One of the most successful and recognized handheld strategy franchises gets a new installment on the Nintendo DS. Advance Wars: Days of Ruin sees a new world and story begun. The tone is a lot darker and more mature. In addition there have been some major changes to some elements of the gameplay. Do these changes enhance the experience or does it ultimately harm the game?
Find out after the jump.
Days of Ruin follows the journey of the 12th division of Rubinelle, nicknamed Brenner’s Wolves after the captain of the division. After an apocalyptic meteor shower wiped out 90% of the planets population, the surviving members of Brenner’s Wolves travel from city to city searching for survivors, one of which is a young boy named Will who becomes a key player in the events of the story. However not all the survivors share this mentality of humanitarianism. There are those who want to use the confusion and chaos for their own ends. Old national rivalries turn into all out war as each side sees the destruction as an opportunity to conquer the other. There is also a mysterious man named Caulder who’s motives are unclear. Brenner’s Wolves get caught up in the middle of it all and must fight to protect the survivors as well as themselves while searching for a way to end the fighting and chaos and turn the minds the people towards rebuilding.
Just as they decided to redo the story, so also did the developers redo the art style. The cute, cartoony style is gone, replaced with a dark and gritty style. Instead of vibrant colors, units now sport dirty and bland colors as do their uniforms. The levels look like a rusty desert and the cities and factories sport a rundown and abandoned feel (in battle screens). Some people may like it, some may hate it, but I think it really goes with the dark tone of the entire game.
Advance Wars: Days of Ruin keeps the core gameplay of the series mostly intact with a few major tweaks. The rock, paper, scissors battle system that is characteristic of the series stays exactly the same. The balance between Air, Sea, and Ground as well as between the various units in those categories is almost perfect. Even the most powerful tank can be dominated by a Bomber. The tables can quickly turn as the Bomber is shot-down by a missile encampment. Its this circle of power and counters that adds a surprising amount of strategy.
Of course with any new strategy game new units are a must. Days of Ruin adds some very interesting and effective new units but also discards a lot of units from the old game. All of the Black Hole units are gone. Most will not be missed. Honestly the Black Bomb was just cheap and the Piperunner had so many limitations it was not even worth it. The absence of the Blackboat, however, will defiantly be felt by Advance Wars veterans as it was an extremely helpful support unit.
As mentioned, there are some new units that try to fill the gap. The most useful is the bike: a fast-moving infantry unit that is best used to capture far away factories and cities very quickly in the early stages of a match. In Fog of War the new Flare Tank is very useful as it can fire a flare to dispel the haze and reveal hidden units making them excellent spotters for artillery. There are a few more units such as the duster and gunboat which add a few more options for air and sea combat.
A few old favorites get a major upgrade as well. The most notable are changes to the Battleships and Carriers. The Battleships can now fire after they have moved making them the only long range units that are able to fire while moving. The Carriers have lost their long range missiles but these have been replaced with an amazing feature. Carriers can produce up to four of the new sea-plane units (a cross between a fighter and a bomber that has very low fuel and ammo) and can also hold up to 2 air units at a time and repair them, making them a mobile airbase. The Rig (formerly known as the APC) can now build temporary airports and seaports (buildings that repair and refuel planes and boats but cannot produce any units or funds). Other units have some minor damage tweaks but otherwise remain the same.
The most dramatic difference from the old games that Days of Ruin presents pertains to the commanding officers (CO’s). In the previous games, the CO was also a god-like figure. They were commanding the army but from the same perspective of the player. Each CO would have certain passive effects on one or more of the unit types such as more/less damage or more/less range. Then there was the CO powers. In Advance Wars: Dual Strike (the previous Advance Wars title), the CO Powers could very well decide who won the match. This issue was most prominent in Dual Strike because the “Double CO Power†allowed the player to move twice in one turn in addition to using the CO powers.
