Advance Wars: Days of Ruin

Advance Wars has always kinda rode that line between accessible and dense, something very hard but so satisfying to get right for a strategy game. There is still a definitive ceiling, but the package is elevated by oodles of fun challenges and a legitimately desolate atmosphere where is seen by some as too much fun and some as a depressing necessity. Mad Max, anyone?

I will start with the good. I believe the game is more balanced than its predecessors. Infantry units are more expensive. Tanks are a bit more affordable, and the big ones are very resistant to indirect fire. The defensive value of cities is also reduced, making them easier to attack. Units gain experience levels by killing things, primarily increasing attack power but not defense (until the highest level). CO powers also charge based purely on HP damage inflicted, not on the cash value of the damaged units, so picking off weak infantry can easily charge the gauge. Meanwhile, taking damage does not charge your power at all. These changes all favor offense, weakening the infantry meatshield + buildup of rockets strategy and making pushing through with tanks more doable, reducing the game's tendency to stalemate.

Furthermore, fog of war mechanics are drastically improved. You now retain vision of every tile you reveal over the course of your turn, even if the unit moves away. You even reveal tiles as you move, allowing fast units such as the recon to move forward, reveal terrain (including, for instance, moving alongside several forests to reveal them all) and retreat all in one action. You can also completely control the path the units will take, allowing many options which formerly would have been impossible (such as the aforementioned recon strategy). Units also don't physically move until the entire action (including attack, wait, etc.) is confirmed, meaning you cannot "scout" for hidden enemies by repeatedly moving the unit in different directions and cancelling the moves right after. (This also empowers hidden subs even in fogless maps). There is also a flare unit that can reveal distant tiles, further weakening forests.

The effects of CO powers on the game are less dramatic, and making use of them at all requires putting the CO onto the battlefield and positioning them appropriately. They still aren't really balanced with respect to each other, but it's much less extreme (disregarding the final boss, who is probably the most OP character in any wars series game).

The AI is much stronger now than ever before. The game of course is best against other players, but (to me at least) playing against the AI is still fun and this game has by far the best AI.

The map editor is a thousand times better.

Now, the bad. For starters the game is a bit ugly. I get that they were going for more realism or something, but the older games were really pretty in my opinion while this one is just meh. Especially the maps look bad while zoomed out. They look detailed when zoomed in (a new feature in this game) but since you can barely see two inches with it zoomed in only a five year old could bear to play it that way.

The campaign is a joke. It has that thing going where the first 3/4 of the game feels like a tutorial. It's really gimmicky and easy and to top it off there's no hard mode.

The characters are also much less likable now. In the older games basically every character was interesting, even (or perhaps especially) the bad guys. In this game the main protagonists are okay but a lot of the other characters are just utterly dull or blatantly unlikable (i.e. Greyfield).

Of course, these complaints are mostly about secondary features. The mechanics are quite solid and a welcome change of pace in a series that is otherwise very samey. I personally just wish the game kept the same personality as the older ones but still went through with all the gameplay changes. The terrible campaign is really the only unforgivable thing.