Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (DS Review) by Jason D.
Advance Wars: Days of Ruin
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Intelligent Systems
System: Nintendo DS
Release: January 21, 2008
September 7, 2011, by Jason D. - Yesterday, I had reviewed the stellar, amazing, award worthy strategy game Advance Wars: Dual Strike.
It had gotten nearly everything right, but its sequel, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, took everything great
about the previous game and threw it out the window.
Days of Ruin was released in January of 2008, roughly two and a half years following the release of Dual
Strike. I had been waiting on pins and needles for the game to come out. It wasn't until I saw the first
screenshots and heard about the story that I began to worry. It wasn't long after I booted the game up
that I realized those worries were not false.
Intelligent Systems took the loose and easy going story of the previous Advance Wars games (there's a
bad guy ... stop him) and completely reversed it. The game now takes place shortly after a meteor shower
has destroyed most of the earth and the majority of the population is now dead. The game essentially
revolves around a young cadet named Will. He wakes up in the war torn world and is found by Captain
Brenner. Brenner is the captain of a small army who basically roams the world looking for survivors
and just trying to keep himself and his people alive. Since Will was a part of the same army before the
meteors, Brenner takes him in and agrees to take him to the next town towards safety. On the way to
that town, you are attacked by a group of bandits. This begins your first battle of Days of Ruin.
It is a very similar set up to every other Advance Wars game to date. It is still a tactical war game where
you are given units to start the match. You send them out to capture buildings that earn you money and
then bases, airports and seaports so you can build more units. The game is then won when you either
destroy all of the enemy units or capture their HQ. So, vets of the Advance Wars series will know exactly
what to do straight away. Your ears will also know exactly what to do because it seems as though they
re-used every single track from previous games and just put them on the cartridge. Very disappointing
since I had hoped they would at least have added something new to the game. They did at least add a
bit of new features that are good.
One thing I really enjoyed off the get go were the bikes. Instead of always having to put your infantry
in an APC or copter to transport them far away, the bikes have wheels, can travel far and can capture
bases. This will make capturing buildings in enemy territory far easier. Another plus is that you can put
your CO into any vehicle on a base. Surrounding units then receive an attack and defense boost. It is a
nice little addition that adds a new layer to the game play.
Unfortunately, where there is a little bit of good added to the game, there is a ton of bad put in the
game as well.
While you can put a CO in a vehicle, CO Powers have gone into the background. Instead of a two level
power, it is single level and takes quite a while to build up your gauge. This detracts from a huge part of
the fun of the previous games, having CO powers in your back pocket always gave you a fighting chance
but in Days of Ruin, I found myself rarely using them because it took so long to build up, I would save it
for when I absolutely needed it.
Certain units are now way too overpowered. The anti-tank is a unit specifically made to destroy tanks.
This would be fine if it wasn't so powerful defense wise and so powerful retaliation wise. They are too
hard to destroy and give the enemy a huge upper hand because they start a lot of the battles with one
or more. The Seaplane is severely overpowered because not only can it be produced on an actual carrier
unit and therefore released pretty much anywhere on the map, their firepower is way too high. This
pales in comparison to how absurdly powerful the Battleship is. The Battleship is an indirect fire boat
that can strike any ground or sea unit. What they changed in this game is that it can move AND fire in
the same move. No other unit can do that and it basically means that anyone can build just battleships
and win almost 100% of the time. It's these severely unbalanced units that hurt the overall feel of the
game.
As the campaign progresses, Will manages to find a girl who he saves and cannot remember anything
about herself. It is revealed later on that she has extensive knowledge of the battlefield and she actually
helps you win a lot of battles and progress through the world. I won't ruin the ending of the game but
it's pretty obvious to figure out who she really is.
The main thing that I took away from the story is that it was really, really depressing. Not only do
you feel bad when a unit dies because you feel like you helped destroy the human race, the survivors
then develop a disease that causes flowers to grow out of their skin. This makes an already severely
depressing game, that much worse. So, not only do you try and keep all your units alive, once you do
that, you are then told that they pretty much died anyway because of a disease. This storyline is just a
complete curveball from a series that has always taken war very lightly. Needless to say, I did not enjoy
myself between battles.
So, I have bad-mouthed the story, the game play so what else is there? Well, with Dual Strike, you were
given hundreds of hours of game play after the campaign was over. With Days of Ruin, not so much.
They got rid of the real time war game, erased survival mode and even got rid of a lot of the maps from
the War Room. The War Room still boasts about 100 maps (some are recycled) but they are all available
from the start of the game. In previous Advance Wars, you earned points from the campaign or other
battles and spent them to buy new maps giving you a sense of accomplishment and reward. Since you
only beat each mission for a high score and receive no points, the game feels very shallow and doesn't
give you that wholesome feeling. Also, the amount of CO's you can choose from has been cut by more
than half and again, takes a lot of the fun out of the experience.
At the end of the day, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin left me with a bad taste in my mouth. After the
amazing Dual Strike, I had high expectations and instead of continuing a great franchise, they took a
step backwards. Intelligent Systems and Nintendo need to forget about this game and get back to what
worked because I still love the franchise and cannot wait to play it in 3D.
The Verdict
Sound
7/15 - Everything seems re-used from previous games. Something I cannot forgive.
Graphics
12/20 - More detailed units can't make up for the over usage of gray.
Appeal
15/25 - It's still an Advance Wars game at its core. If you want a stripped down version of the formula,
this is the one for you.
Gameplay
23/40 - Too much taken away from the game play and too little added.
Overall
57/100 - This game disappointed me on every level and I cannot recommend it to anyone. Completely
skip this one and just go back and replay Dual Strike.
