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 missions. At the other extreme, it’s ultimately a video game about war, casually talking about invasions, killings, and even terrorism. As if that were not enough, it can be very difficult sometimes and become very stubborn with their systems.
But with him, I realized that I’m the same: for all the things I say that I don’t like or don’t correspond to what he does, in the end he won me over irretrievably and I I ended up dedicating almost 60 game hours to him for this analysis. .
Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp for Nintendo Switch is the Californian studio’s compilation and remake Go forward of the first two installments of Intelligent Systems’ tactical combat series, released in the early 2000s for the Game Boy Advance. This means a lot audio-visually: new 3D graphics, new cartoon animations and sequences, re-recorded music and even dubbing (also in Spanish). In addition, it offers the possibility for the first time to play against other chief officers on line.
Historically considered one of the best of its kind, the game’s shisha can be found in the dozens of maps you must solve which are strategic puzzles, either as part of the two campaigns of around twenty missions each, or in the form independent challenges to unlock in the fight room. Then there is the VS Combat mode. and even the ability to create and share custom challenges with the map editor.
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Those unfamiliar with the series should know that it is turn-based strategy by land, sea and air on a gridded map, including different unit types, terrain, conditions, and the occasional weapon of mass destruction used by the invading enemy. In some ways it resembles the battle system of Fire Emblem from the same IntSys, although here you’re using guns instead of sword and sorcery, and with the characters as chief officers of the different armies, and not characterized in each unit. The latter drives the narrative and spice things up with special abilities (in the form of the Powers of OJ).
Para digest el tono algo incómodo de esta guerra y cómo el reparto de personajes de dibus habla del tema, tienes que pensar que esto es como si unos amiguetes echaran una partida a Hundir la Flota, como si jugaran a la guerra con un puñado de soldados in lead. In fact, in the remake you can see how the cards are mounted on a cardboard base or inside a wooden box. Then the toy units and animations will complete the miniature diorama.
Speaking of them, as I said in my first impressions, I missed the originals painted in pixel art at first, but little by little the WayForward restoration convinced me with these nice, thin and recognizable units. The new graphics manage to convey the same spirit while maintaining the style, simplicity and much-needed clarity. And naturally the redesigned characters see their personality highlighted both with videos of the type animelike with the voices recorded for the occasion, both aspects enhancing the remake’s production values. What they need to update is that they can skip the OJ Power animations as they can get tiring after a while. (Pro tip: You can skip dialogue by pressing the More button.)
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The inherent gameplay is pretty much the same except for UX improvements or the fact that there are a few extra missions. Cadets by gender should choose the new relaxed difficultysince the alternative classic sharpen their curve quickly and they will eventually pull them out of their boxes. The most difficult quests can be exciting and legendary when you complete them, but also very bloody when things don’t go according to plan after several hours. Yes: some of the more epic maps can give you several hours of gameplay, which means you might be able to complete them bit by bit over several days.
Expert strategists, who should take on the classic challenge, will find this difficulty at times tricky, unfair, or infuriating, as some cards require trial and error and don’t offer much flexibility to try different or improvised approaches. . Perfectionists will want to give up after several rounds (days of play) to start over and nail every move, and that’s fine, but when you think you’ve already mastered the game and it’s destroying you with no workarounds because you had to follow a strict order , as rigid as it is specific It doesn’t feel as good.
For better or worse, the remake also retains some of the unexplained AI behaviors originals, which you may want you will have to explode if you want to pass the most difficult missions, without forgetting to do S-Rank. If you don’t realize that the TOA are cannon fodder, how to block the 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 second game’s campaign (Rising black hole) also has its tense moments thanks to its larger scale and more dedicated map layouts, some really clever, forcing you to at least be solvent with a lot more tools and OJs at your disposal.
And yet, it is a proposal that inevitably hooks you and which leads to mythical returns and reversals that make you happy. When you are 15-20 days into a mission and finally manage to break through, say, through the bottleneck the enemy had put you in place, to finally feel powerful enough to defeat them, you’ll wave your sweaty fist in celebration. These occasions more than made up for the slower or more boring parts of my campaigns; As you can see, I couldn’t help but play or think about my current mission, which says a lot about something I already did 20 years ago.
So, ultimately, the charm and uniqueness of Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp lies in its very contradiction. This casual finish is necessary to make both the message and the size of the challenge more bearable, and WayForward does a great job of restoring the classic tactical anime to fit Nintendo Switch like a glove, à la both on TV and on a laptop.
