Advance Wars series, also known as Famicom Wars, due to the naming scheme of the early, Japan-only titles, is a tactics game series spanning various titles published on Nintendo’s consoles.
I really like tactics games
Turn-based tactics games have a very dear spot in my gaming heart despite being generally quite bad at them. It all started with Advance Wars but I’ve noticed that year after year I gravitate towards enjoying similar mechanics in games like Wargroove, Into the Breach and Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle.
I enjoy the story campaigns more than the PvP — a factor which explains why I like these games more than chess which I also enjoy to some extent — because they are easier than playing against someone who is great at it.
Advance Wars (2001)
The first game published outside Japan was Advance Wars in 2001 for Game Boy Advance. You as a player acts as an advisor to Orange Star army, working with commanding officers (COs) Andy, Max and Sami who each have their unique abilities, strengths and weaknesses. You encounter opposing armies from Blue Moon, Green Earth and Yellow Comet in various battle maps while learning more about the relationships between these nations and the commanding officers who all seem to know each other rather well.
Each mission starts with a different map with varying terrain features and a set of units on both sides. Usually, the way to win a mission is by either defeating all opposing forces or by capturing their HQ. Some missions mix this up by setting a different goal of controlling certain amount of buildings to win.
Here’s a thing about these games though: the campaign is pretty much just a tutorial for the PvP skirmish. It’s relatively easy in a way that even beating it clean on one sitting with great success only means you’re a mere beginner when it comes to PvP. But I don’t care about the PvP. My brainpower isn’t quite enough to master the strategies of such a deep and complex game.
I’m so happy the game has a great campaign though. Even if the battles themselves are not that difficult and how there are some ways to cheese the computer opponent (and sometimes it just lets you win by not taking action), the fun characters, varying maps and progressing story keeps me returning to the game over and over again.
Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising (2003)
Advance Wars got its much appreciated sequel Black Hole Rising a couple of years later. It’s my favourite type of sequel: “more of the same”. AW1 feels like a great tutorial for the game that starts at AW2. The sequel keeps all the basic building blocks the same but adds more campaign missions, a new unit, new buildings and refreshed CO Power system.
The campaign mode really comes to life in this game. The missions are tad bit more challenging and way more enjoyable. Towards the end, they really require you to dust your Sun Tzu’s Art of War from your shelf and become great at tactical warfare to take down the invading armies of Black Hole.