Advance Wars: Days of Ruin has been out for a week now, during which time I’ve logged over 12 hours into the game’s campaign mode. I have been holding off making a comment about the game because, honestly, I’m not really sure what to say. It is Advance Wars at it’s core, but so much is so very different.

First up – while I was able to S rank both the ‘normal’ and ‘hard’ campaigns in Advance Wars: Dual Strike – in Days of Ruin I am completing battles with B and C rankings for the most part. This is not a complaint, just an observation that Days of Ruin is rougher and tougher.

This may be due to the fact that I am using tactics and strategies that I have honed in previous AWARS titles that don’t quite apply anymore. For instance, CO powers as we’ve known them are a thing of the past. COs no longer sit in some chair off the battlefield and call the shots. Now, they end up directly in the action – and play a key role in your battle plan.

As you would in real battles (I’m guessing here) it is important to keep your CO covered on the battle field. They will hit harder than your other units, and can take more of a beating – but lose them in battle and you’ll probably lose some ground along with them.

Along with the CO changes are new units and some unit tweaks. On the new side of things we have: (I don’t really have a handle on these new units, so I may be wrong with some intel here)

The Duster - In my experience this unit is proving to be somewhat useless. It costs more than the B-copter and while it can attack land and air units it does little damage to either. It has proved effective as a long range recon unit at times, but not enough that I put many of them into production. It doesn’t fill a void that was missing in the AWARS arsenal, so most vets will probably avoid it all together.

Anti-Tank Gun – This is an indirect fire unit similar to the artillery gun, yet it can pack a punch in direct combat as well. I believe it can also punch B-copters out of the sky as well. It’s been pretty useful and I’ve been building quite a few of them during battles. It doesn’t have the best movement, but keep it covered and it’ll get the job done.

Bike – These come in handy when making a rush on a distant base or city. They wont hold up to any strong fire power and can’t cross areas that mechs and infantry can, but they’re quick and can cover a lot of ground when you’re in a hurry.

War Tank - This unit replaces both the Neo Tank and Mega Tank and feels like a combination of the two. Honestly, I don’t use it all to often, but with a CO loaded it can do some devastating damage. I haven’t rolled too many of these out of factories yet due to it’s high construction costs and its slow movement. Still, War Tanks are quite a force to be reckoned with.

Gunboat - The Gunboat is a basically a lander that traded one of it’s cargo holds for a powerful missile salvo. Only downside is that you’ve only got enough ammo on board for one shot at a time. it’s a direct fire unit that works well when you need to get a soldier across a dangerous sea and don’t have time to build defenses around a lander. I dig the Gunboat, but too often I leave them for dead after they serve their purpose as it requires too much effort to get them back to a port to reload.

Seaplane - I don’t have too much to say yet about these carrier constructed aircraft. They have the same movement range as a bomber but I can’t really comment on their effectiveness just yet due to a lack of use.

Flare – I haven’t used this unit yet. Its a cool idea, but I’ve already adapted on how to deal with fog of war, so I haven’t felt a need to roll any of these out.

I’ll post about changes to the old ones soon.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 5:59 pm and is filed under Video Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.