Topic: Advance Wars: Days of Ruin

[Shecky]

- Campaign was a little on the easy side.  Only a few maps that caused me to draw out the war and only a few times where I had to start over, or replay it to get an A rank.
- Lack of Fog of War maps in the main campaign.
- The computer definitely does NOT cheat in Fog of War.  It can get trapped just as easily as you.
- Single turn vision memory for FoW.... about time!
- CPU only firepower makes a return.
- The use of COs isn't terribly useful in clearing the campaign, although it can help when used correctly.
- Save for a few individuals, CO powers seem useless and the boost in range trumps the power.
- Speaking of which, you know how many times a +2 range boost would have helped and I forgot I even had a CO power ready to use...
- Trial maps and Campaign combined into the new "War Room".  Play any campaign mission or challenge at will.
- New balance to unit types
- Carriers are nerfed in a good way.  No longer can they shoot down planes half way over the land.  Instead they can launch rather powerful "sea planes" which only they can produce, or attack other aircraft directly.
- Story is wordy, sometimes you sift through a LOT of words.
- Story is passable, if not a bit hokey at times.
- "Death" is more prevalent in this title.
- Campaign maps were satisfying to play

- Online mode OK.  Limited choices means no fuss over finding a match.
- A voting system would have been nice to allow users to choose their locales and conditions.

Time Invested:
- Campaign Clear time: 25 Hours (Main missions only)
- Online: 2 Hours
- Design: 1 Hour

Purchase Price: $30 @ Circuit City

Target Audience: Turn Based, Strategy, Tactics, War Simulation

Final Word: Highly Recommended to Target Audience

[Kairon]

What's the whole deal with the story? Are military units here robots or something? It is the end of thew world after all...

[Shecky]

Quote
Originally posted by: Kairon
What's the whole deal with the story? Are military units here robots or something? It is the end of thew world after all...

Bit of both actually.  Your picking up survivors, and those are banding together to form the military you play as.  Also some of the tanks and other units you produce are automated.  A resource that was built by a company called IDS before the meteors hit.  The game also tries to shoehorn that as the reason for not being able to migrate units between battles, saying the automated system doesn't work if they stray from the factory they were produced at.  It's corny, but they spend one line on it and never revisit the topic, so no biggie.  The "Black Hole" army in this game is entirely robotic and happens to be lead by an ex-IDS employee.

[Kairon]

OMG EPIC.