Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising

"War even kids would enjoy."

It seems like nowadays, it's getting more and more difficult to find a war game that does not originate over a certain battle within written history, straying away from the cliche science fiction scenario of fighting off aliens from another planet. An epic battle just has to be fought, whether gamers are given an advantage or disadvantage. That's the way of war. Advance Wars 2 continues the struggles of a fighting Marco Land by providing convincing scenarios that would challenge even the craftiest strategy buff.

As the last Advance Wars title ended, a truce between the hoodwinked countries of Orange Star, Blue Moon, Yellow Comet and Green Earth still holds strong against the instigating nation of Black Hole. As prosperity began to settle, Black Hole once again terrorizes everywhere in hopes of imperializing every last square kilometer of land they can find. These four nations on the receiving end of attack are not going to roll over and die as their brightest Commanding Officers assemble their troops to liberate themselves from the Black Hole forces.

The CO's have different personalities along with backgrounds that help provide great story progression outside the field and much needed advantages while in charge of their armada. The best example is the CO's of Green Earth. Green Earth is commanded by Jess and Eagle who are often times in friendly disputes while Drake, Green Earth's final CO, acts as the peacemaker of the two. During battle, they are a force to be reckoned with as Eagle rules the skies in his fighters and bomber planes, Jess roams rough with her ground forces and Drake rocks waves with his naval fleet.

In the battle for freedom from an incredibly powerful, but pint-sized island country in Black Hole, the game gratefully provides a needed tutorial into the game's complex control early on. Orange Star first launches a counter-attack, introducing some of the basic tactics to win over the opposing forces and provide information on the types of troops and vehicles available as the war goes on. The way they did not try to cram all of the info in one battle does not stress out the player into having a one shot chance of memorizing everything.
As the war goes on, the difficulty increases greatly to the point where allies are not given favorable odds as Orange Star did early on. In fact, some missions do not always lead to the absolute destruction of Black Hole's troops. Instead, mission objectives could be in the form of getting troops back to headquarters, destroying huge cannons and even holding off opposing forces. The variety in missions helps give a natural flow of a war that does not result to brute force every time (although that would help a lot).

As the war continues, some aspects bring forth the feeling of fiction into play. The invention of the Neotanks and laser cannons from Lash, a Black Hole CO, adds to the fun values and/or difficulty in the game. Another unreal aspect that real world leaders do not have is the ability to summon a special power out of nowhere. CO Powers and even Super Powers give both CO's the benefit of their combat specialty. For example, Grit, a Blue Moon CO with a knack for long range combat, has a CO Power and Super Power that adds additional range to all of his indirect units. Other CO's have different powers so it's a lot of fun to use them in battle but that quickly changes as holding off a rival CO's power could lead into many devastating loses.

Another difference every CO has is their anthem. Each CO is represented with a suitable background beat as their turn wears on. Some of them really fit their personality like Colin's childish theme matching his young age and Flak's “Jaws” like theme of impending doom. Only one theme really hinders my motivation to fight on and its Jess's theme from Green Earth. Her theme seems to be wallowed down by the loud sounds of a moving tank. The bad part about that is that it does not form any sort of beat giving off nothing more than an ambient annoyance.

At least I was able to enjoy the abundant selection of music through purchasing the Soundroom option from Hachi's shop. As battles are fought and won, points are awarded afterwards and are redeemable in the old man's shop. Aside from the Soundroom option, one can purchase the use of CO's for other modes in the game outside Story mode along with additional battle maps, the option of changing the default colors of the various CO's and even a harder difficulty after the first time around in Story mode.

When advancing in the story is not part of the player's objective but engaging in battle is still on the list, the War Room provides the opportunity to square off not only Black Hole CO's, but also CO's all over Marco Land. Some CO's like Grit, Sensei and Hawke pose more of a challenge than Flak, Lash and Adder would in Story mode, but no real CO would back down from a challenge (especially Kanbei of Yellow Comet).

There are also places where one can make their own maps to use against friends; however, it takes a lot of time and patients to accomplish. Too bad that I am not one of those people.

As the war slowly ends, usually civil unrest remains. As my review ends, it still leaves the notion of whether the game is as good as it gets. I believe that this game is not really perfectly molded into the best war game ever, but it does suffice as a great alternative for when battling outside the norm is called for.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/07/05