Days of Ruin is the first of many great games to grace the DS in 2008.
You can tell by the name. Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is a much darker title than the previous three games. The game takes place after a war that ended with a violent meteor shower that has left the world in ruin. Less than half of the population has survived, and every survivor is as hungry as the next. The main protagonist, Will, is a young survivor who really doesn't realize what happened. When attacked by a punch of pilfering raiders led by "The Beast", he was saved by Brenner, the captain of the 12th battalion of the elite Rubinelle army. Now the remaining warriors are on a search for other civilians to help them out. Along the way, they run into endless skirmishes with "The Beast" and the raiders, find civilians who act like robots, and deal with a Nazi-like mayor as they struggle to fight for what's right.
As you can see, Days of Ruin digs a whole lot deeper than every other Advance Wars game before it. The characters in previous titles had no background, and we honestly had no idea why they were fighting--except Black Hole Rising, which had a barely acceptable story. But even though Days of Ruin sets a darker trail for the series both as a whole and as a story, the gameplay is essentially unchanged.
If you somehow have the nerve to have not played an Advance Wars game, battles are fought on a grid map with cutesy little units that have various abilities and fight in the traditional rock-paper-scissors fashion created by the developers at Intelligent Systems. Each unit has a separate movement range as well as means of attack and defense. With all this, you a whole bunch of different factors that go along with your strategy, such as battle terrain, and when to decide that it's the time to merge two like-units together. The object of the game is to either destroy every one of your opponent's units, or just take over their command base.
You have the staple units like infantry, mechs, recons, tanks, Md-tanks, and a bunch of other naval and air units making a return, and there are a bunch of new ones as well. The new units are just bigger and badder units that make you adjust your strategy a bit more. Anti-tanks are indirect pieces of machinery that are made to take out other tanks with ease, obviously. They're a bit hard to use, because of you decide to move the anti-tank, you won't be able to attack. They can only attack at a stationary position. The same can be said about the anti-air unit, which is used to take out everything in the air. You also have the War-tank, a big bad tank that has more power and defense than the formerly dominant Md-Tank. Also, some units have newfound abilities. Most of the navel units now have the second-hand ability of transporting other units elsewhere, while the Rig now has the ability to build temporary airports when appropriate. Temporary airports can't have you build new airports though. There's even a new unit that can build units, further adding to the diversity of choices you have with your militia.
Gone are the CO abilities introduced in the second game that eventually became a staple of command in Dual Strike. Instead, they've been replaced by the units' newfound ability to level up. Each time one of your units takes out another, they level up. It might not make any sense, because Advance Wars plays like a chess game where sacrifices simply must be made, but the strategy involved forces you to be as diverse with your attackers as possible, so you'll have a much stronger battalion. Just note that the highest level your units can get to is level III.
Days of Ruin gets its story element by taking a page out of Fire Emblem's book. Before and after every battle, there are a bunch of dialog scenes, which we have to give a tremendous amount of credit for. They have been very well written, and each character just has a certain personality that you have to enjoy. We'll even go as far as to say that the game even has some memorable characters. This is perhaps the best step Intelligent Systems has ever taken with the Advance Wars series, and you have to wonder why they haven't done this sooner. Now Advance Wars is more than just a fun strategy game, it's become more of an intriguing title.
To add more to this intriguing game, Nintendo has sought out unlimited replay value by giving the game a great online component. Not only can you share your custom maps with friends online, you also have the ability to start a war with anybody you want all over the world thanks to Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Our trials with the game featured no lag. And why should it? It's completely turn-based. We didn't run into any, but sooner or later there'll be a bunch of jackasses who turn off their game, but they won't be a factor. The game also makes use of the headset, which really adds another competitive edge to an already great game.
As stated earlier, right off the get-go you can tell this game is darker than it's ever been. The graphics team made sure that all the combat was done in the most depressing means possibly. The sky is gray. There's soot everywhere. You're fighting in mud. Every character is dirty. It gives you the feeling that this war is supposed to be fought. It sucks you into the struggle that all your mates are a part of. Along with the great war atmosphere, the character art is pretty fantastic as well. Nintendo does a little bit of Square's magic by making their Japanese-drawn characters less anime like by giving them real ears and eyes. Sure, most of what was done with the game was with its colors rather than any of the models, but this game just looks right.
The sound is quite solid as well. It's not as convincing as the game's visual style, but it has more of a mature rocker feel to it. The music is rocking enough for it to sound like Nintendo stole it from Guitar Hero, but obviously they didn't. The sounds in battle are pretty much a regurgitation of the explosions we're used to hearing, but it's not like those will change anytime soon, not on the DS anyway.
Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is a risk that Nintendo didn't have to take, but they did, and with that, they've made the most interesting game in the series. It's hard to call it the best in the series, but there's enough in this game to expand the audience as well as bring new life to the series. The game also puts a bit more of the challenge back into the series that Dual Strike seemed to have lacked. With an awesome new visual style and story that gives the game more of a post-modern war tone as well as the great gameplay the series has always offered along with the long-awaited online play, Days of Ruin is the first of many great games to grace the DS in 2008.