Advance Wars

One of the best things about the generally disappointing Wii U is its Virtual Console catalog. I never had a Gameboy Advance, but I've been able to go nuts with all kinds of GBA games - GBA games that would cost $20 or more to buy in their original cartridge format - for like $6 a pop. Anyway, one of the most highly rated GBA games of all time is this little title called Advance Wars. It's a grid-based turn-based strategy game that feels a whole lot like Fire Emblem with tanks and helicopters. Some of the maps also feature bases, shipyards, and airports that let you build more units as the given battle continues, and other maps have a fog of war aspect that doesn't allow you to see your enemies' movements. In these respects, Advance Wars also kind of reminded me of Warcraft and Starcraft - again, with tanks and helicopters.

The story mode consisted of a lengthy tutorial followed by around twenty missions that ranged anywhere from ten minutes to over an hour in length. I'm sure each level can be beaten in a matter of minutes, but doing so would have required optimal strategies on my part. Some of the levels, particularly those where reinforcements could be summoned by both sides, grew very long and monotonous. I recall one level in particular with a long bridge; both my units and my opponents' were just stacked into lengthy single-file lines, and only two could battle at any given time. It took me close to an hour to advance the four or five grid-spaces I needed in order to win the battle. The final level of the game, which was actually really well-designed, took me close to two hours thanks to the enemy having six reinforcement locations and almost unlimited resources to create new troops.

It's hard to complain about the lengthy missions, though. While a handful of the levels in the campaign were tedious, the sheer variety of missions and maps kept things fresh and interesting. Some levels were blitzes of sorts, where all enemy troops needed to be eradicated within a certain number of turns. Other levels required that I capture a certain number of cities or defend a certain unit for a fixed length of time. Furthermore, there's an entire "war room" section of the game full of non-campaign challenges and missions. I haven't even touched that yet. For all I know, I'm less than halfway done with the game's overall total content amount.

If there's any additional criticism I have for the game, it's merely a less flattering comparison to the numerous turn-based strategy JRPGs I've enjoyed through the years. I compared Advance Wars to Fire Emblem, but the latter has a rich level of customization built into its gameplay as well as a deeper and more character-driven story. (And games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Valkyria Chronicles are, in my mind, even deeper and richer than Fire Emblem.) Advance Wars doesn't exactly suffer for neglecting to flesh out its numerous army men with distinct personalities and attributes, but it does make all the units completely interchangeable. No death or loss can "hit you right in the feels" when the soldiers are nothing more than pieces on a chessboard. Of course, no one has ever criticized chess for being a game in which you can't get more personally invested in some pieces than others. Advance Wars is a well-balanced turn-based strategy game on its own right, regardless of my own preference for customizable or scripted character development in such games.

I liked Advance Wars enough to consider looking into its many sequels. Advance Wars 2 is also a Wii U-ported GBA game, and beyond that there are two DS games, a GameCube title, and even a game on the Wii. The thing is, I'm in no rush to dig into any of those games when I've still got all kinds of untapped content waiting for me in the war room mode of this one. Someday, maybe.