I enjoy bringing a video game with me to play while I am on the exercise bike or elliptical machine at the gym (the treadmill is a little too bouncy for video game playing). For months I played Final Fantasy Tactics on my Gameboy Advance. Before that, it was a Gin Rummy game my grandfather gave me. After I beat Final Fantasy Tactics, there was a lull of sorts. I got a Chess game for my birthday, which I played for about a month off and on, and will be something good to fall back on after I finish my new Gameboy Advance game: Advance Wars 2.
I had been told by a lot of people before I purchased Advance Wars 2 that it was a lot like Final Fantasy Tactics. And while you do go around on a map picking battles, and then finishing those battles to open up new battles on the map, there is significantly less of a role playing aspect to AW2 than there was in FFT. With FFT, you had a lot of traditional RPG elements, like having to talk to people to get pieces of information that could unlock missions. There is certainly a bit of story to AW2, but while not badly written by any means, it is also not terribly important. The only reason to read it in my mind is that sometimes they give tactical hints in it.
No, AW2 is a lot more like Command and Conquer, Warcraft, and the like, but a turn-based game instead of real-time. Since I am a huge fan of turn-based strategy games and am often internally complaining to myself that there aren't any good turn-based strategy games being made nowadays, this game has come as a pleasant surprise.
The basic idea is there's this organization called Black Hole that is invading your planet, Wars World, and your characters just want to be left in peace (though choosing to live on a planet called Wars World makes me question just how into peace they really can be). Anyway, these bad guy characters come and try to take over the place continent by continent. Little flags go up in parts of the continents, and they represent places you can battle. Some of the fights are where you have a certain number of troops and you have a mission to complete with them. Sometimes there is fog of war, sometimes not. Other missions have you with money and bases and airports, building new troops to take over buildings on the map (the gathering resources component of the game). Each character has a special ability that grows in power on a meter as you attack and are attacked, until you can launch your super power (you can also use it before it fills up for less effect). The abilities range from having a blizzard that damages enemies to being an expert repairman and healing all your own units, and one guy is just really good with stretching a dollar and makes extra money (and has units that cost less to make). It is a pretty interesting game, with each level more challenging than the previous and keeping things interesting despite not introducing a lot of new technology along the way (one new kind of troop per continent, from what I can see).
My main complaint of the game is that some of the troop movement makes no sense. Aircraft that can't fly over walls, boats that can't go under bridges, etc. There are submarines in a few missions, but so far the only effective use I have found for them is against other submarines. Otherwise they blow (literally, they are freaking easy to kill). My favorite levels are building up troops, and this game encourages a good mix of defensive and offensive tactics rather than other games where you can pretty much just build up a massive army, defend against the occasional pathetic force the enemy sends, and then overwhelming the bad guys with power. There are levels in this game where you have to move your forces from forest of forest with the fog of war protecting them, so that cannons can't target them accurately and the only enemies that can attack them have to be right up against them first (otherwise they can't see them).
It is a very fun and addictive game. I find myself playing it at meals and on my breaks from work. I have been itching for a good video game experience like this for a while now, and am pleased to have found it. I highly recommend the game for anyone who likes strategy games, and uh, has a Gameboy Advance.
Oh, and the best part: there is an Advance Wars 1 that I can probably find cheap, when I am done with this one! Hooray bargain bins!
