Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising (2003)

After returning to an 18 year old saved game, I just beat Advance Wars 2 for the first time.

So much has changed since the mid 2000's. Yet my progress was safely nestled away, frozen in ones and zeroes, awaiting my return. Andy and Company would have seen their CO change in an instant.

Advance Wars 2 is just as dynamic, playful and challenging as I remembered. Its nice to have progressed past the levels I was stuck on all those years ago. The most notable part was seeing the Ranks I received on each level during the credits. It was like getting a report card from a completely forgotten time.

There is something more to saved games than I thought.

I hope other titles have exact day and time stamps to their saves. Would be odd to know the exact moment you stopped playing 20 years ago.

I played through Advance Wars a long time ago, and this past year I finally got the chance to play the sequel. Advance Wars 2 is literally just "You Liked Advance Wars? Well, Here's Some More Advance Wars." Like, I'm really struggling to think of anything that's different or improved about this one. Which is fine I guess, IDK. I definitely got bored of this more quickly than the first one though, perhaps because the charm had worn off a bit. At the end of the day though it's still a solid game. But I'd just recommend the original Advance Wars to newcomers, and say get this if you really want more levels to of Advance Wars to play through.

This is a grid-based strategy game, in which you place troops and tanks and helicopters and whatnot on the battle map, and you take turns moving your units and attacking enemies. Capture all the bases or kill all the enemies to win. There is very little in terms of story to be had here, and your generals are all silly caricatures. Which is fine... but for these sorts of lengthy campaigns, I think I personally want something more to hook me, to keep me playing and wanting to find out what happens next. Perhaps some more variety to the enemy A.I. tactics could have helped spice things up a bit too, or more variety to the actual missions you have to complete.

I bought my GBA together with this game back in 2004, and I remember enjoying this game a lot, but had forgot what it was all about. Playing the campaign from start to end now was a strain to my eyes (the screen is tiny and with not great resolution), but it worked out somehow, and I enjoyed it.

The story in the game is fairly japan-nintendo-ish, with a thin storyline: Some evil enemy has taken your territory and you need to get it back. There is a game map with several island which you then take part by part, until you win.

The weak part is most definitely the AI: If you just keep your head above waters through the first attacks, the AI starts malfunctioning and you can run over him. Maybe his units run out of gas and he is incapable of filling them up, or he just keeps producing the same not-very-useful vehicles and sends right at you. In addition, some maps are not very hard, they just take a lot of time.

I especially enjoyed how the heroes, units, and buildings were quite limited, so you quickly got into how the different units worked together. Also how one of the characters is a viking named Olaf.