I am very sorry fellow advance wars fans, I would like to report - as someone who has played the entire series, that we are. for lack of better words.

fucked.


Edit: Hey guys! We aren't fucked! WE DID IT!!! WOOOO!!!

Before I begin my one-size-fits-all bitching and moaning, I would like to give Nintendo my sincerest gratitude in sacrificing this game upon their altars of public relations. I seriously could not imagine trying to play this game, knowing that real world is happening with it's cartoonish depictions. I'm sure Activision is more than willing to do the same for all their Call of Duty games, they could learn a thing or two from them. Since the game has finally released, I assume every war is now over. What a relief! Now I can game with peace of mind!

The constant delay gave me more than enough time to get over my initial shock of them remembering that this series once existed, and start bringing myself back on the level and stuff my inner fangirl back into their hole. The new artstyle for this game? Way too clean, I know it's WayForward's typical style, but I was never the hugest fan of it. Some COs like Lash look cute, but others just look drab. This isn't helped by the overly smooth animation for their in-battle portraits that look insanely cheap to me, it feels like I'm watching a bunch of vtubers in a multiplayer game. This is obviously pretty apples, oranges and melons. I'm sure some enjoy this new art style, but that's completely minor in the grand scheme of things, I would like to talk about the actual in-game graphics.

They are shit.

Awful. The most PepsiCo-sponsored corporate looking mobile 3D that looks tailor-made to run on the most budget cellphone you could imagine. I get that the Switch may as well be a shitty budget cellphone in comparison to my PC rig or the PS5/Series X, but surely you could've done better. It could be because it's hard to duplicate the original game's colorful spritework and backdrops that were created with the brightness of the GBA in mind to a more modern system with stock polygons, but I don't get why this unimpressive-looking mess also apparently runs at uneven frame rates. It clashes with the portraits of the COs, and this difference makes it even more noticeable. This is beyond my usual "sprites > polygons" bullshit when it comes to remakes, there's a clear winner and loser in this affair.

I know I'm going on purely about the visuals, but that's always the biggest change when these dreadful remakes pop up. If it looks shit compared to the original, then I don't care about the QoL improvements. It's great that they are there, but zooming out the map to see even more of the utterly dull landscape of this does little to excite me. I don't always have this attitude with remakes, I can be less mean-spirited. The Spyro Reignited Trilogy managed to survive my wrath despite it's glitches, and I think that speaks for itself enough considering my unspeakable adoration for the originals. A good touch could give an old game a new look for modern hardware that's pleasing for everyone, and this doesn't do it for me.

It's poop, I'm afraid. 💅

I would like to also bring up another thing, the price. It is outrageously rare that I would ever bring this up. I don't consider myself to be made of gold bars and pirate treasure, nor am I starving in the back of a McDonalds parking lot, but I know when something is fucked up. A few months ago the Metroid Prime Remaster was released, it was forty didgeridoos. I consider that game a nice glow up of a Gamecube classic despite it still being a bit much, this is a sixty didgeridoo mixed bag of opinions of two GBA titles that are very obviously running off the same rom file.[Biggest tell is AW1 Olaf losing his chair and Sturm no longer looking like Captain Snifit] I haven't had this feeling like I was about to be mugged since the Space Invaders Invincible Collection dropped, and attempted to put me into bankruptcy. It's way too much, you know the alternative. A sad day when your pricing approaches breathing distance of current-gen Taito re-releases.

If you're still interested, cool. The QoL will surely be nice, since underneath the Great Value presentation are still the skeletons of the gameplay by Intelligent Systems. However I consider this to be a mockery, and I no longer wish it to be in my kingdom. If WayBackward were gonna take up the reins, then they should've just done a new game [and it probably would've smelled even worse]. Maybe WayForward should've just made their way forward into a bottomless pit, because apparently their involvement would've made me angry regardless. I'm just hoping this remaster existing doesn't equip their GBA workers with the slow block when it comes to bringing the originals to NSO.[you know it's gonna be 2026 by that point]

I hope Arin Hanson accidentally bites into the world's most sour lemon, and has his mouth perpetually closed shut for the rest of his life.

Aw man, this is gonna be my longest review and hottest take in a while. When I was a kid I played the first few missions of the original Advance Wars on emulator and remember thinking it was really cool! Well, either I didn't get far enough in to see the flaws or I was just too young to have developed my critical thinking skills because damn - Advance Wars kinda sucks!

Let me be upfront here; nothing that WayForward have done with this as a remake is even remotely a problem - in fact it's about the only stuff I like about the game. The UI and menus are gorgeous, character models and animations are full of personality and the remixed music is great too. No - I don't love the vomit-green colour of the grass and in-game textures, but I find that people who complain about a remake's visuals are often among the most insufferable people in the world and I don't wanna be lumped in with them, I'll get over it, we've got bigger fish to fry.

Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp is a very faithful remake of the original Advance Wars 1&2 and that might be the problem because what I've realised upon revisiting these games is that they are - in my opinion very fundamentally flawed! I'm about halfway through Advance Wars 2 right now and it's just starting to feel like a total slog that I'm not sure I'll finish.

Advance Wars' AI is dumb as a box of rocks. I'm playing on "Classic" (the more difficult) mode and find that the AI never reacts to you having a unit nearing the objective. You can have an infantry unit on literally the space next to the HQ you need to capture to win the match, and they still send their units off to fight your other guys halfway across the map. Only when you begin the active process of capturing an objective does that unit become a target, which is very exploitable because you can just send infantry/mech units in to capture an objective as a decoy, knowing they'll die and then send all your tanks and other guys round the ensuing chaos to win the game. The enemy AI will also frequently attack your units with sub-optimal units. Case in point: I've just had the enemy attack my battle copter with 2 separate tanks (which are highly ineffective against battle copters), get completely destroyed on the counter-attack and THEN after letting their tanks take completely unnecessary damage, send in their anti-air unit which was IN RANGE THE WHOLE TIME to one-shot my battle copter after the fact???

Advance Wars hones in on the strategy elements moreso than its Intelligent Systems-counterpart Fire Emblem - yet you rarely ever feel like you won a match through genuine strategy, instead you feel like you won because the AI kept being fucking stupid. And yet - despite the AI being so dumb, battles - especially ones later in the game take AGES. Fire Emblem I'd say never lets its chapters take upwards of an hour or so on average, it has a pretty clean curve. Battles in Advance Wars start off at a pretty fair Fire Emblem-length, and yet they snowball like you would not believe to the point that the final battle of Advance Wars 1 took me 5 hours. This shit goes from feeling like Fire Emblem to Civilization real quick, it's astonishing how quickly the average battle length spirals out of control, and this didn't take me 5 hours because I had to keep resetting or anything! I don't know if I was doing something hugely wrong but I was only playing the game in the way that made sense and yeah, I did win! But it took me 5 HOURS!

(The battle just before that also took about 3, so.)

Advance Wars is like rock, paper, scissors if there were 8 choices and 5 of those choices only interacted specifically with 4 of those other choices and the remaining choices had extremely niche and specific interactions with everything else and also there were terrain bonuses and special powers and over 50% of the game's maps threw this annoying ass fucking fog of war at you that further slowed the game's pace to a halt and also felt like it eliminated a lot of the strategy in the game and instead just had you fuckin firing blindly in the dark for half an hour trying to find the bastard-ass rocket unit that's been firing on you from 6 spaces away the whole time

It does not tell you what the opponent's CO power does when they use them on you, you only find out what they do once you play as them yourselves late into AW1 or 2 (when that knowledge has long stopped being useful) and it poorly communicates which unit is attacking you by frequently leaving the camera on the unit which has just moved while another unit is attacking you - frequently leaving me in moments of utter confusion where I could swear an artillery unit had just moved and attacked me in the same turn. It is a very complex game that never feels particularly deep. It never justifies just how many different units and niche interactions there are, partially because so many mechanics are exactly that - niche and forgettable and partially because you win almost every match by exploiting the dumbass AI!

Late in Advance Wars 1, when former enemy officer Eagle and literal child protagonist Andy are celebrating a victory, Eagle tells Andy they should "spar" again sometime.

...Spar...?

...What the fuck do you mean...Spar? When a helicopter bursts into flames and explodes with screaming men inside it, is he aware of what's happening? He does realise what war is and what it entails, right? Why is he suggesting "sparring" with the game's child protagonist as if sending men to their deaths in large-scale armed combat is a fucking anime training montage? Why does every Japanese game lately seem to have dialogue like this? Those are people, with guns and explosives, Eagle! You fucking freak! Why has everything gotta be so fucking anime all the time?? It's POISON!!! IT'S BRAINROT I TELL YOU!!! BRAINROT!!!!!!!!!

The world of Advance Wars is canonically called "Wars World". Clearly, the biggest loser in this review is me, who has written up this entirely-too-lengthy diatribe about a videogame where anime teens wage literal war against eachother in a place called "Wars World." Fucking Wars World. Genuinely, I can not stop thinking about the ramifications of a place called "Wars World" that seems to exist for the sole purpose of being a place where wars happen.

