Advance Wars: Dual Strike was my single most anticipated Nintendo DS game from the moment it was announced. The series began on the Nintendo Famicom in Japan, but it wasn’t until the Game Boy Advance that any of these titles were finally localized. Advance Wars: Dual Strike looked like more of the same, but bigger and prettier. The previous releases were darn near perfect, and I was happy they didn’t try to re-invent the wheel. What’s more is it looked like a game that made good use of the two screen set up of the system. This was a rarity especially in the early days of the Nintendo DS. It largely lived up to the hype and was one of my most played games for the platform. Today we’re going to take a look at this now forgotten sequel.
The plot follows the same timeline and characters, but Advance Wars: Dual Stike picks up a short time after Black Hole Rising concluded. Rachel and Jake are up and coming new CO (commanding officers) in the Orange Star Army. While they’re learning the ropes the Black Hole Army makes their return and begins laying siege to the land. It’s up to these two, along with several old and new friends alike, to send them back from whence they came.
It’s pretty typical Advance Wars fare. Despite the story being centered around war and invasion it’s very lighthearted in its approach. The game has a lot of dialogue and rather than being dire the game is full of jokes and tropes. It’s sometimes funny, but always charming. I liked how the main characters are new. While most of the cast consists of returning characters the plot seems focused around Rachel and Jake mostly. While I liked Andy, Max and Sami it was nice to see some new faces get the spotlight this time around. With that said the plot isn’t amazing by any means. I’m not exactly invested in Advance Wars lore. The plot is charming though, and more than enough to push along the action.
Advance Wars: Dual Strike plays just like its predecessors. This is a turn based strategy game where you view the map from an overhead perspective. During your turn you move units across a grid based map, purchase new troops, capture cities, and engage the enemy in battle. In the main campaign each mission has its own objectives. The typical victory is won by destroying all enemy units or by capturing the opposing teams headquarters. Sometimes you’ll have other goals like surviving a specific number of turns, or defeating a specific enemy unit. There’s decent variety here with other limitations such as a turn or even time limit.
The unit types come in three basic categories based on their method of travel. You have the basic ground units which include infantry, tanks, long range missiles, anti air guns, and more. The other categories are boats and planes. On each map you begin with a specific army of units but can add to your forces by purchasing additional ones via factories (for ground troops), as well as seaports and airports. These are pretty self explanatory. Not all maps have air and sea units, but all have ground units. In some stages (especially in the beginning) you cannot purchase new troops or vehicles and must win with just what you’re given.
Later strategies are focused largely on which units you purchase, and how they’re used. Everything has both a strength and weakness, and all are useful in some way. Infantry and mech units are the weakest and cannot travel far on their own. These can however capture cities and cross terrain others are limited by such as mountains and rivers. Tanks are stronger (with four different types), and can move farther but are more expensive to purchase. Other specialty units like anti-air and missiles are weak against almost everything except planes/helicopters. Fighters can only attack other planes, bombers can only strike ground and sea units, and helicopters are weak to fighters but can perform decently against tanks and infantry.
Ships offer perhaps the most variety despite having so few of different types. Submarines can submerge making them invulnerable to attacks unless first spotted by an adjacent unit. Battleships are long range only so against something like a sub they’re sitting ducks. Cruisers work can attack pretty much any other ship as well as air units. Meanwhile landers have no offensive capabilities and are used solely to shuttle ground units across water tiles. I’ve always loved the variety in this series. The three basic types of units as well as the variety within them makes each battle distinctly different from the last. You are given a lot of freedom here and there’s a ton of room to come up with your own strategies.
Advance Wars: Dual Strike also introduces a few new unit types to the series. I’ll start off by saying that I’m not a fan of them. First off is the new megatank. This is too overpowered in my opinion. If you save up for one of these they can lay absolute waste to a battlefield with very little push back. These are heavily limited in fuel, ammunition, and movement range but these drawbacks aren’t enough to balance them. There’s also the new black boat that can recover one hit point to a unit per turn, and also transport infantry/mechs. I never cared about their utility and largely ignored these. Next up is the stealth fighter which is basically the submarine of the skies. It felt uninspired and made some battles frustrating. Next up is the aircraft carrier boat which can store and resupply air units. Honestly I found it boring.
