I blame this one on Wargroove. I saw the ads for it, and it immediately gave me a hankering to play Advance Wars again. Then I did my Top Ten GBA Games list and realized that of the top ten GBA games on the list, Advance Wars and Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising were the only ones I don't currently own. I don't know what happened to my copies from high school-they're somewhere along with a ton of my handheld games I suspect my brother pilfered. One impulse driven purchase later, and I was the proud owner of an extremely beaten up copy of Advance Wars-I really should return it, but I'll be patient and maybe grab a label upgrade at some point and flip this one, because it's really trashed.
I feel a little queasy featuring this here because I honestly can't remember if I beat this game in high school. I may very well have, and I may very have not. I remember the last level, and getting stuck on the last level, and can't remember if I ended up finishing it, so I'm just including this one here anyway. I'm very confident I never finished the second one, so that means I probably never finished this one. I think.
Advance Wars is a turn-based strategy guide from the co-MVPs of the Game Boy Advance, Intelligent Systems (sharing the throne with Camelot, who developed Mario Tennis: Power Tour, Mario Golf: Advance Tour, Golden Sun, and Golden Sun: The Lost Age). Intelligent Systems is better known for their stellar Fire Emblem series, but Advance Wars was the very first game that I played from the company. Compared to Fire Emblem, the Wars series has a decidedly lighter tone, and a more modern setting. Rather than controlling knights and wizards, the Wars games have you playing as a commander of the Orange Star Army, which finds itself embroiled in a war for no apparent reason.
The lighter tone is both due to the delightfully cartoony graphics and the lack of permadeath compared to its grim cousin. In Advance Wars, you build your army, making losing one unit not just possible but necessary to victory. It's far more like chess, in that sacrificing units, and strategizing around using that sacrifice to open your opponent for attacks while seizing new territory, is the name of the game. The game, like chess, features a ton of different units, each with different attack patterns and movement options. The game requires that you learn each of the different units and their strengths and weaknesses, as each will have its uses in battle. For example, infantry units are notoriously weak in battle, yet are tremendously useful, as you can use them to conquer neutral and enemy properties. Capturing these properties grants you extra resources, and your units can repair themselves by sitting on these properties. As you build out your territory to collect more and more property, you'll eventually cross paths with your opponent, who is also building out his territory. By this point, you'll have built a small army to contest his, and battle ensues.
I am SUCH a sucker for GBA sprites, particularly those by Intelligent Systems
Each commander has his own strengths and weaknesses, which further constrains your choice of units in battle. Max, my personal favorite, is really strong with ground and air units that engage in direct combat, but is woefully weak when it comes to using long range units like artillery, rockets, and battleships. Grit, on the other hand, has weak direct combat units, but his ranged units have longer range than normal, and they hit extremely hard. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of your opponent, will dictate which tactic you take, and when. Commanders also have a power gauge that builds up and allows you to buff your army for a turn, so monitoring your opponent's gauge, and planning your own devastating unleashing of power, are also critical components to playing the game. The game ends when you've captured your opponent's headquarters, or when you have destroyed all of your opponent's units.
All of this combines to create a game that looks very lighthearted, but is actually every bit as deep and strategic, if not more so, than your typical strategy game. There is a fairly long campaign in the game, although not quite as long as Advance Wars: Dual Strike. The campaign is filled with a diverse set of very fun, albeit pretty easy missions. In addition to these, you also unlock a new, more challenging campaign after finishing the campaign, and you also have a few standalone maps you can battle on called the War Room. You earn coins for finishing campaign missions and War Room missions, and can use these to unlock new commanders, new War Room missions, and new maps to play against your friends.
Speaking of playing against your friends (you can play with up to 4 players), some of my most fond memories in high school revolved around playing the game hot seat style against my friend. As a turn based game, it really fit well with the concept of passing the GBA, and when you have a tiny GBA SP, you could even covertly pass and play it under your desk without the teacher noticing (most of the time, except for that one time with my Biology teacher). The game's rich level of units, commanders, maps, and options makes each new tilt against your foe a tremendously fun experience, and we certainly wiled away countless happy hours blowing up each others tanks and launching sorties against the enemy HQ.
The soundtrack is pleasant, with each commander having their own music that plays on their turns. It's nothing to write home about, but you won't complain.
This game made me completely happy at the time, but there are definitely a handful of rough edges in hindsight. The enemy AI, particularly in the main campaign, is pretty dumb. It follows a script of what should be targeted first, and this script rarely follows any sort of understandable logic. There were plenty of times when I'd have an APC parked within lethal range of an enemy unit or units, along with a more critical unit I really needed also in lethal range, and the enemy would frequently attack the APC. There's also an enemy which has a power that lets him call a meteor down upon your units in a given area, reducing them all to 2 HP (max of 10). While a smart commander could easily use that to soften up vulnerable units that they could actually reach, my opponent would just pop it off on the units that cost the most money, regardless of whether or not he could capitalize on his power by finishing those units off.
There are also a few quality of life upgrades that are present in the DS game, which is the best in the series, and which this one is really missing in hindsight. In the DS game, you can turn off battle animations, which is a nice option for situations in which you want to rush more quickly through a battle. You can also set it so that your turn automatically ends once you've moved all of your troops, which is also a very nice feature. The second screen also presented some serious upside by nicely displaying information about you, your opponent, the map, win conditions, etc. I also miss the presence of super powers, but not necessarily tag powers, which felt significantly overpowered in the game. The DS game also featured a MUCH improved AI, which is the main reason why it reigns supreme in the Wars canon, in my humble opinion.
With all of that being said, Advance Wars is a very good single player game with plenty of depth and replayability, and a superlative multiplayer game that really can't be missed. I'll give it a 9.0. I'd highly recommend this one, or the sequel, but especially the DS game. They're all great additions to anyone's collection, and I'll definitely be picking up the sequel at some point in the near future.
Up next may be a title I'll tease here, that I'll definitely finish at some point, but am not sure if I'll stick with it all the way to the end. It's likely one that I'll need to finish bit by bit, as I don't think I can just sit down and commit a few weeks to it.
-TRO
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