By the way - what's the deal with the voice acting? Like, it's fine don't get me wrong but why are characters only ever saying 30-40% of what's on-screen at most? I understand having a budget or time constraints but like, none of the VOs who got into their studios or whatever had the time at any point to just read all of the dialogue in any given textbox? This isn't like a Fire Emblem situation where they're using grunts or noises to actively convey the characters' emotions consistently because every character has like, 2 noises max and the lines/words that they do choose to read out I just find really weird! I don't know how else to describe it, you'd have to see it for yourself! It's just really weird what they did and did not record! The plot fucking sucks by the way! I played through the entire first game and still genuinely have no idea what happened! It's a mess and it feels like they barely even tried!

I'm really disappointed to return to Advance Wars and think it's actually pretty bad. I wanna reiterate that I don't think much of the fault lies with WayForward - who inject a lot of personality and charm into this thing, and just faithfully recreated what I think is a deeply flawed pair of games. I wanted to like it a lot more because I love its vibe and aesthetic but damn, I only have so much time on this beautiful green planet, bro. I can only spend so much of it exploiting AI and mashing through mid-map stalemates in fuckin Wars World for hours on end. I'm gonna go outside and see if I can get my ass ate

This might be one of the most difficult reviews, I've done so far since reviewing Fire Emblem Engage. Because I have so many mixed feelings about WayForward’s remake of Advance Wars(AW) 1 + 2. Full of ups and downs. And yet, I'm still not satisfied after ruminating for over a week. But in the interest of not having to stare at my google docs page for more time than necessary, this will be the final time I have to type this out after overhauling my thoughts several times. So here goes.

Let’s talk about the huge disgusting tank out of the way. I completely agree with all the reviews panning the games under three stars. The biggest, glaring fault must be the unfaithful 3D representation that takes out the rugged and lil dirty look from the Gameboy Advance(GBA) era. You can see in Vee’s review with pictures and greater detail. To add oil onto this fire truck of a situation. I also found the ‘Vtuber animation style’ coined by TyphoonSwell. Accurate as well. And I couldn’t stop musing on the matter during my playthroughs. The shiny visual style Wayforward recreated under is a persistent style that continues well into the 2nd campaign. Which slowly increased my dislike for the visuals. As someone who enjoys remasters and remakes. This one aspect disappointed me. Since there are other games that I feel do remakes or remasters justice. Like Bluepoint Games with Shadow of the Colossus. Crash Bandicoot trilogy by Vicarious Visions and Spyro trilogy from Toys for Bob. These developers I believe faithfully recreate the original experience under modern lenses. Here I don’t see that as much. Graphics-wise. Granted it could be worse, making a remake that could not run well, plagued with bugs and glitches galore, sound effects not correct and voice sync is off. They could’ve made too many changes to the remake which I would equate to a re-imagining such as Final Fantasy VII remake. I’m grateful in some ways Wayforward didn’t completely butcher AW 1 + 2. Probably in a worse timeline they did. But, I can take a small measure of satisfaction, they didn’t completely massacre it like my favorite RTS Warcraft 3: Reforged turned out at launch…oof…

Voice acting are another issue. Each character is voiced, but after saying their first lines, no voiceover(VO) follows. With the rest of the sentences unvoiced. I’m not sure whether this is a bug or simply the development team ran out of budget to properly voice all the lines. But to me, the result is a jarring mess when I expect lines to occur as I read their text dialogue. Either go all out on the voice acting or take it out altogether. Don't make me expect something that isn't there. Furthermore, I feel it's worth noting. NocturnalFudj had the same issue as well. I'm glad I am not alone in experiencing this.

Additionally, The bundle has been delayed too long by Nintendo due to a war that occurred last year in Europe. And I cannot for the life of me wonder how much of it was seriously a delay when the product hasn’t changed drastically to the point you need to delay for over a year since the announcement. Other games with similar development delays & changes due to world events are Metal Gear Solid 2 experienced major changes to the ending and hell even Grand Theft Auto III was changed with the color scheme, art, etc. affected. GTA III was delayed three weeks while the former did not experience a delay. And yet here we are for AW 1+2 reboot camp needing a year to make what substantial changes? The story starts with an invasion! Oh. My. God… My facial expression is the most exasperated I could make. Big sigh

