Advance Wars/Battalion Wars

Series:Advance/Famicom Wars
Developer:Intelligent systems
Systems: Famicom, Super Famicom, Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS.
Spin Offs:Batallion Wars Series.

Advance Wars. or Famicom Wars in Japan, is Nintendo's War strategy game which puts you into the boots of a Commanding Officer(CO). Despite fitting onto that small 3 Inch Screen, the whole battle Field can span over the size of Canadian Province Ontario.

Recently Advance wars turned from the Happy Go Lucky look's of Orange Star's and Blue Moon conflict,to the bleak and desperate aftermath of a deadly meteor shower in a part of earth where the neighboring countries of Rubinelle and Lazuria have been waging war of Centuries.

So who played this amazing series? At first it seemed lamed and had little action when i first saw it on the GBA. Nothing more than moving sprites around on a square map. I decided to pick up Days of Ruin and was amazed.

Any ways discuss all Advance/Famicom Wars things here.

PLUS: any one like it how Intelligent Systems just slipped thier name in Days of Ruin?
Intelligent Defence Systems

I've only played dual stike, however I found it highly enjoyable.

I own/play Dual Strike and Days of Ruin. Prefer the latter, but I haven't finished story mode in either. No one around my area to play against. I haven't played since...February?

I've played the hell out of all of them.

In terms of storyline, it's gone downhill from the first game. AWDS had a couple decent plot twists, but nothing as big as AW1. Even though everyone praises it, I hated Days of Ruin's storyline. Sure, it starts out dark and mysterious and it makes a bunch of remarks about human nature in crisis scenarios, but at the same time it leads to really one-dimensional and unlikeable characters. The only plot twist is at the very end during the final battle (which seems a lot harder to me than the others in the series since it's basically the final battle and the factory battles from AW2 combined) and at that point it really doesn't add much to the story. AW2's plot was incredibly linear. Yep, AW1 is definitely good times in my book. Also, Sturm. STURM!

In terms of gameplay though, they're all very good. AW2 added a lot more depth to the gameplay of the first one, and AWDS added even more than that. You'd think that Days of Ruin would retain all the stuff from AWDS and add wifi as well, but no, Nintendo never gets anything right with their sequels that have wifi. Almost everything I liked about AWDS was absent from Days of Ruin. Survival mode, gone. Tag battles, gone. DS battles, gone. On top of that, they completely ****ed up the CO power system. I need to pay 1.5 times the price of my unit and hope it survives long enough for me to use the power? That's bull****. They might as well have gotten rid of them entirely. I like some of the changes they made in the units - I like the bike, the Flare, and the Anti-Tank (even if it is too **** hard to kill) units, I like that they dropped the price of the AAs by a thousand, and I like that they consolidated the Neotank and the Megatank into the War Tank - but I don't like the other changes to them - Infantry should not be 1500, MD Tanks should not be less than 15000, and T-copters did not need a price raise.

Okay, I'm done with my ranting now.

So what COs does everyone use? Here's my list:

AW1 - Eagle
AW2 - Whoever, mainly Eagle I guess (haven't played in in a while)
AWDS - Ness/Rachel for tag battles, whoever for 1 CO battles

Yeah, I like Eagle lol. Multiple turns ftw.

Days of Ruin was the best, but intelligent systems is not making very many games recently. They made the best games like paper mario, which was EPIC

Days of Ruin was more tactical in a sense. I like it that its a goddam total war. Maybe the broken CO's where the things that put me off in the first place

I love the Advance Wars games to bits. Dual Strike probably has to be my favourite of the series, either that or Advance Wars 2. To be honest, Days of Ruin (or Dark Conflict as its known here, I dont know why they changed the name, Days of Ruin sounds better) was a little disappointing. They changed way too much of the gameplay. CO's became a very small part of the game, which I loved about the previous games. I never used CO powers in Days of Ruin, you have to sacrifice your extended CO zone for a single turn power. Anti-tanks were overpowered. An indirect unit that can counterattack direct units, has tough armour, and blows through all ground units. Infantries did a fair amount of damage to them, but they usually died from the counterattack. Re-naming units was unnecessary, it got confusing playing with friends and referring to Interceptors as Fighters, since Fighters were now a brand new unit.

