For a game that's set after a world ending event and takes place in an apocalypse, this game is probably the funniest Advance Wars game cause of the hint system. Characters will do some two man comedy bit talking about the most random shit like cooking rats or drawing doodles of tanks on war notes, and then the enemy CO will tell you the most optimal way to choke out their units.

Also shoutouts to the game only letting you play as the ranged CO specialist once in the campaign in a pre-deployed mission with no ranged units.

Days of Ruin is a very brave game. It completely throws away all of the setting and tone, alongside much of the mechanics, of the original three Advance Wars games, in favor of something of its own. Unfortunately, it sucks. Despite the game technically being balanced to be more offensive, the AI is super defensive, and since CO powers no longer let you make a big push, a lot of the single player maps are complete agony because the enemy can and will stonewall you for hours, all of the OST sounds like dogshit because they're trying to play real music through a DS' speakers and the story... actually it's pretty decent. But the game isn't very good.

I actually really enjoyed this game. I've always expressed interest in the Advance War Series, and this was my first one. Honestly a pretty good introduction to the franchise. It's super strategic, and most missions are really fun to problem solve. The Ai in this game is actually insane, some of the smartest Ai I've ever seen. The Ai changes on a mission by mission basis. It's genuinely genius. But sometimes, I feel like the Ai can be too smart on certain missions. Chapter 22 took me a week to beat due to how annoyingly defensive the Ai was, it felt good to beat it eventually, but by the end of the game, I was a bit tapped out. This really isn't a criticism, as it came down to my lack of skill, but I still felt burnt out. So it's something to consider. The story is genuinely bad, the main protag is just a terrible Makoto Naegi clone, characters have no charisma and are paper thin. And the plot is dumb... But thats fine, it's a pretty cool game.

It really is quite something to witness a franchise throw out everything its well received predecessor had done just three years before. Compared to Dual Strike, Days of Ruin offers a more balanced and less wacky take on the franchise's mechanics. CO powers are nerfed substantially, and with the abandonment of the dual screen gimmicks, no longer provide an extra turn through the CO Swap systems. Units introduced in Dual Strike are a given similar treatment, with the megatank returning in a weaker form, and the neo-tank, piperunner, oozium, stealth bomber and black boat being entirely absent, leading to a slimmer range of tactical scenarios but a greater emphasis on engaging with the bread and butter of the air, land, and sea fronts that Advance Wars combat revolves around. The new units, which are the anti-tank cannons, the duster plane, and the aircraft carrier, add additional layers of strategy to these fronts by fulfilling multiple functions. Anti-tank units attack from range but can still defend themselves in direct assault, duster planes can attack land and sea units, and carriers create a mobile production capacity while creating seaplanes, which can attack almost any unit. Paired with level design that is tighter and more focused, it comes across as though Intelligent Systems felt that the series got away from itself and needed to return to the basics as it were.

Of course, there’s another ambition that these changes are in service of, and it’s the readily apparent pivot in tone that this reboot undertakes. Days of Ruin is concerned with what the question looks like in a war without law, and to visualize that it takes to anime character designs and a color palette consisting of a dirge of gray and brown, in stark contrast to the bright and poppy cartoon fare that the series is known for. While the very premise of these games necessitates a degree of cynicism in the approach to such a question, as without a war there’s no game to play, but I did appreciate that the visual novel sequences did present some optimism towards groups of people working toward a common goal without a state structure. Still this is undermined by the story’s turn toward an one dimensional villain and a healthy dose of sci-fi genre nonsense. Compared to the original Advance Wars, the text is more interesting, but the subtext has lost its delightful idiosyncrasies, but still, I do appreciate how tight the tactics on display are here.

4 localized entries into AW and I've seen this series go from 'war games satire' to 'found family beats the shit out of the ginyu force' to 'power of friendship beats the shit out of carbon emissions' to 'western apocalypse drama'.

As IntSys drifts further away from the original's meta-contextualization of tabletop strategy, the weird balance issues feel at odds with its tone: You have this depression-age slaughterhouse conflict happening amidst the franchise's most overly-balanced entry. Feels off. The new unit types and revisions to power/pricing levels help cover all the utility-based gaps from 1/2/DS - Dusters as an all-purpose budget plane, Gunboats for cheap sea damage, Antitanks to block vehicles from sniping indirects, - but I could not tell you how many times a match became a borderline stalemate.

AI is defensive to a fault, doubly so with Air units. If they get a chance to set up their field with 1-2 of each major attack type (air, tank, indirect), they'll just make an impenetrable wall. Often times, there was no way to win without poking holes in the enemy front until they screwed up. I'm aware the game isn't balanced once you get into PvP and bring in the new CO power system (what were they thinking), but in story mode, it's too sterile. But more than anything, it clashes with the feral characterization of the world and its resources. For a story about 99% of infrastructure getting bulldozed by God, you sure do build more units than any game preceding it. I LIKE spamming my Mechs, B-Copters and Artillery! Breaking things is fun!

Couldn't say one thing or another about the plot. It's not what I want out of AW and I think you could chop the script length in half, but I never 'disliked' it. Very 'political'; a lot of posturing about loyalty and war morale, was surprised how visceral its writing gets for being an E-rated Nintendo gig. They sure do talk a lot about drinking each other's blood for sport. Best part is they finally commit to the 'pull the trigger' bit they cockteased in Dual Strike. Couldn't really name characters or moments I got sucked into, besides Brenner, Lin and Caulder's 'family'. I like Will's convictions and think 'optimistic shonen self-insert' was probably the best foil possible for this setup, but he ain't no Andy.

In spite of balance issues and tonal dissonance this is still worth the time imo. Difficulty feels the lowest of the series up to this point, using expensive units ad hominem is fun, the ways they mix up story battles are cool, and there's bits of QOL/refinement that make it more digestible than its predecessors. Debatably the best starting point, especially since 1/2/DS aren't acknowledged in any capacity here.

Its pretty alright, better than Dual Strike because the devs weren't doing lines of cocaine between inputting the values for the COs and their abilities, not that this game has spectacular balance mind you. This time around its gritty, and as a result, not so pretty in some ways. For some the character portraits are acceptable, but it wouldn't suprize me if some would call them ugly when you blow them up on an emulator or XL DS model. The visuals on the map unfortunately have that late 2000's desaturation problem that accompanies games about war, so while the texturework is rather good in some parts, the color pallet is bland to the eye, even if it represents the state of the land very well. The campaign, story, and dialogue are very solid all around, with an interesting narrative, and somewhat memorable characters and moments, my only real complaint is some annoying characters, particularly villains and sides, and more importantly, some real annoying maps later on because of the AIs strategy to spam the same units over and over again until you fall asleep bored, or wait through 30 turns to win as you chug out as many anti tanks and infantry as possible to beat the AI's anti tanks and war tanks, or make a ton of AA to deal with the enemies dusters, only for them to swap back to ol reliable; AT and tanks, thus barely make progress. Thankfully for the most part this only happened to me twice. The new CO gimmick is pretty neat too, although I feel a punishment for loosing the unit containing your CO isn't enough, and allows for some spammy strategies in multi. Pretty good game, although Nintendo may not have thought so, as it took them years to bring it to their own homeland, which is real strange, and points to the intended market of gritty military games at the time.