"Attack on Pearl Harbor" received "mixed or average reviews", according to review aggregator Metacritic. Tristan Kalogeropoulos of "PALGN" wrote that the game offers "great 'arcadey' action and some incredibly fun aerial combat". In a retrospective piece about the game, John Walker of "Rock, Paper, Shotgun" praised the satisfaction of combat. Conversely, "IGN"s Charles Onyett concluded that the game "manage to take something as interesting as World War II's air battle over the Pacific and turn it into something as repetitive as bouncing a tennis ball against a wall".