It can be safely told that it's still the old same good Advance Wars that delighted us westeners since the first GBA game, so it can be still described as an highly addictive drug inserted into a cartridge and then sold for a relatively low price, especially now that there's a free online mode thanks to the Wi-Fi Connection.
The first campaign missions are easy and use incredibly quick tutorials to explain things during a mission, telling you how the game works but without nursing you as Dual Strike did...probably they are still invasive for experienced players but at least there's no need to play tutorials disguised as missions.
Campaign mode also throws in optional missions not related with the main story quite early and on these maps you have full access to units, without restrictions, and are moderately harder than standard story missions.
There are still super deformed units on the battlefield but they aren't that super deformed and still look like existing military units; you've got T-34s for light tanks, M1s and T-80s for medium tanks, Cobras as attack helicopters, Paladins as artillery units and so on - the game mixes old and modern military units to recreate its own visual style.
Thankfully enough the hugely pixellated sprites used during battle animations in Dual Strike are gone, replaced with properly drawn vehicles and men.
The story is a good match for the new visual style: it won't take long in being introduced to something that would have never happened in the previous Advance Wars, and I'm not speaking of the meteors of which the introduction speaks of.
Musically speaking some themes are remixed version of old ones and they are mostly rock pieces with heavy use of guitars and some electronic effects; sound effects are almost identical to the previous games.
The new units include motorbykes (fast infantry able to capture cities and armed with machine guns), anti-tank batteries (short-range indirect unit with huge attack power against tanks and infantry that can counter direct attacks - simply deadly against swarms of light tanks) and flares to reveal hidden terrain during fog-of-war scenarios; some units are cheaper to produce (medium tanks are now at 12000 credits, mechs at 2500) while other are more expensive (infantry at 1500 credits) and have all been rebalanced. Now all of them carry very little quantities of ammo and fuel and capturing cities and mantaining a strong supply line is a prime concern: for this purpose APCs have been renamed Rigs and can build temporary airfield and ports to repair and refuel air or sea units, while still being able to carry one infantry unit and replenish other ground units.
Most scenarios feature a complex terrain layout so that no unit is useless and each map has a number of strategic options to consider - even during the first missions, the terrain layout was a pure joy to play on, with free battles being even more entertaining, also thanks to a better AI.
COs have been nerfed down: they no longer affect the army as a whole, but only units near a "honor unit" that carries the CO. These honor units are normal units where you can load your CO (using a full turn, unfortunately) and bring him or her into battle. CO powers are still present, but they take much longer to charge and they aren't as devastating as some previous powers.
This choice basically removes any "weak" CO for small, ground-only maps and due to the particular terrain, each CO can shine on any given map, if used correctly. If the old system was still in use there was no reason for people not to chose Eagle and Jess on most maps, that could have turned online matches in an endless sequence of double turns and tank battles.
It's good and I need to buy an access point for my DS. Then I will forfeit any social life and play it endlessy.
The first campaign missions are easy and use incredibly quick tutorials to explain things during a mission, telling you how the game works but without nursing you as Dual Strike did...probably they are still invasive for experienced players but at least there's no need to play tutorials disguised as missions.
Campaign mode also throws in optional missions not related with the main story quite early and on these maps you have full access to units, without restrictions, and are moderately harder than standard story missions.
There are still super deformed units on the battlefield but they aren't that super deformed and still look like existing military units; you've got T-34s for light tanks, M1s and T-80s for medium tanks, Cobras as attack helicopters, Paladins as artillery units and so on - the game mixes old and modern military units to recreate its own visual style.
Thankfully enough the hugely pixellated sprites used during battle animations in Dual Strike are gone, replaced with properly drawn vehicles and men.
The story is a good match for the new visual style: it won't take long in being introduced to something that would have never happened in the previous Advance Wars, and I'm not speaking of the meteors of which the introduction speaks of.
Musically speaking some themes are remixed version of old ones and they are mostly rock pieces with heavy use of guitars and some electronic effects; sound effects are almost identical to the previous games.
The new units include motorbykes (fast infantry able to capture cities and armed with machine guns), anti-tank batteries (short-range indirect unit with huge attack power against tanks and infantry that can counter direct attacks - simply deadly against swarms of light tanks) and flares to reveal hidden terrain during fog-of-war scenarios; some units are cheaper to produce (medium tanks are now at 12000 credits, mechs at 2500) while other are more expensive (infantry at 1500 credits) and have all been rebalanced. Now all of them carry very little quantities of ammo and fuel and capturing cities and mantaining a strong supply line is a prime concern: for this purpose APCs have been renamed Rigs and can build temporary airfield and ports to repair and refuel air or sea units, while still being able to carry one infantry unit and replenish other ground units.
Most scenarios feature a complex terrain layout so that no unit is useless and each map has a number of strategic options to consider - even during the first missions, the terrain layout was a pure joy to play on, with free battles being even more entertaining, also thanks to a better AI.
COs have been nerfed down: they no longer affect the army as a whole, but only units near a "honor unit" that carries the CO. These honor units are normal units where you can load your CO (using a full turn, unfortunately) and bring him or her into battle. CO powers are still present, but they take much longer to charge and they aren't as devastating as some previous powers.
This choice basically removes any "weak" CO for small, ground-only maps and due to the particular terrain, each CO can shine on any given map, if used correctly. If the old system was still in use there was no reason for people not to chose Eagle and Jess on most maps, that could have turned online matches in an endless sequence of double turns and tank battles.
It's good and I need to buy an access point for my DS. Then I will forfeit any social life and play it endlessy.
will there be a thread for freinds codes for some wifi action 
Comment