Part of the fun and the danger of generational shifts in gaming is the potential for franchises to reinvent themselves. Here, Advance Wars: Dual Strike takes the opportunity of the brand new DS hardware to age things up a bit, with a toned down color palette and new protagonists who are less visibly unqualified to lead soldiers into battle. At first glance the appears to be dangerously close to stripping away all of the personality of the first two titles in an awkward middle phase before a sharp pivot to teenage grimdark sensibilities with Days of Ruin. At a certain point, I have to wonder if the awkward outdated internet lingo that is deployed by the localized version of Jake is preferable to the more straight laced technician that I've heard is in the Japanese version; at least the cringe is a character trait.
However, eventually the plot returns to staging full blown lethal conflict between allies over tests of skills and adds in sudden heel turns for at least some of its previous villains, so at least there’s still some wacky cartoon toy soldier energy to go around. Mechanically speaking, after Black Hole Rising refined the first game's template, it feels as though the franchise's gameplay identity has been solidified and there isn't much left to do but add a few new gimmicks with a handful of new units and enemy types. The slow moving but extremely lethal one turn kills of the oozium slimes makes for fascinating evasive gameplay, while Black Bombs, Stealth Bombers, and Piperunners add new dangers and potential to the combined arms battles that define the franchise. In terms of new system mechanics, the results are a tad more mixed. The extra screen introduces multi-front battles as an additional form of variety, but they also provide an additional form of frustration, especially in missions where the second front is handled exclusively by an AI partner. The ability to swap to a second CO mid battle adds a lot of tactical wrinkles but it's telling that the extra turn provided by the titular Dual Strike mechanic is far more impactful than any of the CO Power combinations that I tried. At the end of the day, however, AWDS is simply "another one of those" and in terms of Advance Wars, that's enough to keep me happy.
However, eventually the plot returns to staging full blown lethal conflict between allies over tests of skills and adds in sudden heel turns for at least some of its previous villains, so at least there’s still some wacky cartoon toy soldier energy to go around. Mechanically speaking, after Black Hole Rising refined the first game's template, it feels as though the franchise's gameplay identity has been solidified and there isn't much left to do but add a few new gimmicks with a handful of new units and enemy types. The slow moving but extremely lethal one turn kills of the oozium slimes makes for fascinating evasive gameplay, while Black Bombs, Stealth Bombers, and Piperunners add new dangers and potential to the combined arms battles that define the franchise. In terms of new system mechanics, the results are a tad more mixed. The extra screen introduces multi-front battles as an additional form of variety, but they also provide an additional form of frustration, especially in missions where the second front is handled exclusively by an AI partner. The ability to swap to a second CO mid battle adds a lot of tactical wrinkles but it's telling that the extra turn provided by the titular Dual Strike mechanic is far more impactful than any of the CO Power combinations that I tried. At the end of the day, however, AWDS is simply "another one of those" and in terms of Advance Wars, that's enough to keep me happy.