Last critique. I wish there is a rewind button to fix slight errors or you make a big tactical mistake. Previous Intelligent System titles such as Fire Emblem Engage and their predecessor Fire Emblem: Three Houses had a rewind mechanic as well as another strategy RPG, Tactics Ogre: Reborn. So I don’t suppose it's too hard for Wayforward to add it in just in case you mess up. It's pretty brutal having to do an hour plus during a mission and fail. Making the player have to restart from the very beginning once again. It’s soul-crushing. And while there is a ‘reset turn’ button available. It only resets your current turn. So you have to play very carefully and make sure each decision counts before moving. 2nd I wish an enemy range button existed. This way you can see the total number of enemies possible attack range. I had to select every unit to triple-check that I can get the most out of my unit's distance without being attacked in return. And finally, I wish the 2nd and 1st embraced deeper or extra radical mission objectives. The 2nd improves on the victory parameters. However, I did see a bit of copy and paste in the endgame where you have to destroy yet another pipe or cannon. This wouldn’t become so egregious if we had diverse mission objectives; Surviving for an ‘x’ amount of turns, escorting ‘x’ units to a corner of the map, and mixing up the destroyed objectives with extra interesting encounters. Stopping a big Neotank before it escapes. Or eliminate a wave of enemies while protecting your base. Defend your bases and allies against naval and air assault while contending with enemies at your flank. Ok, that might be a bit too brutal. But hopefully, you get the point.

Moving on. I never got the chance to try the Advance Wars series on the GBA in my younger days. So when the announcement of AW 1+2 was being remade, I became very excited. I’ve heard AW over the years as another franchise Intelligent Systems developed. And as a casual Fire Emblem fan, my reaction was something along the lines of “Ooooohhh modern Fire Emblem? But not really.” So this is a newcomer’s perspective.

For those who don’t know Advance Wars is a turn-based strategy title set in a fictional world where multiple colored-named countries fight using modern warfare except think of it comparatively to toy warfare. In the first campaign, you play Andy, a commanding officer(CO) in the Orange Star nation under the leader of Nell. In the beginning, there was peace until the Blue Moon nation(led by Olaf) attacked. That’s the main start for the plot to roll around. For the second campaign, I won’t say since the campaign selection is covered until you beat the 1st AW(But you can jump right into the 2nd with no problem). A great way to keep things spoiler-safe for newcomers.

In early missions, you can blaze on through pretty fast once you know what each unit can do and what they’re effective against, similar to chess. Forget notions of weapon triangles from Fire Emblem and embrace different unit compositions. Where an anti-air unit can be very effective against a foot soldier haha. Most missions will have you defeat all enemy units or capture the headquarters. There are other win parameters as well, but I won’t go through the whole list. You control a variety of units from land, sea, and even air. I found the diversity in my army to be a good thing, because I could choose any soldier or vehicle in my command for the right situation. I could choose a medium tank over the tank(Yes there is a difference in tanks). Or the battleship to replace my submarine. Although these units are costly they can be worth the price if used effectively. The inverse can also be true. Sometimes you don’t need to pay so much money to create a unit to take down a medium tank. A combination of baiting the enemy to key locations to a road that has zero defense is better than fighting, when they have the terrain advantage, acting as if they’re stationed on a tree tile. The trick is to use the most of the units you're given. Enough to damage them in the most crushing manner and as a result cripple their combat capability. So using soldiers as fodder, artillery from behind, a combination of sea, and air vehicles, and using a mix of mechanical infantry can turn the tide of battle in your favor. Hell, I love using the APC vehicle which is a supply unit and functions as a fast storage vehicle to carry my foot soldiers across great distances as bait. Which will the A.I. target? Surely not the tank?! They fired at my APC vehicle!

Honestly, playing around with these units and building them when certain missions allowed me to is great. A decent spread of map variety here. You can fight in open plains with roads, navigating through a mountainous region with a forest nearby. Once you throw water and rivers into the mix, the difficulty gradually increases as you unlock new powerful additions to your forces, new terrain to consider, and new enemy units into the equation. A nice pace to steadily nudge players along bit by bit and teach and reward them. A fair balance, whereas other titles throw you off the deep end. And ask you to climb a tall cliff. Reminds me of my time playing Starcraft and Warcraft back in the day and recently Wargroove. A fantasy strategy turn-based indie similar to Advance Wars. Feels good to head back to familiar roots here with AW and see how the franchise has gone off to inspire indies to the same degree Warside and Empires shall Fall Both titles are currently in development.