These were the CO's I used for each game:
AW1: Max (Decreased range and power of only 4 units in the entire game was a small price to pay for 150% damage for ALL direct units, Max was Top Tier back in the days of AW1. He was nerfed down to 120% damage in AW2)

AW2: Colin (Swarm the enemy with Neotanks before they're even making MD tanks, plus really small CO power bar that increased fund even further) Kanbei (Basically a brute force CO, Max outshined him in the original but since Max was nerfed I began using Kanbei) and Grit (Super CO power rapez)

AWDS: With the skills system, I played as pretty much everyone. Grimm = 130/80 - Offense/Defence. Give him a load of defence skills and he had no weaknesses.

Days of Ruin: CO's made little difference but I always played as Forsythe (I think thats his name in NTSC, I cant remember his PAL name and I got that from Gamespot) Large CO zone = Closest thing to a CO being helpful in DR

Oh yeah, I guess I used Colin the most in AW2. I think the only reason I stopped was because he's so broken lol.

I want to say I use Grit and Eagle for AWDS. I love having multiple turns.

I just remembered one thing I loved abotu Days of Ruin: Mr. Bear. Mr. Bear was the best character in the game by far. If he were a CO he'd be even better. Mr. Bear is simply amazing.

I only own the first Advance Wars. I played the hell out of it. Unlocked every character, every map. Pretty sure I s-ranked everything (Got up to rank 1).

Pretty good game.

Anyone else like Eagle as a character?

ZeroFox said:

Anyone else like Eagle as a character?

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Yeah, he's my favorite CO, him and Sami are the best, extra turn, and one day HQ capture.

ZeroFox said:

I only own the first Advance Wars. I played the hell out of it. Unlocked every character, every map. Pretty sure I s-ranked everything (Got up to rank 1).

Pretty good game.

Anyone else like Eagle as a character?

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Eagle is awesome in AW1. In the sequels he loses power though. I did like the Sami/Eagle tag in DS but it just takes so long to charge up.

Gates said:

Eagle is awesome in AW1. In the sequels he loses power though. I did like the Sami/Eagle tag in DS but it just takes so long to charge up.

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Hmm, never played the sequel.

One thing I tried doing though, was I would create a multiplayer map with 4 players, and control 2 humans against 2 computers.

Of course I set the game so it was super easy to make money, etc. And I'd amass a huge fleet of aircraft and ships (the map had islands on the 4 corners and large water in between) and use Eagle's CO power...

Noobish I know, but I was curious to see how much stuff I could destroy. Mindless fun after hours of trying to get up to Rank 1...

I only played AW2. I played as Olaf, Eagle, Hawke or Andy. Depends on where I am fighting. Sami KILLS when you are on campaign. Capture in ONE DAY?!! She was how I beat the one War Room map where Strum has you surrounded by Neotanks. My friend picked Strum and beat me in vs. mode. Unfair.

The last and favorite Advanced Wars game I've played was Days of Ruin. Forsythe and Tabitha are probably the strongest COs but my personal favorite is Isabella in terms of fighting style, and my favorite personalities are Caulder, Dr. Morris, and Lin.

Penny has a pretty cool fighting style also. And good music.

Da Shuffla said:

I only played AW2. I played as Olaf, Eagle, Hawke or Andy. Depends on where I am fighting. Sami KILLS when you are on campaign. Capture in ONE DAY?!! She was how I beat the one War Room map where Strum has you surrounded by Neotanks. My friend picked Strum and beat me in vs. mode. Unfair.

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It's Sturm, not Strum lol.

Gates said:

It's Sturm, not Strum lol.

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Oh, my fault. Always pronounced it Strum. The most broken of all COs. I usually went with Hawke, anyway. Anyone here use Kanbei? It would be worth it if you're on a map with plenty of cities to increase your income.

Days of ruin IMO was the closest to the original Famicom wars. It didn't portray war as a bunch of kid playing a game. It portrayed war as gritty, alot of emotion stress and death with Brenner death and the more tatical approach with you relying almost on real world tactics(support with Battle ships and transport units with landers like D-Day).