The bottom line is that you need Advance Wars. Its that good. If you can't find Advance Wars, get Advance Wars 2. It'll do. But make sure that you own at least in some capacity, one of these games. Advance Wars is a cartoonish turn-based strategy game. The Campaign has the player controlling the Orange Star armies on many missions. There isn't much of a story here, but the COs (army leaders) have a lot of personality. The game consists of the players taking turns moving their armies. You can only move each unit so much per turn and different terrain such as forests or mountains gives you less range of movement (think Civilization.) Some units can't even climb mountains. But different terrian can boost your defense, and in some missions with Fog of War, mountains give you a better range of vision while units in forests can only be spotted by enemy units right next to them. When two unit fight, we go to a split-screen perspective of the two armies firing at each other. Units range from two types of infantry, two tanks, artillery and rocket launchers (which are useless at close range but can do a lot of damage from a distance,) Battleships, copters, bombers and a lot more. Some missions will provide you with all of the units, others let you build units. They're appropriately priced. You earn money by capturing building with infantry or mechanized troops, and each building you possess will give you $1000 each turn. Captured buildings can also repair units and refill their ammo and fuel (necessary to move and do good damage.) One of the most interesting twists Advance Wars brings to strategy games is the use of COs. Throughout the Campaign, you'll use Orange Star COs and fight against others, but they can be unlocked for other missions. Each CO has its strengths and weaknesses, and thus you're forced to adjust to cater to your CO's abilities and your oppenents. So while Olaf may not be affected by snow, rain slows his units down. Kanbei has more powerful units but they cost more. There's a long list. Besides the Campaign, you can play single missions for fun, using maps you've unlocked using cash earned in the Campaign, or you can make your own. For multiplayer, you can either fight other people using multiple GBAs and any number of copies of the game, or you can hot-potato the GBA. Because the game is turn-based, you can just take turns and play on one GBA, making Advance Wars the most multiplayer-friendly handheld game ever. The bottom line is that you need Advance Wars. It doesn't matter whethet you get this or its sequel (though AW2 is a much harder game.) Just buy it. Its the most addictive handheld game since Tetris.
Advance Wars is an fantastic game. It can get really hard at some points. But it more than makes up for it with the addictive gameplay. It takes a while to learn everything,though. Part of my review: GAMEPLAY Its a t... Read Full Review
How did I come across this fun little addicting game? Oh yes, the day where I first picked up my Game Boy Advance. My parents were going to buy me one extra game to go along with my new GBA system (I also had the choice ... Read Full Review
