"It Takes Mud and Ducks to Win a War"

Sitting in a trench out in the middle of nowhere, a small brigade of troops restlessly await the call of their general to charge into no mans land. Anything would be better than what they are sitting in right now, even if it means braving mines. Disease is spreading rapidly due to an infestation of rats and lice, trench foot is setting in due to the watery pools that they are standing in, and worst of all, most of them are freezing. Still, even with that, they at least know that they are safe inside this prison of mud. Minutes pass…………

CHARGE!!!

With that call, these brave men scurry out of their protection to face the oncoming hailstorm of bullets that await them. Scenes such as this are far too common in the world of Advance Wars. It's a shame, too, because none of it would have happened if those stupid blue guys didn't start invading the homeland of the Orange Star Empire. Naturally, the Orange Army didn't want to let their land be taken, so they fought back. And boy, did they fight back. It's one thing to beat an enemy, it's another to whip it until it keels. Wanting to figure out the answers to this sudden invasion, the Orange Army pressed forward into Blue Moon territory. Forget the fact that it will cost some men and money – they want answers.

Unfortunately, just as they don't like people marching through their own countries, neither do neighboring nations. Call it all you want – they're going to war. Thankfully, the Orange Star Army has plenty of COs (Commanding Officers) to guide this battle weary army to combat. Although the number isn't staggering, most players will be more than content with the amount of diversity that each CO manages to bring to the table. Want a powerful yet lacking range specialist? Go with Max, the Brute of the West. Want an infantry specialist? Then Sammy is your prime choice. You can't just call them generic clones of each other either, because who you choose will diversely affect the bonuses that will be received upon combat.

So you've picked your favorite CO, managed to formulate your main strategies in the training camps, heck even got some sea salt in your boots – now it's time to see what you've got. Being as though Advance Wars plants itself in the tactical genre, you can expect wars to be just that – tactical fests. Each map that is provided will look like one big grid (complete with plants and cute fuzzy animals, of course). At the beginning of each battle, you'll be provided with a small number of units to march to complete an objective (such as capturing a base, or my personal favorite, total annihilation). Of course, you can buy more, but that will take some capturing of cities to fund your evil plans.

If you've ever read any history book in the past, you can almost always guarantee that people don't like their land being invaded by some enemy army. On that same token, you need their money if you hope to bolster your army through the factory end of it. So let's picture it. The enemy army is going to sit there and let you capture all of these cities to make your army big. Nope. They'll go and try to capture them first, and then blow you up, of course. Sounds great. Unfortunately, it's not, which is why capturing cities to secure a solid income is what's usually needed if you hope to win the war. Of course, the game provides plenty of maps that only give you a limited number of units to work with, but then again there are many more maps that require you to be quick and deadly if you hope to capture effectively.

So you've got your honken huge army and the enemy has theirs, now what? Well, you sit there and have a cup of tea while reading bedtime stories to each other. If you're really lucky, you may even see some hugging. Oh, what a wonderful world we live in! While I'm at it, I might as well say Barney is the best Tv show ever. Eh? Just like in real war, your objective is to secure complete and total victory. You can't be nice to someone who wants you gone, you want them gone. See the colliding differences? That's why you can't be nice to them. The game rates your mission success by a score of three factors – power, speed, and technical. How you get those rating up depends primarily on what the words themselves say in the first place. If you want a better speed rating, then you'll have to move through the levels as quickly as possible. If you want a better power rating, then blow everything off the map. Technical is a bit different – it requires you to make sure none of your men die.

Of course, no good general would want their men to die needlessly in the first place, but you get the picture. In order to achieve the highest rankings possible, you'll have to be a cunning, ruthless general that plots several moves in advance. That's the whole point of this game, the player will have to get accustomed to being ready several turns in advance to secure victory. Charging in blindly will more often than not cause you a failure, and with the amount of time it usually takes to get a mission done, that's often not an option.

As the game progresses, the player will be given a large variety of units to make sure that horrible realization never happens. These units range from simple infantry to massive tanks that can roll them over faster than a cricket can chirp. The funny part is you'll never get those massive tanks on the field without first using those little men to capture some cities, which is exactly why AW is as balanced of a game as it is -- you control your destiny. Whether you lead the charge of infantry for a quick, but deadly, knockout or go ahead and build an impressive line is completely up to you. More often than not, the only person to blame for defeat is yourself and how you conduct your troops.

Now don't get me wrong, the AI can be simply brutal at times. You think you want them dead? Well, they want you dead even more, and unlike you, they don't care about some stupid rating. That means that they will not be afraid to sit there and throw men at you, in fact, they'll do it on a regular basis to screw up your score. The trick is getting around them and finishing it before it becomes a major problem. That's where the CO powers come in, little boosts that can totally crush the enemy opposition – or at least cripple them. Each and every CO in the game has a different power that gets filled as you fight. Some allow for two strikes in a single turn, others heal units. Whichever you pick solely depends on how you fight. If you take a ton of damage, then you may want to think about getting a power that can heal. If not, then go ahead and pick the one that slows enemies down and speeds you up.
In general, worrying about everything that's been said so far can really take away from the many good qualities of AW, particularly the graphics, music, and sounds that make the experience that much better. Advance Wars may not be the most visually entertaining game on the GBA, but it definitely is colorful, well animated, and consistent in what it does. The backdrops that are used have the ability to captivate any person easily enough, and make the rather long sessions of battle enjoyable. War grids themselves may not be nearly as pleasant on the eyes, but then again neither is the muddy picture of war generally. Don't get me wrong though, there are plenty of beautiful maps in the game. Problem is they look rather pixilated, not the good way either.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said about the music. Although it is chipper, lively, and genuinely fun, that's piddles compared to just how darn repetitive it is. Every time you enter a battle, that same stupid music for that same stupid CO plays again and again and again until the next annoying CO steps up to the plate to have his or her music played over and over and over until the cycle repeats itself again and again. Definitely not a good idea. Fortunately, the sounds that the game presents really are realistic if you've ever heard war guns going off, which is always a plus.

Some other problems that scatter this game include the overall time it takes to get through a map. Sure, you can turn off the animations, but then the game is reduced to just another pixel blowing up pixel adventure, something I don't want. Along with that, the game has a nasty habit of not allowing the player to replay any of the campaign maps at all unless you go ahead and do everything else over again. That takes up more time getting through all of those stupid regular maps just to play some map one time.

Apart from those minor qualms, AW and its protégé are definitely some of the best games on the GBA. If you haven't picked up a copy of this game, then it may very well be time to declare war.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/14/07