Gameplay-wise, for those who have never tried a turn-based title. Advance Wars starts with you the player controlling a set amount of units. You start a turn by moving and attacking any force on a map. Once you use all of your vehicle and infantry's actions you can end your turn. Then the opponent's forces will advance. The process repeats until either side wins. However, there is a cool gimmick to this. You and the enemy leader can activate their respective abilities. For Andy, once his meter fills up you can repair all of your unit's health +2 & +10 to firepower and defense. Olaf’s ability changes the whole battlefield to snow, increasing movement costs for all units except his own. Olaf’s forces gain +10 in firepower and defense. New COs’ abilities are different. Capable of adding substantial adjustments to the battlefield than changing numbers. If used at the right time they can change the fate of a battle in your favor. So use them when you're in a pinch. Just be careful, the leader can use their ability to inch closer to victory. These mechanics largely stay the same in the 2nd campaign. With extra CO abilities because of new commanders and a greater map variety with large cannons and pipes. AW 2 is pretty neat. The sequel I feel is better since they expanded on victory objectives. They can range from destroying a large cannon, multiple small cannons, and even a small pipe behind a big cannon. Missions take a bit longer to complete than in the first installment, but overall I found it better than their predecessor due to the map variety and mission objectives. Also, the villains are more menacing in the 2nd game than the first. An improvement over the first installment. Very refreshing to beat them mercilessly, who assumes they can beat me? Tsk tsk tsk. Don't underestimate the kid with a big wrench.

For AW 1. My experience is a positive one, despite the harsh critique I stated earlier. Took me over eighteen hours to complete the main story. Enjoyed fighting on various maps and utilizing a good spread of my units. There’s a lot of strategy involved and even when the fog of war maps came in, the difficulty didn’t waver in the slightest. In the old versions, the A.I. could cheat. Here that’s not possible anymore. Which is a cool tidbit to learn about. Plus, I found the usage of CO powers an awesome way to spice up the gameplay beyond commanding your troops. They provide a fair way to tussle against the enemy commander while supplementing your forces. Granting a layer of strategy to expect. Should I activate my ability now? Or wait until they use theirs? These questions will undoubtedly pop up as hypothetical scenarios of where to place your forces on land, sea, or air. Or if you need a bit of a boost to your forces in a dire situation.

For AW 2. My experience was still positive. Took me over twenty-six hours to complete the main story. And I believe it is a better sequel than the first with better villains to fight. And new commanders to choose from. Also, the player can choose to progress in a non-linear fashion by choosing different factions to start in the middle of the game. Start missions from Yellow Comet or Blue Moon and Green Earth are pretty wicked choices instead of always commanding troops from the same nation again and again. The difficulty is a bit increased, but as a sequel, I feel they function fine for the new changes to the gameplay. Not too much to be rage-inducing while not being too easy on classic difficulty. Moreover, your CO power is upgraded. If you wait a while, you can activate a supercharged move. This is a great way for players to reward those who patiently wait for their meter to increase or for those who immediately use their CO power once available. The choice is yours.

I want to say one last thing before I head out. Since this review is getting too long for my tastes and I apologize for that. I don’t want to make a review to put you off the game. I’m merely stating my experience and hope my review helps you in some fashion to understand another piece in the pie for AW 1 + 2 discussion in general. Despite the harsh critique I said in the beginning. I think the bundle is fine for anyone looking for other turn-based strategy goodness. Solid enough to hold your hand, but enough to keep you on your toes. The plot is decent. I didn’t expect anything amazing. Those who expect a simple story will be left with some measure of satisfaction upon completing either of the two campaigns. And a main cast I found to be endearing at times. Andy’s straightforwardness despite being a loveable dork. To the overprotective Kanbei for his daughter Sonja. Grit and even Eagle I like as well. The music is good. My favorite would be the Orange Star National Anthem. For some reason, I’m receiving Fire Emblem vibes from the track. Orange Star Theme I love how upbeat it is. And if I was isekai’d into the Wars World, I would immediately travel and enlist in their nation. The gameplay is all right, despite the critique I said earlier. I believe the mechanics are optimal enough to grasp as long as you can remember what each unit does and what they're effective against.

I also want to plug in a useful website to offer some helpful tips for anyone. Looking to play AW 1 + 2 These tips helped me immensely, so I feel more people should know about it just in case. I failed horribly in the first mission since I was operating with a Fire Emblem(FE) mindset. Despite the fact, FE & AW were made by the same company.

So, if you’re looking to try out Wayforward’s take on Advance Wars. I think Re-Boot camp is fine to play for newcomers or the original versions on the GBA. I sincerely hope the bundle sells enough, so we can see a new entry for fans in the series. And perhaps we can see Dual Strike and Days of Ruin come ashore in the future. Remade properly. Hopefully, the developers learn their lessons here and improve. But the future is uncertain, so we’ll see if that bears fruit.


Score for AW 1: 7/10
Score for AW 2: 7.5/10
Score for bundle: 7.25/10
Final note: I played both games on classic difficulty.
An option to play on ‘Casual’ is available.

