It’s a post apocalyptic future where humanity is barely hanging on after a devastating plague. Taking place in the future, all the characters, factions, and story from the previous games have been wiped clean. In 2008, fans of Advance Wars would get one more game in the franchise subtitled Days of Ruin which also operated as a soft reboot.
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The Advance Wars series along with Fire Emblem had a steady and dedicated fan base, but where Fire Emblem blew up, Advance Wars unfortunately busted. Not only did you need to think about combat at the tactical layer, but you also had to take into account your CO and the opponent’s. This slight asymmetric design helped to make the Advance Wars franchise stand out. Over the course of the battle, COs could activate a special power that would further enhance their units or weaken the opponent, with this growing into a two tier system in later entries. Max - who was the tank loving CO - would do more damage with his direct fire units, but suffered a penalty using ranged units. Even though every faction had the same pool of units, the COs would bring big differences to combat.Įvery CO had a passive that would tilt the units towards their preferences. The heart of the series was with the various COs, and this also created added depth. Advance War’s design did not change that much since the introduction The third entry “Dual Strike” introduced battles that took place on two different screens and sometimes fighting a colossal enemy. The variety of mission types would evolve considerably over the four games in the franchise.
A unit with one point of health left was practically worthless in a fight.ĭifferent maps would have conditions that you would have to meet or deal with in order to win - ranging from fog of war, escort missions, and even “boss” fights. The actual damage done when attacking was dependent on the health of the unit. Attacking a unit who was in a forest or mountain tile would give them additional armor to absorb damage. There was a basic rock paper scissors formula in terms of units being stronger or weaker to other classes, but the two main factors were terrain and health. The units in the franchise are standardized across the factions: from infantry to recon units, and of course rocket artillery and massive bombers. Both sides take turns in controlling their units and building additional ones. Players control one army on a preset map fighting against the AI. (Not So) Modern Warfare:Įach game in the series was built on the same model for its design. Over the course of the four games in the franchise, the core gameplay loop stayed consistent and provided a variety of turn-based challenges. When nations suddenly began to attack, it’s up to the player and Andy to prevent a world war.
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strategy games off the PC have come a long wayĪs for the story, players took control as an adviser for the Orange Star army helping their commanding officer (or CO) Andy in battle. The impact would be felt for years to come with recent examples like the XCOM franchise and Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle.
The success of the franchise not only proved that strategy games could work off the PC, but there was a market for it. The game featured bright and detailed pixel graphics to draw players in, and tutorials and missions were designed to ease players into it. For most of the world, the strategy genre has always been seen as a PC only experience with some of the best - and most complicated - games staying platform locked.Īdvance Wars was designed to be the perfect entry point for new players to the genre. In 2001, it was announced that Nintendo was bringing a new game in the franchise to the US with Intelligent Systems returning as the developer.Īdvance Wars became a huge hit for both Nintendo and Intelligent Systems. Intelligent Systems would release one more game in the Wars franchise and then the next two sequels were done by developer Hudson Soft. It was one of the first turn-based strategy games to be released off the PC, but was never ported over here in fear of it not being well-received. The original game in the franchise was Famicom Wars in 1988 (as a point of reference, the first Fire Emblem was released in 1990). But for today, I want to talk about their other franchise, and how fans of turn-based strategy might have missed one of the best sleeper hits.