2026-4 - Advance Wars Dual Strike - ★★★★☆

★★★★☆
Playtime: 17 hours

The culmination of Advance Wars as a series, and a great low brainpower fidget game on the AYN Thor. Some people say that Days of Ruin is a more balanced, competitive game. They are right, but balanced, competitive gameplay is not really the appeal of Advance Wars to me.

Being comically unbalanced is a big part of the charm. I do not want to get a modest +20% attack boost to ground units adjacent to my Commander. I want to triple the effect of Com Towers and become invulnerable. I want to build a big stupid Megatank. I want to call in an army of paratroopers. I will pair Colin and Sasha together and nobody can stop me.

There is a "children's anime" tone not unlike Yu-Gi-Oh! or Gundam Build Fighters that causes everything to gel together. Those shows involve treating toys and games like they are the most serious things in the world; Advance Wars approaches via a different vector of treating one of the most serious things in the world (global war) with a cartoonish farcicality. Tanks are exploding, foot soldiers are gunned down, ICBMs are being launched, and yet it does not feel incongruous for Jake to say, "That's whack, man! Weak!" while the evil enemy commanders slink away so there can be a new battle next week.

Intelligent Systems isn't about to make another one seeing as how Fire Emblem has taken off, so I have investigated a few of the "fine we'll do it ourselves" Advance Wars clones like Wargroove over the years. I don't think any of them really hit the right balance for me. Alas.