"Advance Wars Days of Ruin is anything but Ruined!"

Overview
The advance wars series has always been one of great strategy but with an extremely friendly atmosphere are light hearted characters. Advance Wars: Days of Ruin changes all of this and makes the characters, environments, units, and story much more mature.

This game is much more strategy based than the last advance wars, CO powers are weakened, CO bonuses have a limited radius, and tag powers are gone altogether. I say that this is a great change because now matches are more determined by skill than who gets their tag power first. Terrain bonuses are also increased and many units have been balanced and changed to further balance the game.

Graphics: 9/10
The maps and units are much more detailed than the past games. The new mature style also looks excellent. The characters are very memorable and as always, look great. To top it all of the infantry units *gasp* actually look like people! The only complaint I have is the fact that the attack animations look much more static now than the ones in previous games.

Sound: 10/10
The sounds of explosions, machine gun fire, guitar music, and orchestrated music all sound wonderful on the DS's speakers. The music sounds even better than Dual Strike and the music in between missions sets the mood for the story.

Story: 8/10
This has always been one of Advance Wars' weak points. This game is no exception. The story is promising at some points but it is ruined by the fact that there are two kid COs which seem to plague the series. The dialog, however; is much better this time around. I actually want to read the dialog instead of skipping through it. Nintendo definetly learned their lesson and made none of the character say "WE TOOK DEM 2 SKOOL" after winning a battle. Or making you fight your ally for no apparent reason other than they think its fun.

Gameplay: 9/10
This is where the game shines. The game is highly strategic and fun to play as always. They balanced many of the units such as tanks. For example they made MD tanks (a slightly stronger tank) a lot cheaper and removed neotanks(old overpowered tank) to justify buying it. The last tank is the War tank, which is similar to the megatank from previous games, but with less armor, more ammo, and more speed. They also added new units such as the duster and the anti tank. The campaign mode is quite long and has challenge maps dotted throughout the normal maps. The campaign mode is pretty easy and was designed for first timers. The war room has been removed, but it really isn't a big deal because you can have free battles and wifi battles. Wifi Battles are a huge bonus this time around so you can fight real people instead of the AI. Wifi mode even has voice chat via the DS's mic. You can also design maps, but can hold a lot more map data than Dual Strike.

Conclusion
This game is by far the best game in the advance wars series. They removed everything that was bad, and added everything that was needed. This game gets a well deserved 9/10 from me.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/04/08

Game Release: Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (US, 01/21/08)