A tough but challenging strategy game.
Gameplay:
Quite simple to play this game. Simply get your character(s) to the exit located on the screen (it changes each stage) or defeat all the enemies in the area and advance onto the next stage. Each battle begins by showing you the stage you are on and the round you are on. The stage changes each time you win and the round changes after ten stages. Each round has ten stages and there is a total of five rounds (50 stages in the entire game). You fight in ten stages in each time area. Once you get to the tenth stage of the round you face off against a boss of that respective time area. Once the boss has been defeated you advance to the next time area or round as it is called in this game. As you progress to each time area the enemies begin to have stronger weapons and can take more damage than ones of the previous time area.
Characters:
When you start the game you will have three characters to use. Fear not though you will be able to rescue other characters on other stages as you progress through the game. And if any of your characters are defeated in combat they do not dissapear immediately. This gives you the opportunity to rescue that character that has fallen in combat if you have the characters to spare of course.
NOTE: When rescuing a character you must escort this character to the exit before you defeat all the enemies on the stage (the escorted character will follow behind you and will not be effected by enemy fire. You can only rescue one person at a time. But if the character escorting the new character is defeated before reaching the exit the new character will be replaced by the character that was most recently defeated.
The characters you start out with are a rifleman who can shoot a long distance, and girl who uses grenades, and a guy who uses a spear. Each character in Gain Ground has their own special weapon and basic weapon. The basic weapon is usually something that the character would use in their time area such as a pistol,spear, missiles, magic, and other weapons. Each character also has a special weapon. These special weapons vary from character to character and each special weapon has its own distance, trajectory, speed, and direction.
EXAMPLE: The spearman you get at the begining has a special weapon that can fire in all directions and can hit enemies on higher areas of land but has short distance. As of the rifleman you get in the beginning can fire a long distance but only in a certain direction (for this guy his rifle shoots north only).
NOTE: The basic weapons for all characters can be fired in all directions but cannot hit enemies on higher areas of land such as cliffs, roofs of houses, or high walls.
Each character and their special weapon must be taken into consideration since each battle is different. Certain characters such as spearmen and archers are good in battles with lots of cliffs or enemies on higher ground. Boomerang special weapon using characters are good at hitting enemies taking cover behind walls and barriers. Grenaders, Riflemen, and other types are good against normal enemies and bosses.
Strategy:
As stated earlier this is a real time strategy game. You will have a time limit to complete each stage. The time limit will return to the default at the begining of each new stage. The time does deplete even while you are chosing your character so you must think quickly. Stated earlier as well there are two ways to win each stage. Either get all of your characters to the exit located on the screen or defeat all the enemies on the stage. If you plan to take the exit approach there are two values located in the bottom left of the screen for player one and in the bottom right of the screen for player two. There is an OUT value meaning how many characters are out on the playing field (this includes ones that were defeated and now need to be rescued and new characters to be rescued) and a LEFT value meaning how many characters you have left in your team. Decide which way you plan to attack each stage. Sometimes its good to defeat off all the enemies and sometimes if your low on characters it's wise to take the exit approach. Choose carefully and choose the way you want to play each stage.
NOTE: If all of your characters have been defeated you can continue your game on that stage but you will start off the same three characters from the begining of the game. You only have three continues. Once they have been used up its game over.
Controls:
This is for the Virtual Console Controller. Use the directional pad to move your character around the screen. B button fires your basic weapon. Y or A button fires your special weapon. The control sticks and the other buttons except the + button (pause) and the Home button are not used in this game.
Overall:
Gain Ground is a tough but challenging real time strategy game. The difficulty in this game does get harder quite quickly once you get to the second round and this game does require thinking and patience in order to get far in the game. The two player co-op is great and can make getting through those tough stages easy. If your a strategy gamer or if you like old strategy games Gain Ground is a good game for you.