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The game implicitly acknowledges its imbalance by sticking several points on the map which not only allow you to save the game, but if you grab enough of those coins, you can fully heal and resurrect everyone on your squad. It gives you the impression that you're supposed to fully comb each map, but the enemies are constantly sending in reinforcements, making this tedious and impractical.again, unless you know beforehand where the important stuff is located. The maps are littered with coins and gears, these are used to obtain new equipment since there's no real experience or leveling up mechanic otherwise. There are other counter intuitive mechanics too. You're also never clear how many tiles enemies move or how far their attacks can reach, which is a huge contrast to FE/AW where you spend every turn checking enemy movement/attack ranges. It leads to lots of case where you first try a map and get creamed, but once you know roughly where the enemies are, then you can come back, play more cautiously, and end up doing much better. However the game balance greatly rewards defensive play due to the overwatch mechanic, which is (again) similar to Valkyria Chronicles and X-Com. As a result, the player is always on the offensive, since you need to move forward, and the enemy is on the defensive. The goal is never to beat all of the enemies but usually just to make it to one specific spot on the map (or rescue people or find X trinkets or whatever).
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But it still feels like you're feeling around in the dark and enemies can easily surprise you. This isn't a flaw, that's the entire concept of the game. The biggest issue is that there's no mini-map and your only viewpoint is from the perspective of your characters. The bad reviews aren't necessarily wrong, but you definitely need to be a big strategy game fan to have patience to deal with its design. I grabbed Codename STEAM on sale after avoiding it initially due to negative word of mouth. Most units are expendable and the focus is more on controlling resources and breaking stalemates. It's a great game if you can put up with its eccentricities though.Īdvance Wars may superficially look and feel like Fire Emblem, but fundamentally it's a LOT more like Dune II/Command & Conquer and those types of games, except turn based. It plays a lot more like Valkyria Chronicles than Advance Wars/Fire Emblem, but it really needed some extra playtesting when it came to mechanics and mission design. I didn't like the additions of Dual Strike.Ĭodename STEAM is extremely rough around the edges.
#ADVANCE WARS DARK CONFLICT CHARACTERS SERIES#
It's one of those series that was probably more popular outside of Japan than in. But it's hard to say how popular it is - the original GBA games were delayed in Japan (and released together when they did come out), and Day of Ruin was NA/EU exclusive for a long time, until it was released as a downloadable bonus. So, Intelligent Systems would need to do something similar to Advance Wars. Fire Emblem climbed out of its pit by refocusing on the "dating" aspects and sanding down some of the elements unique to the series, but it worked. Advance Wars was running into the same problem as Fire Emblem - how do you really evolve the formula? The two GBA games were pretty similar, Dual Strike amped up the CO powers and had the dual screen thing, but Day of Ruin scaled that back and refocused things.