Very faithful remake of the two GBA Advance Wars titles, with everything feeling mechanically similar with an updated graphical style.
I can understand the decision to go with a toybox visual style for the battles, it's very reminiscent of the Japanese artwork but personally it didn't quite vibe with me. The character artwork and the handful of cutscenes are genuinely incredible and show the potential of how Advance Wars could look.
There's been a handful additions to this package. We have some voice acting which is nice to have. Andy shares his VA with Ash Ketchum and it's hard to tell them apart at times!
A casual mode for newcomers is included. From what I can tell this doesn't really change much. Depending on the map, casual mode either gives you an additional unit or two at the start, an additional property or two, or downgrades one or two enemy units (like a Medium Tank being a regular Tank instead). It's helpful but I don't think it makes the game that much more accessible. I feel like scaling the damage would be nice as well but it's a difficult balance to find.
They also added a turn rewind. It's nice to have but it literally resets you back to the start of that turn which is pretty limiting and frustrating when you only want to undo one move and not your whole turn. I feel like this is something they should have had right when Fire Emblem has a pretty in depth turn rewind.
There's also online play added but it's limited to 1v1 while local multiplayer allows for 4 player matches.

So the new additions are nice, though I feel they should've went a little bit further, the rest of the package is where it shines though. Advance Wars 1+2 are two fantastic strategy focused games with colourful casts and plenty of content. AW1 spends the bulk of it's time introducing players to its mechanics and various units. AW2 takes everything from AW1, rebalances CO powers and diversifies the map design with new gimmicks and objectives that really gets the brain working. No doubt there are two fantastic strategy titles on offer here and it's nice the series has been given another chance to shine.

While the new additions don't quite hit expectations, there's plenty to love here and a lot of love and charm has been put into remaking these games. Fans of the GBA titles will find a familiar experience with a new coat of paint while newcomers have two top notch strategy games to dive in to

This game is a product with every detail taken care of, a full-blown remake that preserves what was good in the original products and makes them palatable to new generations as well thanks to a series of shrewdness and improvements to the user experience. Whether you're looking for a hit-and-run strategy game that introduces you to the genre or one that is soft only on the surface but capable of making you work up a sweat, here you will find plenty of content and gameplay that is as punctual as a Swiss watch, making balance and plurality of approaches some of its cornerstones.

Nice that new people will be able to experience this cool series. Combining the first two games is nice. I just wish it was a NEW game but whatever.

The new art style offends me. This series didn't need this sleek, Vtuber animation style. It makes the overall presentation look more generic.

I don't regret my purchase but I'd rather play the DS games.

Disappointing is an understatement. This game is frustrating as hell, tedious, and anxiety-producing.

I was so excited for this game to come out, waited months for it, and wanted to love it so badly. I'm not sure what I expected but I was told its gameplay resembles fire emblem...but it's nothing of the sort. Not even remotely close.

This is a shitty, low-budget indie battleship game that has somehow managed to make battleship worse and even less enjoyable. Graphics are trash, its mechanics are simple yet feel overly complicated for no reason at all. While simultaneously, I can't help but feel like something is missing from this game. Don't get me started on the fog of war missions. They make me want to end it all.

The worse part is how each mission takes literally f o r e v e r. I've spent hours on a single map, I've had to replay maps like four times to win. Talk about fucking time-consuming...Not to mention alllllllll the times I've restarted turns while still messing up by a single tile or so and needing to restart the whole thing anyway. It doesn't even feel rewarding in any way at all. It's nothing but a slog.

I’ve rage quit the game way too many times and quite frankly I'm surprised I made it to 55 hours of gameplay (completed 1 and about two thirds done with 2). It's extremely anxiety-producing because if you make a single wrong move, you're fcked and will need to restart the map. Oh you moved one of your troops a single square in the wrong place? HAHA LOSER, why don't ya start over and lose the 30-40 min of progress you made. Keep restarting over and over again until you want to fucking jump off a cliff for real.

Yeah the music goes hard but it's hardly redeeming for what a massive headache this game induces. Probably watching paint dry, sitting in L.A. traffic, or going to the DMV will be more fun. HARD PASS from sometime who absolutely loves strategy games. Extremely overly priced at its $60 price tag, what a joke. Good thing this game was gifted to me or I'd be F U M I N G -

V O M I T I N G, S H I T T I N G, and P I S S I N G myself.

Making custom maps and playing multiplayer with friends is, by far, the best aspect of the game. It's no saving grace by any means but at least it makes the game a mid tier multiplayer. But what makes no sense is that you can make maps that support up to four people...but can only play online with one friend though? Makes absolutely no sense that four people cannot play online together. Only two humans and two AI max can play online; playing multiplayer with four humans requires couch co-op. Sigh.

De-advanced Wars

The remake of Advance Wars has been the greatest cause for confusion I've had after completing a game in a very long time. I disliked just about every minute I played of AW1, but when I unlocked AW2's campaign I felt a weird sort of Stockholm Syndrome that I could not let up.

