Finally, a strategy game that needs strategy more then any other
The main campaign mode has a set of missions for you, as you complete them you get more and can continue the story. But really, the story isn't really a main factor, I haven't even played the first one and don't need to know about whats going on. But basically, an army called Black Hole is trying to take over different continents that are color coded and has something to do with space. The first one is Orange Star, when you clear that you move on. You use the charaters that live there and they have their own special power. The character that you use are called CO. They have their own personalities, strengths and weaknesses, powers, super powers. Of course they don't do the battling, for being the Commander Officer they lead their troops into battle!
The battles are between two armies and are turned-based. Turns are layed out in DAYS, when its your turn, you first move all your troops, then the other army moves their. Each unit only has 10hp, and needs to be used effectively. Everytime you attack another unit, there's a percentage of how much damage you do. Say a basic infantry unit is going up against a tank. In the battle, both units take damage, and since the tank will have more defence and more attack, it'll do more damage and take less. And if it was infantry vs. infantry, the one who attacks will do more damage. Or maybe the other one will depending on terrain, but if they were in the same, it is more likely that the attacker will do more damage. There are units that do direct damage while others are long range are counted as indirect. The way you move your units are basically how you move anything in tactics games. You select the unit and a series of squares that you can move to will be highlighted. There are lots of different units to choose!
The terrain that was mentioned above affects battles too. There are several cities on the battlefield, where you use your infantry to capture, the cities have there own HP and your infantry deducts it with his HP. You can capture other bases that you use to bring out units with money, cities to stay in for a turn to get healed and have more defence in battle, capture the oponents headquarter to win the game. And just other terrains to use as defence to gain advantage in battle, like the woods, or on mountains. Some units like most vehicles can't go on mountains. The enemy gets all those advantages to, like capturing and terrain advantages. One thing that effects the whole field is a fog. The fog covers the whole map and you can't see enemy units unless your close to them. Units also have a stat called vision, used to see far distances in the fog or any other effect. This plays big in strategy!
The gameplay has even more to offer so just play the game to find out, there are powers, money to use, terrain, nice strategic battling, ranks at the end of battles, there are so many different things you could do in battle you can just think, hey what if I moved there instead of where I am know? This has the best features in gameplay for the GBA!
The maps are nice and colorful, the units you have are the color of the section your in (in most cases) and the bad guys are colored in black. In battles you see the units shooting eachother. Pretty basic, but quite effective, just keep in mind its not the flahiest graphics but also take the fact it isn't crap. Sound is pretty "meh". Not really bad though.
Well allin all this game is totally worth every last second, there are tonnes of different modes you can play in so this game WILL last very long.
This game is just awesome, from godly gameply, colorful designs, fair music, addictive and very long worth, and its just SO AMAZING