Of course you know, this means war. Or rather, ADVANCE WARS!

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Lago PARANOIA
Invincible Overlord
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Of course you know, this means war. Or rather, ADVANCE WARS!

Post by Lago PARANOIA »

My general opinion of the series is that AW2 > AW: DoR >>> AW:DS == AW1. I have played and watched videos of Super Famicom Wars and Famicom Wars and while they have some interesting ideas I think that several design decisions make them so ponderous -- animations aside -- that they're really not worth playing unless you like that sort of gradual grinder style play.

More specific opinions:

AW2: In my opinion, AW2 is the best of the franchise. It doesn't do everything better than the other games, but it does do a lot of things better. Probably the best innovation AW2 brought to the table was an Advance Mode campaign that wasn't just a rehash of the original campaign with more units. At least until they got out of Orange Star, it not only had new maps but new dialogue and mission setups. I really wish that the game developers decided to do this for the entire Advance Campaign instead of just Orange Star, but, it was probably the best idea in the series.

AW: DoR's changes were pretty good on the whole, though I'll understand why some people don't like them. The NA story translation is very good. but unfortunately they take way too long setting up gameplay tutorial nonsense. Also, this is a churlish complaint but I think that the whole trope of producing dozens of tank and plane and artillery battalions really doesn't fit the tone and premise of the game. A Days of Ruin-like game would in tone work a lot better for a franchise like Shining Force or Fire Emblem.

AW - DS: Deeply flawed game. While I think that DoR is a tad too grindy at parts, AW: DS is much too rocket launcher tag-y. In a game where a +10% to attack is considered sufficient to make an otherwise vanilla CO above-average, having 4 selectable skills stackable on top of that is too much. Not to mention that the dual strike mechanic and faster-charging CO bars make a lot of maps and battles a matter of playing biding your time until your bars fill, then completely exploding the enemy's position. Which sounds fun in theory but the structure of Advance Wars isn't very amenable to this kind of see-sawing. Not to mention that the plot and characters are very ridiculous and not in a good way. The Advance Wars 1 and 2 characters were silly in those games, too, but they weren't distorted stereotypes meant to spew forced meme lines. Javier and Grit in particular got on my nerves in this game. Also, the pseudo-3D + 2D sprite graphics along with the slanted playing field looks like garbage. I much prefer the GBA graphics. I only consider it better than AW1 because it has much better variety than that game and in the end that's what makes these games.

AW1: I think that it's the worst of the bunch but only by slightly and the fact that it's the first in the series makes it excusable. Sort of like how Megaman 1 is undoubtedly worse than the mediocre Megaman 5/6 but it ended up irritating people less because, hey, it's the first game. Regardless, it had a number of features that I wish the other games didn't end up ditching.

EDIT: Hell, if I was going to make an Advance Wars fangame or remake, I'd probably just pull a bunch of elements from all of the series and mash them together. Specifically, I'd:

Advance Wars 1:
[*] Use the Advance Wars 1 tileset, sprites, and artstyle, especially for the CO vs. CO facial expressions.
[*] Have a plot to the game beyond 'rar, Black Hole/IDS is EVIL and we need to meet them in the field!'
[*] Have branching paths depending on which character you selected and even had a option for bonus missions.
[*] Have a separate tutorial mode instead of integrating it with the main campaign. It allowed the game to take off at a much faster pace than the other Advance Wars because then they only had to explain a couple of things in the main game.

Advance Wars 2:
[*] Have passive CO abilities, CO power, and a Super CO Power, obviously.
[*] Have an Advance Campaign that functions more of a Bunny Must Die/Chain of Memories alternate gamemodes instead of just normal campaign with more units.
[*] Use the AW2 plotline advancement. That is, you only have to clear some of the available missions before you can advance in the game. This allows people to skip missions that they don't like or find too hard.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike
[*] If you're going to have skills in your game then some serious thought needs to go towards setting up AI maps to have them.
[*] If you're going to have Dual Strikes in the game then you really need to rebalance the power-charging formulas.
[*] The Survival Mode was a very interesting and fun idea. Having people clear a number of maps with only a limited total number of days or funds or RL time adds to replayability.

Advance Wars: Days of Ruin
[*] Use Days of Ruin's interpretation of Fog of War.
[*] Use their damage and defense formula instead of AW1-3's.
[*] Use their scoring formula instead of AW1-3's.
[*] Keep the mission structure the same so that you can replay old missions without having to redo the entire fucking game.
[*] Use DoR's slate of units instead of Dual Strike.
[*] Have off-plotline maps that function more like training exercises or puzzles than War Room-style full-on missions.
[*] Implement the Veteran System.

Misc Ideas:
[*] I think bringing back the Adviser character would be a pretty smart move. It worked pretty well with My Unit. Hell, you could even have it so that you could gain experience in various modes and digivolve your CO Adviser character how you wanted to.
[*] Allow people to play more often as Black Hole or other antagonists during campaign mode. For example, you could have a couple of prequel missions of Flak and Adder smashing up Orange Star defenses and setting up a beachhead for the site of their factory.
[*] The games should come with an AutoPlay mode where you can relinquish control to the CPU if you feel positive that you have the map won. One of the more tedious things in Advance Wars is cleanup once you've established dominance.
[*] Make the map editor tool less pathetic. Anything available in the main game should be up for grabs in custom maps, including weird and specialized bits like Black Cannons and the Death Ray and even the Factory and Grand Bolt. If there are 90 properties up for grabs in the campaign mode, I should be able to lay down 90 properties. If you're doing Dual Window mode I should be able to design the second map as well.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Thu Jul 24, 2014 8:23 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
Blade
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Post by Blade »

I've had fun with AW1, but the characters felt like kids who got in command of an army.
I pitied the poor soldiers who died just because one kid wanted to have a friendly battle with another one to prove he's better.
Pseudo Stupidity
Duke
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Post by Pseudo Stupidity »

Advance Wars is a brilliant game, but I never played the sequels because I never bought a handheld after the GBA.

That game is way deeper than any handheld has the right to be, and its local multiplayer is fucking awesome. I still get friends to play it to this day, because it is so much fun.

Grit is overpowered on most maps, though. Indirect fire is way too strong unless the map is heavy in air units and/or your opponent is Eagle and can just fuck your shit up with a double turn.


The single player campaign was fun and all, but I feel for Blade. It was really confusing when somebody would say "LOL I think I'm awesome, let's send hundreds of people to DIE so we can prove it."
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If you wanted to participate in a conversation, you've lost that right. You are a non-human now. You are over and cancelled. No concern of yours can ever matter to any member of the human race ever again.
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