The big question looms. How do you earn money in Advance Wars: Dual Strike? You need it in order to purchase new units and resupply the old ones, after all. For each city you’ve captured your bank is increased by one thousand dollars at the start of each turn. Only infantry/mechs can take these. What this means is you cannot simply rely on brute force in more maps. Sometimes you have to play the long game by slowing creeping across the map stealing territories so you can create new and more powerful units. This adds a ton of value to the strategy. Units have just ten hit points apiece and you’re going to lose a lot of them. Keeping them atop city tiles replenishes two health per turn while also refilling their gas and ammunition. This too costs money however.
While Rachel and Jake may be the main stars of the story you unlock new CO as you progress in the story. In most of the later missions you can even choose who you use. They each have their own bonuses they add, and you can fine tune your strategy around this. These vary from having increased attack with specific units (but lowered for others), having increased sight or defenses in fog of war situations, stat changes based on terrain, additional movement, and more. These attributes are much more significant than they sound, and can change the tide of a battle when taken advantage of. The selection is pretty huge as well not only in the campaign but in other modes as well. In multiplayer for example every CO from every Advance Wars game can be unlocked for use.
Each character also has a CO power. These are unlocked by filling a meter at the top of the screen which increases each time to dish out and receive damage to your units. When full you can activate this ability, and it differs between each character. Sometimes it increases their abilities that are already in place, but the effect varies. For example, Andy’s ability recovers two hit points for every one of his active units. Meanwhile Eagle’s lets his units take an extra turn, and Colin’s decreases the cost of new units temporarily. Super CO powers also return and are basically just more powerful versions of these. I was never a fan because in the last game this messed too much with the balance, and it still does here.
Unfortunately the developers took this feature a step further and introduce dual strikes here. In some maps you can use two CO at once, and simply switch between them at the end of your turn. A dual strike occurs when they both have their meters at max. This not only unleashes both Super CO in succession, but also allows the player an entire additional turn. It’s way too much. One dual strike can completely destroy a player in battle. Victory is sometimes determined just by who can fill their meters first. It’s insanely unbalanced and actually makes Dual Strike worse than both of its predecessors in my opinion. This feature definitely should have been re-tooled.
In spite of the new additions this is good classic Advance Wars. The gameplay remains exactly the same as it always was, and the maps are just as creative as in the past few titles. The aforementioned problems aren’t enough to bring this one completely down although they do dampen the experience. This is still one of the best turn based strategy games around. It’s also very much geared toward the pick up and play experience. In other words it’s perfectly suited for handheld play when you’re on the go. You can thank the turn based gameplay for this. It’s pretty easy to figure out where you left off even when away for an extended amount of time.
The Nintendo DS was a handheld marketed around unique features, and Advance Wars: Dual Strike takes advantage of a few of them. First of all let’s cover the two screen configuration. This is most often used to show the battlefield and statistics of the highlighted unit at the same time. In specific levels of the campaign this actually displays two battlefields; one on the ground and another high above the clouds where you can only use air units. The mechanic of transferring planes between the two fields is neat. Surprisingly it never feels too busy. The touch screen is also put to heavy use here and you can play the entirety of this game using it if you so choose.
Content is king, and this game is loaded with features and options. On top of the main campaign there are several different modes including survival, war room, and pre-made battle maps. These are a fun diversion. The real highlight however is the multiplayer. You can play wirelessly with someone else who has a Nintendo DS either with two cartridges or one using the download play feature. If you have just one system however you can pass it back and forth as you take your turns which is amazing. Even better is the fact the option to create your own battle maps, and play on them solo or with up to three buddies in literally all of the multiplayer modes. You can even set some players to bots if you want. I don’t say this lightly, but Advance Wars: Dual Strike is one of the best multplayer games of all time.
I’m pretty happy that Nintendo stuck with the 2D sprite based graphic engine for this sequel. It looked great on the Game Boy Advance, and thanks to a few touch ups and effects it also looks good on the Nintendo DS. There are now some neat zoom functions the camera performs during attacks. Furthermore the resolution appears to be higher, and animations have more frames. Advance Wars: Dual Strike is also a very colorful game. The map graphics are a bit on the simple side but that’s because they’re typically very busy. It’s still quite easy to see all of your units even on the cluttered screen. The music is also quite good with each CO having their own musical theme during their turn. Most of these tracks are ported over from the GBA games but some of the new ones, especially Jake’s, sound amazing.
