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Re: Top 10 and Bottom 5 DS Games partial draft by fabio 04/12/2011, 8:41pm PDT
Mischief Maker wrote:


#6 Advanced Wars: Days of Ruin

The best title in Nintendo’s premiere portable strategy series, but it tried its damndest to make you hate it.

From a pure gameplay standpoint this is the most balanced AW has ever been.


The 2 balance improvements were getting rid of neotanks (though Dual Strike did that first) and making naval units better by reducing their costs and letting battleships move + shoot.

Other than that it's the same game.


The simple experience system for units encourages smart tactics over brainless tank spamming.


How so? Anti tank guns? Those things took the biggest problem with the series (turtling behind a bunch of ranged artillery) and exasperated it. The idea was to make infantry more useful, but they just don't do enough damage to anti-tank guns to really be called a "counter".

Dual Strike was on to something with the sealth fighter unit. Ground based anti air was always too good. Choppers were nearly useless and bombers got one shot before getting shredded. The anti air gun was always just too good all around. It was cheap, decimated air units in one shot, fast enough to instantly respond to any air attack, shredded any non-tank ground unit, and didn't even do that badly against light tanks.

Best of all the toned down COs riding a unit creates a nice “King” unit to mix up attack priorities.


The only truly broken COs in the old games were Grit and Colin. AW2 kind of alleviated this by setting up levels where they picked a fitting CO for you.

Have you tried skirmish games? Picking COs is even more lopsided than the old games. Tabitha and Forsythe are the only viable choices, and Fortsythe is the better pick 90% of the time. No one picks anyone else in online matches. Pack Forsythe onto an infantry unit and just park him in the middle of your army. You now have a one star defense advantage on your opponent, which is decisive in the early infantry push to middle cities/factories. Even if you manage to break through and kill the CO, it's just 50% the cost of a cheap infantry unit to replace it.

And that was always the trouble. They kept trying to push the multiplayer more and more when the game really, really wasn't designed for it. It was always a puzzle game where you tried to figure out how to beat an AI with a huge starting advantage. In evenly matched multiplayer games it was just an infantry rush to the middle. At most you'd see an artilley or tank or two. Whoever grabbed an extra city or base in the middle first was guaranteed to eventually win; it was just a slow snowballing grind after that.

Maybe if you started with a bunch of money to buy a varied, full sized force right from the start, where the income from having a one city advantage on your opponent took time to manifest and make a difference, then multiplayer might be interesting.


But Christ on a pogo stick, why did they have to take AW's bright, cheerful visuals and silly story and turn it into a SERIOUS LESSON presented in brown-o-vision? Was there some kind of public outcry that impressionable teens would turn to video games for moral guidance and start a world war because AW made it look like good clean fun? Sorry, video game developers, but when you write a character whose sole personality trait is that he tells bad jokes an incredibly inappropriate times like he's got some irritating strain of Tourettes, Tolstoy you ain’t.


I remember the campaign missions themselves being boring too. Nothing like the varied setups of AW2, and a boring linear campaign replacing the branching one of AW2 where you could skip some missions entirely.

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Top 10 and Bottom 5 DS Games partial draft by Mischief Maker 04/06/2011, 2:56pm PDT NEW
    #3: Elite Beat Agents <---- fixed NT by Horrible Gelatinous Blob 04/06/2011, 3:31pm PDT NEW
        Worse than Spirit Tracks? NT by Mischief Maker 04/06/2011, 4:14pm PDT NEW
            I kid. by Mischief Maker 04/06/2011, 4:19pm PDT NEW
                Tell me more about Infinite Space. by Gutsby 04/07/2011, 5:07pm PDT NEW
                    Re: Tell me more about Infinite Space. by Mischief Maker 04/07/2011, 6:04pm PDT NEW
            Spirit Tracks has been at 10% completion since release week. by Last 04/13/2011, 9:43am PDT NEW
    How about Children of Mana? by skippy 04/06/2011, 4:37pm PDT NEW
    Scribblenauts shut out! (UPSET) NT by Fullofkittens 04/06/2011, 4:53pm PDT NEW
    Re: Top 10 and Bottom 5 DS Games partial draft by fabio 04/12/2011, 8:41pm PDT NEW
        Re: Top 10 and Bottom 5 DS Games partial draft by Mischief Maker 04/13/2011, 4:28am PDT NEW
            AW2 should have won best DS strategy game then =( NT by fabio 04/13/2011, 10:16am PDT NEW
                worst strategy game: Puzzle Quest Galactrix by fabio 04/13/2011, 10:49am PDT NEW
    TWEWY ate my fucking life for a month. by Last 04/13/2011, 9:36am PDT NEW
    I don't currently have an article scheduled for Sunday. How happy are you with by Ice Cream Jonsey 05/03/2011, 8:33pm PDT NEW
    Re: Top 10 and Bottom 5 DS Games partial draft by Mischief Maker 05/04/2011, 8:40am PDT NEW
        Fixed Bad Link 3rd Draft by Mischief Maker 05/04/2011, 8:52am PDT NEW
            FINAL DRAFT: Good to go. by Mischief Maker 05/04/2011, 4:17pm PDT NEW
                ACES! I am gurgling with pleasure. It'll be up Sunday night. NT by Ice Cream Jonsey 05/05/2011, 9:34am PDT NEW
                    Re: ACES! I am gurgling with pleasure. It'll be up Sunday night. by Ice Cream Jonsey 05/05/2011, 9:45am PDT NEW
                        Re: ACES! I am gurgling with pleasure. It'll be up Sunday night. by Mischief Maker 05/06/2011, 1:58am PDT NEW
 
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