This game is HUGE and it's everything a strategy game should be.
Graphics:
While the game play graphics are not brilliant as you watch the main map and move your units around, the animations that come up during battles and captures are nice and smooth and for some weird reason tantalizing to look at. The game in general is very nice to look at, meaning that while not exceeding in visual effects, the atmosphere the graphics create as you play on is amazing! Each of the Commanding Officers of the different armies (Red, blue, green, yellow and black) have stills that displays every time you use their special powers. They also have a small "face" picture to show their change of emotions which adds variation to the game play a bit. If your infantry gets wiped out, your facial expression will change to a disappointed or a sad look. Very cool! The maps have very repetitive backgrounds though, but what would you expect? The menus all are fully animated and are incredibly nice to go through. They're the kind of menus you go through an extra pass just to hear the "chick" and see how the choices move around in the menu. Of course, this is something you never ever should tell anyone because it's weird. Seriously though, even the high-score list is fully animated. Everything in this game is colorful, animated and just full of life (including soldiers you massacre). Beautiful game.
90%
Sound:
The music grows on you. I remember the first session I had with this game I thought "this music is nothing special" but as you progress through the game and face different adversaries the music changes according to whose turn it is. You get a few different songs to listen to as you play and some short bursts of exciting music as you win, face defeat or use your CO-power (every Commanding Officer has a different power). I've played this game for many hours and have never wished to turn the music off. The songs differ depending on what feel the game wants to project. As you face the last enemy, who is a high-tech alien you get hardcore rave music and when you play as Grit (Grit is a cool younger guy with a goatee and a grungy style)or witness his movement you hear a chilled out hippie style laid back tune. This adds tremendously to the overall feel for the characters and the fact that they are all different with personalities of their own. Sound effects are beautifully produced with a wide range of weapon's fire, explosions and vehicle movements. The clicking sounds in the menus are also appealing, strange as it may be, as stated earlier.
92%
Game play:
Turn-based in all it's glory, with a cuteness to it that would make you wonder if this game has anything to offer a hardened gamer like yourself. The tutorial missions and the first few missions are easy enough but as you battle your way through the world of Advance wars (the territories of Blue moon, Green earth, Orange Star and Yellow comet) the challenge rises steadily and quite briskly as the missions toward the end of the campaign offers a healthy dose of difficulty. The different characters come to life through silly but effective dialogues and everything they talk about is very light and foolish for being at war with each other. They also each have a slogan as they use their CO power. My favorite is Olaf's "Let the winds of war bring snow!" His power calls on the winds of war and snow starts falling. Olaf's troops are better in snow but weaker in rain. This is only one example of CO-powers. Others include faster capturing, tsunamis and hyper repair (this is Andy's Co-power that restores 2 hit points to all damaged units) with only four naval units and a shy number of airborne units at your disposal, your ground units are by far the most important ones. It takes a lot of strategic thinking as you deploy (build units in factories, airports and ports) your forces. Every unit has a counter unit, for example, the jet-fighter takes out the battle copters, the anti air unit takes out the jet-fighter and the tanks annihilate the anti air unit. But wait, there's more. Things get stirred up by facts that are not as expected, like the fact that the anti air unit takes out infantry better than any unit and that cruisers can attack jet-fighters. When you finish maps you get a grade and a number of Advance wars coins that you can buy stuff from Haichi's shop. Commanding Officers and new maps are for sale. They don't show up all at once though, but after certain conditions have been met in the game. The independent maps you can buy at Haichi's are a bit different from the campaign maps and the AI seems to work differently, and doesn't seem very bright I'm afraid. The maps that can be bought are easy to win, but if you want to score an A grade for the mission it takes some thinking and planning. And to win a battle and be rewarded grade D gives you 3 coins, whereas the B grade gives you 6 and so forth.
92%
Lastability:
The tutorial missions and the campaign missions alone take a while to complete. The very many maps that are available at Haichi's keep the game fresh for a very long time. Add to that the possibility to play with many different CO's and you have a game that offers solid game play for months. But after you have bought and played everything the shop has to offer it's not time to put the game out on e-bay just yet. You can also create your own maps! That's right. There's a map editor included. This little cartridge is bursting with things to do. If you are fortunate enough to have friends that like TBS games and own a GBA then you're REALLY lucky as there are many options available for multiplayer. Characters and places add things that you can do if you visit shops and training grounds after you've played a while. One cool example is that if you enter the field training missions again after a while, your instructor, Nell, gives you additional advice and you get a new map. Also, the high-score table makes you want to score higher than before and after a while, if you have straight A's and see a B or a C, it doesn't look very good so you'll want to beat that map again and get the A you strived for. Fun for a very long time!
95%
Overall:
This game is HUGE and it's everything a strategy game should be. Fun, nice to look at, a lot to do and last but not least it holds it's own on the console and it lasts for a long, long, long time.
94%