Days of Ruin takes a huge step back in terms of COs, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The CO is now a unit on the field, similar to the hero unit in Warcraft 3. The CO is not a stand alone unit but must be attached to a unit already on the field. Any unit can serve as a host and the cost of producing the CO unit is half of the cost of the unit it is attached to. Another dramatic tweak to the COs is that their passive effects no longer apply to every unit. Here is where the CO unit comes in. There is an area of effect (size varies by CO) that expands from the CO unit. Depending on the CO, certain units will receive a damage and/or defense boost as long as they remain inside the CO area. The CO powers still exist but don’t have the over-the-top effect they usually did. Since a full CO power bar increases the size of the CO area of effect, there is more incentive to keep the expanded CO effect rather than use the power. Some long time fans may be disappointed by the changes to the CO’s but people playing Advance Wars for the first time shouldn’t have a problem with it.
Lets not forget the most important part of any strategy game: strategy. Remember this is a turn-based strategy game but how much strategic depth does the game have? The short answer: lots. Days of Ruin is arguably the most strategic game in the series. New units such as the Flare Tank, with its aforementioned uses in Fog of War, and the speedy Infantry Bike can dramatically alter the way a match plays out. The addition of new terrain types also alters the battlefield layout and offers many more hiding places in Fog of War. The tweaks to some of the old units as well as the new CO “unit†will lead to some interesting strategies.
A big downer about the game is that the developers got rid of a lot of the cool features from Dual Strike. The War Room, a collection of challenging bonus missions, is no longer there. Instead 36 unlockable missions have been added to the campaign. While some of these are indeed challenging, they are nothing compared to the old War Room maps. Also missing in action is the Store, one of my favorite features in the old games. I loved spending my hard earned mission points to buy new multiplayer maps and Commanders. So imagine my disappointment when I booted up the game to find that all maps were already available and Commanders were unlocked by beating certain missions in the campaign. There are also no harder difficulties for the single player campaign which really surprised me because of how easy the campaign was the first time through. A lot of longevity was lost when these features were dropped.
That’s not to say that there are no features in the game though. Online play is the biggest feature by far. Online multiplayer comes in two forms: 1v1 Matchmaking and custom games with up to 3 friends. In 1v1 (named “Worldwideâ€Â) the player is matched with a random person on a random map.
If you are fortunate to have 3 other friends with this game and enough patience to write down your NSA security-grade friendcode you can play a 2-4 player custom game over the internet. You and your friends can choose the map and conditions of your choice and voicechat (low quality) is enabled. You can also play with up to four friends locally via the DS to DS WiFi connection and this is identical to the online mode. You can even play a 4 player game on a single DS by passing the DS around after you finish your turn.
One of the few returning features is the map editor. Maps can be a minimum of 5×5 tiles and a maximum of 30×30 tiles. The interface is very easy to use and has some very useful tools that make the editing faster and easier. There is even an option to let the game create a map on its own that you can then tweak to your liking should your imagination be having a slow day. One feature I found really neat was the ability to control the behavioral patterns of pre-deployed AI units. This specific feature presents some great potential for user created single player missions via map sharing.
Yes, map sharing. After you have created your masterpiece of a map you can then share it with your friends via local WiFi or the Nintendo WiFi service. There is even an option to upload a map to the worldwide database for anyone to download and rate. However, the worldwide option requires that your map meet certain criteria before they can be submitted (the most annoying being a 10×10 size limit) and you can only have 1 map on the server at a time. Thankfully local and friend trading does not suffer any of these restrictions so you and your friends are free to share whatever insane designs you can conceive.
Days of Ruin is a solid title and one of the best on the DS for semi-casual and hardcore alike. It is missing a lot of the single player features from the previous games but its multiplayer and map editing/sharing features are far better than its predecessors. If you are looking for a solid single player experience I recommend you pass on this one and pick up one of the earlier titles. But if you want a competitive and versatile portable peer-to-peer strategy game this game is a must have.
Overall Score – 8/10
