#awdor

Advance Wars Days of Ruins (AW DOR) is, for me, tied with AW 2 for the best Advance Wars game, and it’s a shame a lot of people passed over it. To be fair, it was announced in 2007 and released in 2008, the time a lot of people are getting sick and tired of the trend where many stories tried to be dark and gritty and/or apocalyptical with little to no success, like Shadow the Hedgehog. DOR, however, is a polished game with an overall great writing.

First of, let’s get the story out of the way. Yes, it’s an apocalyptic setting, where most of the human population got wiped out, and our characters have to survive the harsh environment, but it’s not all dark and gloomy as it appears to be. The story is balanced with the central theme of “hope”, and the characters do their best to try to survive while helping other people out. They run into all sorts of characters, who try to make use of the environment in a variety of way, and it’s this clash of philosophy and belief that makes the story engaging. In addition, the game never lost the humor of the previous games; the game just moved the humor to a different location, mainly the Main Story’s War Room, where you get a skit where everyone is invited to chat or cause trouble, including the enemies, who will steal the show. There are some dark moments in the story, but those moments make the lighter moments all the more appreciated. Overall, I love the story. It may not have as many individual moments like AW2, but I think it has the best overall writing.

Gameplay wise, there’s plenty of adjustments and additions to enjoy. The new units provide additional variety to strategy, and battleships are pretty insane. You can move AND attack on the same turn, but its range is reduced to max 5, so if you go after rockets, you are putting yourself in range. The fog of war now allow buildings to hide units like forests and reefs, so there are more places to hide.

And the AI... OH GOD the AI. It’s even smarter, yet fairer, than in the one in AW Dual Strike. This AI stays out of your overall range, and its harder to bait them. Plus, they make some smart decisions, forcing you to think a bit harder. They are also affected by the Fog of War like human players, so now it doesn’t feel as unfair as before.

The soundtrack feels like Sonic Adventure 2, where it’s primary a variety of Rock music, but still enjoyable. My favorite has to be Will’s theme and the hero CO Power theme “Power Up”.

The story missions doesn’t have a separate difficulty, so it feels like it starts easy but ramp up to hard mode campaign close to the end. There aren’t as many cheap missions like AW1, but some can be a pain, like that final mission.