Advance Wars – Days of Ruin
Posted on January 31st, 2008 by
Advance Wars is a series I should enjoy more than I do. There’s something about the happy, happy take on warfare I always found vaguely off-putting and the series is marred, in my opinion, by way too much writing. Still, they’re great for kids – they’re easy to learn, hard to master, and the tactical challenge is brain-teasingly fun and second to none. WhatTheyPlay has published my takes on Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising for GBA and Advance Wars: Dual Strike, and now they’ve put up my take on Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. An excellent new direction for the series where the story gets darker, the warfare is still happy, and the gameplay is still unparalleled and perfectly safe for kids as young as 8.
January 31st, 2008 at 11:51 am
Three years on, there is still no better strategy game for ‘next gen’ handhelds than Advance Wars … and I like the new one even more than the first. The dark tone is quite nice.
February 8th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
I’ve been playing Age of Empires for the first time and I think I’m liking it a lot. Advance Wars is really tightly built, but I feel like after a while each map just winds up being a puzzle, like a really deep game of solitaire or something. With an RTS-derived strategy like AoE, I feel like you *get* somewhere as a mission goes on, and you build up a town that’s your own.
I’m still going to buy Days of Ruin, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not sure it’s the *only * good strategy game.