Advance Wars is a walking contradiction, almost an oxymoron. He has a very cute appearance, his dialogues are almost childlike and he is presented in a colorful and friendly way, taking you by the hand step by step in the first few missions. On the other hand, it’s ultimately a video game about war, one that flippantly talks about invasions, killing people, and even terrorism. As if that wasn’t enough, it can be very difficult sometimes and get very stubborn with their systems.
But I noticed with him that I’m the same: Whatever I say that I don’t like or that goes with what he’s doing, he hopelessly convinced me again in the end and I ended up dedicating almost 60 hours to him Game time for this analysis. .
Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp for Nintendo Switch is the compilation and re-release of the Californian studio WayForward from the first two installments in Intelligent Systems’ tactical combat series released on the Game Boy Advance in the early 2000s. This means many things at the audiovisual level: new 3D graphics, new animations and cartoon sequences, newly recorded music and even Voice output (also in Spanish). It also offers the first opportunity to play against others chief officers on-line.
Historically considered one of the best of the genre, the game’s appeal lies in the dozens of maps that you must solve, which are strategic puzzles, either as part of the two campaigns of around twenty missions each, or as independent unlockable challenges in the combat room. Then there’s the VS Combat mode. and even the option to create and share custom challenges using the map editor.
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If you don’t know the series, you should know that’s what it’s about Turn-based strategy on land, sea and air on a gridded map, including various unit types, terrain, conditions, and the occasional WMD used by the invading enemy. In a way, it’s similar to the same IntSys’s Fire Emblem combat system, although here you use firearms instead of sword and sorcery, and the characters are tagged as chief officers of the various armies and not in each unit. The latter drives the narrative forward and spices things up with the special abilities (in the form of the OJ Powers).
To digest the slightly awkward tone of this war and how the cartoon cast talks about it, you have to imagine that this is like having some dudes playing a game of Sink the Fleet, like playing war with a bunch of lead soldiers. In fact, in the remake you can see how the cards are mounted on a cardboard base or in a wooden box. Then the toy units and animations complete the miniature diorama.
Speaking of which, as I said in my first impressions, I missed the originals painted with pixel art at first, but little by little the WayForward restoration won me over with these beautiful, subtle and distinguishable units. The new graphics manage to convey the same spirit while maintaining style, simplicity and much-needed clarity. And of course, the personality of the newly drawn characters is enhanced with type videos animeas in the voices included for the occasion, both aspects increase the production values of the remake. What they need to update is that they can skip the OJ Power animations as they can get tiresome after a while. (Pro tip: you can skip the dialogs by clicking the More button.)
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The inherent gameplay is pretty much the same aside from the UX improvements or the fact that there are a few extra missions. Cadets in sex should choose those new relaxed difficultybecause the alternative classic sharpen their curve quickly and they’ll end up taking them out of their boxes. The hardest quests can be thrilling and legendary when you complete them, but also very gory when things don’t go to your liking after several hours. Yes: Some of the more epic maps can give you several hours of gameplay, which means you could potentially complete them piece by piece over several days.
Experienced strategists who should go for the Classic Challenge will sometimes find this difficulty tricky, unfair, or annoying as some of the maps require some trial and error and don’t offer much flexibility to try different or makeshift approaches. Perfectionists will want to give up after several rounds (days of play) to start over and nail down each move and that’s fine, but if you think you’ve already mastered the game and it wrecks you without palliatives because you have a strict Had to follow order, as rigid as specific It doesn’t feel so good.
For better or for worse, the remake also retains some of it inexplicable AI behavior of the originals, the you can want You have to explode if you want to complete the most difficult missions, let alone them S rank. If you don’t realize that TO A are cannon fodder, how to block that artillery of the enemy, or what decisions his infantry At first, some challenges will be simply impossible.
This mostly happens in the last third of the first Advance Wars, but the campaign of the second game (Black hole rises) also has its tense moments thanks to its larger scale and more dedicated map layouts, some of which are really clever and require you to at least be solvent with a lot more tools and OJ at your disposal.
And yet it’s a proposition that inevitably captivates you, leading to some mythical comebacks and some about-faces that are a delight. When you’re 15-20 days into a mission and you finally manage to break through, say, through the gorge the enemy has created for you to eventually feel powerful enough to defeat them, your sweaty fist becomes the shake celebration. These opportunities more than made up for the slower or more annoying portions of my campaigns; As you can see, I couldn’t stop playing or thinking about my current mission, which says a lot for something I did 20 years ago.
Ultimately, then, the charm and uniqueness of Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp lies in its contradiction. That casual finish is needed to make both the message and the magnitude of the challenge more bearable, and WayForward does a great job of restoring the classic tactical anime so it fits the Nintendo Switch like a glove, both on TV and on Laptop.
