Advance Wars: Days of Ruin

Been a fan of the series and hadn’t played for awhile. I found this copy for a decent price and came as I expected. Condition is pretty good in my opinion. They send a little candy too, it’s sweet and I appreciate it. Been playing for a few hours now, will definitely go through again for next online games I need ordered.

I have purchased and religiously played Advance Wars from the very first Advance Wars game, to the sequel, to Advance Wars: DS, to this puppy - and even the silly sorta FPS Advance Wars, heh. But this one is my favorite of them all, just BARELY edging out Dual Strike. The dark feel of the COs (commanding officers), the map, the storyline, the graphics - it all adds together to make for what is by FAR the best campaign mode of all the Advance Wars games. And, of course, there are several new units, and most interestingly, ALL NEW COs! The first three games kept using the same COs, plus a few more new ones each time, but they basically completely redid them for this, and I really like it. A few of the oldies but goodies do come back in altered form (stat-wise), but it really feels like the first true FULL sequel to the original Advance Wars for GBA.To elaborate slightly on some of the new features *SPOILER ALERT*: You can now load your CO into a unit for half the unit's price to make a superpowered unit with a CO zone - a large area that will give large stat boosts to any unit of yours in range (the boost varies by CO). CO and Super CO powers make their comeback, when you charge your CO bar and Super CO bar, each time it adds to the range of your CO zone, so it can be a tough decision. I won't add any more spoilers, except to describe some of the new units. For ground units you get a Mega Tank: EXTREMELY powerful but very low mobility, fuel, and ammo make regular tanks still the ground unit of choice. You get flares, which are basically slightly more powerful recons that can shoot flares that light up fog-of-war. One of the most useful additions is the bike, an infantry unit with 5 range (on roads, anyway) and slightly more power. And you also get the anti-tank unit, which is basically an artillery that costs more, has slightly decreased range, but can counterattack when fired open in direct combat.As for air units, the Duster is basically the only air unit (sorta - you'll understand shortly). It's basically a weaker fighter that can do really, really crappy damage to ground units, too, but still costs almost as much as a fighter. Blech! The navy on the other hand, gets lots of cool new guys. The super cheap gunboat is awesome - it can only fire once before needing to get more supplies, but it's fairly powerful, extremely cheap (5,000, I think) and can transport infantry units. Finally, the last unit (that I'll reveal, anyway) is the carrier. This puppy is SUPER expensive, and can't even fire. What's the point???! What the heck?! Well, if you are just rolling in dough (say, on a map with TONS of cities but almost no production), this carrier can produce, hold, and refuel seaplanes, which are basically a 90% strength fighter/bomber mix for about 18000. But since the carrier itself costs like 32000, it's an insane investment that is really only for fun, not serious battling. Oh, and I don't know if you could do this in advance wars DS, but copters can land on cruisers. the anti-air/anti-sub boats.So, if any of that sounds interesting, or if you just like turn-based strategy, this game is a MUST buy. Enjoy :)

Between this game and Advance Wars Dual Strike, I will say Dual Strike gets a slight edge. Dual Strike sticks extremely close to the original Advance Wars formula laid out from the prior two games on GBA. But that is not a bad thing, those are near-perfect portable strategy games. Days of Ruin tried to be adventurous. They changed the art style and atmosphere to a much harsher more dark one. The story is almost adult-level sci-fi but told in a kid-friendly way (creeper virus makes pretty flowers pop out of you and pics are non-gory, other sci-fi viruses like zombie stuff etc. get really gory on other hand) and the story looks at the bleak situation of desperate people after comets blast Earth. Starvation, political manipulations of shady mayors, it's the script of a good B-grade movie that would at least beat out the SyFy channel garbage movies.As far as gameplay goes there is balance changes for vets of the series. First of all the AI is stop notch. Dual Strike really upped the ante with it's AI over the GBA games but this one I feel takes the AI even further, it can be a challenge until you get really good. As for balance changes I will list off the ones I can think of quick: There is a new infantry unit on motorcycles, cheaper and weaker than a jeep and not quite as fast but faster than normal infantry and they can capture buildings like normal infantry. Mechs are 2500cr instead of 3k, this is huge as you can accept the loss of mechs more easily and use them to eat away tanks more. Anti-tank artillery is like normal artillery except it has armor similar to a Md tank, costs 11000cr, and can fire just as far as artillery as well as point blank. This unit can be quite overpowering because it can also counterattack like a normal tank. Standard tanks cannot kill this thing easily, and at 11000cr they are 5000cr cheaper than Md tanks and can really hurt a map of infantry and tanks. The gunboat has only 1 shot that can do about 75% damage to an enemy ship and can carry a single infantry unit, the duster is a propeller plane that is cheap and is basically an airborne jeep, best for countering helicopters. There is a new flare tank that can reveal a good 3-3 range on a map with fog of war.Summary: This game plays like any other Advance Wars game but the large amount of additions and balance changes makes it play differently. Some of the same strategies that worked in the rest of the series don't pan out as well in this one. The atmosphere doesn't feel as good as the original games, almost like it tries too hard to be edgy with the darker art and heavy electric-guitar rock-type music riffs but stays within PG-13 or below ratings. Good game, it's still Advance Wars at it's core, this is just a different flavor. Since this and Dual Strike are not being made anymore get them now before the prices go crazy high.

In my opinion this is the best Advance Wars game. The story is a little ham fisted, but you don't really play these games for the story, and in retrospect after living through the covid-19 pandemic, the way people react to the pandemic in the game turns out to be far more accurate than I would have suspected. In some ways I have to give the developers props for their very prescient depiction of people's reaction to modern day catastrophes. While it really seemed melodramatic at the time, it seems much more plausible now.The strategic combat is stellar, though, and the reduction of power for COs is much better than previous games.They've also addressed problems that earlier games had where the AI always knew where you were in fog of war. Now the AI can't cheat, so fog of war missions are fair.Some units are a bit OP, and the computer is just bad at dealing with certain units, so they become very exploitable, but that's to be expected of an AI opponent.

Item came very on time, in a very very good condition (as per description). 5 stars !!!

I only rate it 4 stars because it wasn't days of ruin I've got but the European version dark conflict. Still the same game but everyones names are different which threw me off a bit.

Good

perfect gift

I decided to visit this classic after buying a 3DS XL just before Christmas rather than an Xbox One (no good games out until mid 2014 at least).Graphics are quirky and fun, and still look pretty good through the 3DS XL larger screens (advance wars is from the old DS, but the 3DS systems are backwards compatible).Gameplay is addictive, pretty simple to pick up but hard to master and think ahead. A lot of the missions you can stumble through but to constantly get 'S' grade (highest), you will have to think beyond the first few missions. When you get on a destructive roll there is a real sense of achievement with the soundtrack and battle animations upping the action.Story is bizarre but i prefer the darker tone to the older games. CO powers aren't as powerful as before in the last game. I miss this a bit as they could really get you out of a pinch or up the challenge when the enemy commander uses theirs just as you think you're winning.Scary to look at how many hours I've 'wasted' on the 3DS game log, but you just have to play that next turn.