Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp (2023)

I finished playing through Advance Wars 1+2, and... it wasn't good. I have some good memories of playing it as a child, but I never actually finished it. After finally getting around to it, I was very disappointed by not only the quality of this remake, but also the overall gameplay structure of the game. While I do think the game's ok, it's also an incredibly flawed experience that feels more like a chore than a game.

Advance Wars is a duology about war developed by Intelligent Systems. You play as a bunch of commanders in charge of different armies inside one world, all locked in a battle for the survival of their countries. Throughout the game, you'll fight in multiple different fronts while trying to uncover the truth of who truly is behind this war.

The game's designed in a very casual way, and It's very clear that the story is not the main focus here. While the story is serviceable, it's really hard to take it seriously, and it doesn't really add much to the game. It mostly serves as a segue between the different levels, and even feels like an afterthought at certain points.

It also left somewhat of a bad taste in my mouth. Sure, I don't expect the nintendo game Advance Wars to treat the concept of War in a serious way, but it also doesn't really commit to making light of it. Most of the time the story feels like a child playing with army toys, but every once in a while it drops a line about sacrificing yourself for your country or characters surviving through childhood in a war-torn town and it just... never feels right.

Gameplay-wise, the game's pretty solid. It's got a good base that the game builds upon, and the main gameplay loop and war gameplay is a lot of fun. It could be better balanced, especially when it comes to its COs and their powers, but it's still a lot of fun.

But while the main game is good, unfortunately, the single player campaign is a whole different story. The game itself is already pretty unbalanced, and this mode does its best to stack all the cards against you. It starts out fine, but slowly becomes a chore to finish.

So let's talk about the two story modes. They suck.

Advance Wars 1 is an unbalanced mess that punishes you for trying to win. Every objective feels very samey, without any interesting objectives or maps throughout the whole campaign. While every CO has their own strengths and weaknesses, levels are designed to specifically offset the enemy's weaknesses, turning every single match into an uphill fight where you're better off turtling, and stripping your characters of what actually makes them worthwhile

The premise is somewhat interesting, being about other countries retaliating against attacks that your country didn't make in the first place. There's something here, but I feel like it drops the ball halfway through and it just ends up becoming pretty generic right before it ends.

On the other hand, Advance Wars 2's campaign tries more interesting stuff, but it's just a slog to get through. The game has a more variety when it comes to objectives and COs, but it slowly morphs into a repetitive mess where you do nothing but fight the same enemies over and over again. Level design is also lacking, and a lot of levels feel like you're better off cheesing them rather than actually trying to play through them.

And if the story for the first one wasn't good, then just you wait until you see this one! The enemies are as generic as they come, and they serve even less of a purpose than before. It fully sacrifices its story in lieu of the gameplay, and while at first it looks like it might work, it very quickly ends up becoming even more of a bother than the first campaign.

Visually, the game's pretty ugly. It features a lot of different art styles that are always clashing against each other. On their own, they range from just okay to pretty good, but they always look terrible when they're mixed together.

It's also not a very clear game when it comes to the gameplay. Multiple units share similar designs, and are easy to mistake for each other. Add this to the fact that every faction has unique models for every unit type, and it just becomes impossible to actually learn which unit is which.

At least the music is good. As far as I know, it's all remixes from the original soundtrack, which was already pretty good. And these new versions are pretty good too! The voice acting isn't quite as good though, but I feel like that's caused by the actors receiving a lackluster script and poor direction, rather than the actors being bad. It's fine.

I usually don't care much about performance issues, but they were really noticeable in this game. I played this on the original Switch, and it's horribly optimized. Not only did the game crash a few times for me, but the enemy AI just slows to a crawl any time there's too many units on the map. You'd expect this to happen on the original, but on the 2023 remake? That's just ridiculous.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to try out the multiplayer, as I don't know anyone who'd care about this game enough to play with me. However, I think the base gameplay is fine, and fighting against other players in this engine sounds like something I'd really enjoy once in a while. For this time only, let's just pretend the multiplayer is good to save this game from 1-Star hell.

In conclusion: While I like the general gameplay and base of the game, there's a clear lack of direction that makes everything else a bad experience. Missions are frustrating and dont feel good to play. The storytelling is generic and boring. It has terrible optimization... Everything just sucks. I love Strategy RPGs, but this just isn't it.

Even though I was very excited to try it out, I cannot recommend Advance Wars 1+2 in good faith.4/10

It's insane how much better advance wars 2 is compared to the first one. I think it's mostly due to the fact that there's more variety in mission objectives now, and they incentivize a more aggressive playstyle instead of hunkering down and slowly letting the enemies come to you.

You get to play as a lot more COs now, with every mission being different instead of letting you choose one of the Orange Star protagonists. This kinda kills the variety in enemy fights, as basically every fight is against the same three COs, but also forced the designers to be more creative when making the levels themselves. Their abilities are pretty generic as well, most of them being boosts to their stats. It's pretty boring, yes, but it also prevents the designers from basing levels around giving the enemy a huge advantage and making you fight your way through it. Most missions now revolve around a specific objective or a gimmick, and I think that's a fair exchange.

Yeah the level design is pretty bad actually. I'm about 12 levels into the first game, and it feels like every single one of them was specifically made to be as unfair as possible.

All commanders have downsides, but it's like each battle I go through was hand-crafted to offset these limitations and screw you over. Fighting against the guy whose units cost more? No factories in the map and they start with more tanks. Fighting against the guy that's useless close-range? Fog of war, and all their range units are hidden. Fighting against the guy with low defenses? You only get a few units to fight back, and no way to build more. Good luck!!!!

And it's not like the levels are hard or anything, they're just annoying, and only difficult until you realize the exact way the game wants you to play in order to beat each mission. 90% of the time, the solution is to play super deffensively and turtle your way to victory. That's not very fun!!!

The narrative doesn't fit the gameplay either. I guess levels like these could probably work in a game with an underdog story, where you're a developing nation whose been stripped of their resources and now has to fight back against its opressors using guerilla tactics, but no you're just some guy who commands an army trying to fend off invaders (and having fun while doing so, I love murder!). It's so weird.