I don't have the attachment a LOT of people seem to have for Advance Wars. I never owned a Gameboy, and until Valkyria Chronicles 4 had never played a true tactics game. The nostalgia and know-how required to tackle AW, as opposed to Intelligent Systems' other marquee franchise in Fire Emblem, that so many seem to have is completely lost on me. Most of the friends I've conversed with and users on forums I've read online seem to be experienced with the original releases and how the game differs from its peers and predecessors. Maps are rather small in Advance Wars... which makes sense because its a tactics game on a system that wasn't designed to have sprawling maps or a display that could handle them. In theory this is alright, but worked against the way my brain wanted to think. In a typical new-gen Fire Emblem game, the maps are decently sized and transitioning from start to finish is an easily understood task in regards to the time it takes. In Advance Wars (Re-Boot Camp but I will just generalize it here,) the maps show small but take a LONG time to complete because of the various wrenches and roadblocks it throws at you. Often I would get to the middle and later stages of a map and throw my safe-turtle strategy aside so I could bee-line to the map objective, only to be met with a map ending spamalot of enemies that would take a plethora of turns to deter. Now you could recommend I adjust my strategy, and I did greatly from AW1 to AW2, but I felt generally annoyed that there was almost an artificial lengthening of maps. I guess the tl;dr of this paragraph is that all the levels seemed short but ended up much longer than I felt they needed to be because of random "gotcha" mechanics or endless enemy spawns. As the games went on, levels took on average thirty minutes to an hour and a half which is... sorta awful for trying to rewind after the gym and trying to make any progress before bed. To add on, I played the majority of AW1 on "Classic" difficulty, switching to "Casual" for the last few battles before going to "Classic" in the final battle and I'm... not really sure what the difference was? They felt equally difficult, which seems like a breakdown of the entire logic behind difficulty systems.

Poor map pacing aside, the mechanics of Advance Wars felt a little one dimensional and rather annoying. Missions start with your CO in a sticky situation; with a predetermined squad of units, bases in which you can spawn units to start the map, or a combination of both. This is a great departure from the tactics games I'd been used to (Tactics Ogre, Valkyria Chronicles, FE... to name a few,) where you have familiar heroes with special abilities. On paper this isn't an issue, but it leaves the game to become a sorta rock paper scissors matchup with random enemy spawns so you can never really exactly prepare for what the enemy is going to put out there. Having to half offensives for an extra ten to twenty minutes so you can ramp up your anti-air production to combat enemy bombers felt grating almost immediately, needing to stop your entire attack to direct funds into constructing cruisers to take out enemy submarines to protect your transportation landers was awfully annoying. This pattern continues across both games. Playing cat and mouse with the way the game wants you to play versus generating your own strategy made me feel like I was playing a puzzle game in which the developers wanted me to solve the way they made the game rather than play it in a way that I enjoyed.

Skip this if you're a fan of the GBA soundcard: the music in this game is genuinely horrible. I try not to make grandiose statements like that about the soundtracking of games because generally speaking, I find them inoffensive at worst. But outside of a very few CO themes (Sonya and Sensei,) the recycled crustyness of bad guitars and synths played like musical vomit in my head while I made my way through both of the repackaged Advance Wars titles. Thankfully there's a way in game to turn it off because Andy's battle theme was going to drive me up a series of several walls.

That all being said, there was a decent amount to like about the game(s.) Despite not having almost any narrative at all to them other than "bad men are bad," I enjoyed gallavanting about with my party of completely unalike CO's that have no feasible logic in regards to commanding an army. Only a few of the CO's seemed like plausible commanders which made the launching of large scale offensives and the gravity of war so hilarious to me. I came to appreciate how little the devs really cared about plausible motives/crafting a halfway decent narrative in the way of just saying "you're the good guys just do good guy things." The updated visuals give this title a LOT of charm, which is something that the greater playerbase seemed to be rather worried about when the trailers announced Reboot Camp. I liked the jovial drawings of each CO and the way they animated in dialogue and in game. I enjoyed the vibrant orange/green/blue/yellows of the units on the lusciously basic maps. It felt like a game that didn't take itself too seriously, and when coupled with the "plot," that is perfectly acceptable.

If you liked Advance Wars the first go around, it seems like the general consensus is that you'll like Reboot Camp quite a bit. As mentioned above, I didn't play the GBA titles but those that I've conversed with that did, have been rather high on 2023's take on the famous tactics franchise. I personally cannot recommend Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp, but hey if ya like it, ya like it.

