Thoroughly enjoyed this one, honestly might be my 2nd favorite AW game behind the first one. The reworked CO ability is fantastic and led to the battle system feeling much more balanced and strategic, as certain CO boosts and abilities were OP in previous entries. It made the game feel like it was going back to basics, especially coming from Dual Strike where the dual battle system felt gimmicky. Story wise its fine, I don’t think any AW game has a plot to write home about but I appreciate the shift to a darker tone in this one

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.

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.