"A few big losses, but mostly good additions"

Advance Wars is a somewhat quirky series that pits armies of chibi soldiers against one another against a backdrop of faux-war. Up till now, the games had two defining characteristics:

- The goofy, upbeat atmosphere and cartoony graphics (notable for being on such a grim topic as war) and
- The extreme focus on CO's (commanding officers) who shaped the entire strategy of what you would build and how you would command the game.

Days of Ruin throws both of these old ideas out the window, making the game much more mature, and changing the game's focus to strategy rather than abuse of CO's. In my opinion, the vast majority of changes in the game are for the better; although the game feels missing in some areas, it is, overall, a much better gaming experience.

GRAPHICS: 8/10

The graphics in Days of Ruin are neither an advance nor a retreat from previous quality, simply... different. The battle scenes are much more vivid and detailed, taking place on two screens rather than one (although, I must complain, the units look somewhat more pixel-ly in battle compared to Dual Strike). The actual map takes a zoomed-in perspective, throwing away the annoying and ugly isometric view in Dual Strike. The units on the map are much better than they have ever been; they've never looked more vivid or different from each other than they do now. And for people who prefer the older, zoomed-out perspective, there is the ability to switch between the two perspectives without going to a menu (although, thankfully, the maps are 2D rather than tilted now).

The game also incorporates cutscenes involving well-drawn character pictures and backgrounds. It's a lot like Fire Emblem, in a good way. These are a great addition to story mode and do a much better job of drawing you in than the annoying, boring text boxes from old Advance Wars games.

SOUND: 9/10

The batch of CO music this time is much, much better than previous games. Each of the tracks has a unique feel to it; Will's feels appropriately hopeful, Brenner's feels brave, and all of the other CO's have great music to fit their personality. It's much more memorable, and much catchier, than the old CO's music, and also much less annoying.

The sound effects are what you'd expect. Tank treads, foot steps, MIDI machine-gun noises. One interesting addition is that in-battle, you can hear the tanks' engines idling, which I thought was a cool little detail that made the game feel that much more real.

Overall, the sound gets the job done in a much better way than previous Advance Wars games, although people who don't like Metal are probably in for some serious iPod usage while they play the game.

STORY: 9/10

FINALLY! A good story! Advance Wars games have been dying for a decent story forever, and to be honest, anyone who considers fighting off the Black Hole Army for the upteenth time to be an actual story are out of their minds.

Essentially, Days of Ruin takes place on an unnamed planet where the former nations of Lazuria and Rubinelle were at war. Meteorites struck the planet, obliterating the majority of human life and ending the "Great War" between the two nations. Now, the main character (Will) joins a remnant of the former Rubinelle army for survival in the new world. As you might expect, you have to protect survivors, and take it to your old enemies (the Lazurians), and, of course, there are betrayals, some bad guys become good guys, all that good stuff. It's predictable, but it's fairly good, and it's nice to have characters who are at least 2-dimensional (as opposed to the laughable one-dimensional Sunday-cartoon characters of old).

The story also makes an unusual (but welcome) attempt at musing towards human nature. There's some pedestrian pondering of whether humans act for self interest or in the name of others, and there's even a half-baked attept to compare clones and humans to evaluate what makes you a human individual.

At any rate, by the standard set by other games, the story is by no means amazing, but the fact that it EXISTS is so much better than previous Advance Wars games that it is hard not to appreciate this newfound attempt at character-building.

GAMEPLAY: 9/10

Wow. Where to start?

To veteran Advance Wars fans: EVERY unit added in Advance Wars 2 or Advance Wars Dual Strike has been removed. Every single one. Replacing them are a few new units, and some old units have been improved or had attributes changed.

But the gist of it is: No more broken, overpowered units like Neotanks, Black Bombs, Stealth Fighters, and other such nonsense. The units in this game are extremely well balanced, often to the point that actual strategy can develop, as opposed to "buy Neotanks, kill enough units to activate Tag Power, and win." Weaker units like regular tanks and recons actually have a reason for existing now, and they are in fact much more cost-effective than big units now. This is an EXCELLENT change that makes the game much more fun, and demanding much more thinking from the player.

Second, on CO's: Contrary to what's being spouted on forums, reviews, and magazines everywhere, CO powers are still in the game, and CO's still have a huge effect on how the battle turns out. However, the way COs work has been fundamentally changed in a much better way: basically, COs fight alongside your normal units as "Hero" units with significantly better stats than normal units. Around them is a radius, within which friendly units gain a stats bonus. As they kill units, they build up power for their CO meter, so you obviously want to use a powerful unit as a CO unit, or at least one that can get a lot of easy kills, like a Rocket or Anti-Air. The powers themselves are much smaller than before; a movement bonus there, free supplies there, that sort of thing. The management of COs is much better done in this game, and makes the CO you choose actually MORE important than in previous games, since the units are so well balanced that you have to formulate some kind of strategy to turn the tides.

My one complaint about this new system? The actual effects of the "CO zone" (the aura around the CO unit that buffs up friendly units) are really boring. Almost all of them are generic attack and defense bonuses, with some being specialized to air units or sea units or indirect units or whatver. In my opinion, the possibility for much more varied and interesting CO zones exists; how about a free-supplies CO zone, or a heal-1-HP per turn CO zone, or an increase-indirect-unit-range CO zone? These sort of possibilies were passed up in favor of boring stat-increases.

However, overall, the gameplay is much better off than before, with better balance, better playability, better interaction between units, everything. I really hope they continue this gameplay style in the next game, but improve upon it further.

REPLAY: 6/10

This is the one category where the game suffers needlessly. The campaign is decently long, and decently challenging, but the excellent War Room game type from previous games is gone, as are unlockable maps and other trinkets that had to be bought with points earned through victory. I sorely miss saving up to buy new maps, and having my best score for each map recorded in the War Room. The Free Battle mode is kind of like War Room, except without saved scores, which kind of removes the point.

There is one saving grace: the excellent Trial Maps in campaign mode. It'll take weeks, maybe months, to complete all of them with an S rank, and they are different enough from each other and the campaign mode maps to make them fun individual challenges. However, the fact that you can't choose which CO you use is a slight annoyance to an otherwise cool concept.

Basically, expect some good mileage out of the game, but nothing extraordinary. The old Advance Wars games were far from perfect, but at least all the War Room maps gave them some longetivity.

OVERALL: 8/10

This game is good, but not excellent. It is a huge improvement over previous titles in the series, but to be truly EXCELLENT, there needs to be a few further tweaks. However, the game is definately a step in the right direction, and I strongly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys strategy games.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/27/08

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