I have only completed the AW1 campaign at the time of this review

Advance Wars has had a very special place in my heart ever since I first played it. I loved its mechanics, its tone, its character, and really just fell in love with everything about it- and this remake is exactly what I wanted. This is an extremely faithful remake, which is great since it didn't need a big revision. Without destroying the original character of the GBA game, this game tastefully and wonderfully recreated it, only adding in nonintrusive ways where it did nothing but make the experience better. ((optional)) restart turn button for little mistakes, gorgeously animated character art and some cutscenes, speed up features, etc. Wonderful. Top that off with a wealth of challenge stages you can unlock, a robust multiplayer and level editor, unlockable difficulties, a gallery, and an entire other video game in this package and it is a stunning, extremely well-polished nostalgic walk for longtime fans or must-have for newcomers. Lovely time

I was pleasantly surprised by this one. I was expecting to maybe get a few hours out of it and then fall off it, but the campaigns retain their intoxicating addictiveness from the GBA days and were a joy to play through.

I'm not a fan of the unit visuals but after a few hours you stop noticing them as you're so focused on actually playing the maps. The rest of the visuals I actually thought were quite nice and well polished. The story is... well, almost non-existent - if you're expecting this to be "Fire Emblem with tanks" then you'll be disappointed. The characters are one-note but do their job of being likeable and cool. The updated music is fantastic re -imaginings of the original tunes (Sensei's theme a particular standout) - the music was a highlight of the originals and I'm so glad that they nailed it here.

There is also just a ton of content. I got around 50 hours out of the game with the two campaigns, and then there are bonus War Room maps and the challenge level campaigns if I want to hop back in later. The online is pretty lackluster so if you're looking for a mutiplayer experience then you'll want to look elsewhere.

Overall if you're looking for raw single-player strategic fun then I don't think you can go wrong with this version.

Japanese Game Company manages to remake better version of Chess.

Not a fan of Olaf's american accent, but Andy being Ash Ketchum and Max being Arin from Game Grumps more than make up for it.

However, considering that you can get the original games off the internet for free, I really couldn't recommend buying this unless you properly love Advance Wars.

Two full games in one is quite the value. It takes the old advance wars and makes them playable in 2023 which in and of itself is a joy and allows people entry into this classic strategy game.

Most of my problems come with the repetitiveness of missions across games. They mostly amount to the same core group of strategies you can use to out-match your enemy. Failure state for me was rather rare. Lots of downtime watching your enemies move/attack.

It's also weird that like, Orange Star is just casually going to war with all of these people. It really does feel like you're playing the bad guys in the first game.

Two of the best platform-signifying games of the Game Boy Advance, are still two of the best strategy games yet made, with Intelligent Systems’ charming sprite-work cartoonized by WayForward.

Several Quality of Life changes make this an essential try even for series veterans. That enough has been changed, points to everything that has not been changed, and even new changes which newly get in the way. Some of the new unit visuals, which change based on faction, are hard to tell from other units, now, and the overall refresh to the style, while initially pleasing, is not as form-fitting for the grid-based movement and precision of the first two Advance Wars.

There are other caveats which are regular Nintendo caveats: there is multiplayer if you connect directly with a friend, but no open online lobbies or public play. There is a map creator but the sharing is even more limited than Mario Maker, you can only send your creations to a friend who plays the game (for me, one person), so that’s a creative dead-end for what remains a pretty clean-cut mapmaker (but still limited to one size, odd).

There are baked in things, that feel more urgent to address now. The animations for CO Powers, in particular, are very long. Some in-game days you’ll see as many as three powers, meaning you’re watching long cutscene animations you’ve seen many times and when you progress with more troops, those times get longer, as it must touch every unit the power has influenced. There are filters for other game-specific animations like capturing and watching the battles, so it’s hard to imagine this did not especially occur to anyone while reimplementing those.

What the style does do is scale pretty well and allow a more readable format that can now be zoomed way out using the stick. Good. There are also changes to scoring, making S-ranks relatively easy, and even some formal changes to how certain battles progress, specifically changing many of the fastest routed strategies you may be able to look up for some levels.

While on the whole it felt significantly easier, whether by age and growing a big brain or because they’ve really made certain missions more accessible… There is one mission that took me about six of my 55 hours to complete, which is an absurdity, when everything else was cleared in a few tries. There is maybe some imbalance and someone else may get hooked up somewhere else. I do feel some of the instinctive changes are not considered whole cloth for how they change the course of a battle.

This is a terrific value and two of the best games. Given the extra year of development due to ongoing conflicts in Ukraine, it’s a major downer every rough edge wasn’t smoothed out, all the options expanded, and online worked on. There could be the definitive Advance Wars here, but you cannot really say that for either version, and this far on, you still need to play those original games — and if you love them — only then do you need to play these games.