There are a few strategy games that do this properly, like Total War or Civilization. If you go to war, the beginning of the war is always the most intense part of it, and then slowly gets easier as you take land, key resources, defeat their forces. It's one of the few games where the disconnect between the narrative and the gameplay doesn't exist. Too many other games have a pronounced disconnect between those two things, like Ace Combat.

If I am playing a game of Ace Combat and I have a mission to I sink the enemy fleet and destroy their main shipyard, then why is their fleet even bigger and better equipped later in the game? Why even contextualize the mission with that kind of story when the gameplay is disconnected from it and ends up being the opposite?