I was pretty disappointed in a lot of the COs for Dual Strike. The pro/con design of the COs was, for me, integral to adding a lot of character to the COs. Grit's laid-back style and lack of aggressiveness tied into his weak direct combat units. Colin's connections fast-tracked him but his units suffer for it.
In Dual Strike we get SEVERAL COs that are +10% on [TERRAIN] and that's it. Javier had no weakness at all. We even had some pretty lazy COs like Sasha who is a twist on Colin. Only no weakness again. Just very bland design. They even did this retroactively with COs like Olaf.
That said, Javier was a pretty awesome character.
0
PaperLuigi44My amazement is at maximum capacity.Registered Userregular
Although the last DoR map for me to S rank was actually Metro Map, it just never worked out properly.
Oops, I actually meant Web River. Tatter River at least has airports. Web River... ugh.
We are talking about the one with 4 people FFA and everyones' base is surrounded by a river except one road entrance and there are no airports or seaports right?
Because whatever it's called it needs to burn in hell.
Days of Ruin just didn't grab me in the same way as the first two games. I think a lot of it had to do with the less cheery theme, and the music I just didn't like very much.
And I didn't have a DS until Dual Strike had pretty much completely disappeared from shelves everywhere. I never understood why that game was as rare as it seemed to be.
But the first two games, oh man that was some damn good fun. I beat both of them... and I rarely beat games.
Who here beat Days of Ruin without resorting to a strategy guide?
The last level has you and your peanut army against a doomsday machine. The doomsday machine fires cannonballs that do area of effect damage, super lasers, and a CO who restored life to all units.
:raises hand: I'm a total AW/FE junkie though who must "S" rank everything. So yeah, I handled it after several retries.
Me too. The trick is simply B-clicking on the cannons and center laser cannons to find the column where they can't shoot. Produce from the side of the battlefield that most recently got shelled and move forward along the center safe zone. I have no idea if that's the "S-rank" strategy though; all I got was an A, one of the few AW missions where I simply gave up on the S.
I'll raise my hand to that one as well. S-Ranked all of the missions. It was fine once I worked out the route to the cannons and lasers. I think Dark Conflict(as it was called here)'s ranking system made it many times easier to actually get S-Ranks. I only ever had to retry a couple of the maps to get the rank. Maybe 25%.
I'd love a console version of AW. The SNES one looks totally sweet. I'd love to see one on Wii (not happening) or on WiiU (unlikely also).
Yep! AW1 doesn't have any air superiority maps like that and it completely baffled me for a long ass time. I'd get so frustrated I'd put it down for a year, come back, start over from the beginning, get to that map, lose again.
I S ranked it the first time I got to it on hard mode though.
I suppose when you choose Eagle all the time in the War Room (Dire Range, Mial's Hope, Land's End, Twin Isle, Stamp Island, Last Mission) you get used to aerial fights. Churn out bombers, fly eastward, carpet bomb everything, activate power, rinse and repeat. Beats land or sea battles. Unless it's fog of war in a rainforest. Which reminds me, forgot to add this map to the all-time greats.
Casting my vote for DoR being the best of the series. Just way too much bloat and degenerate mechanics in AWDS. Dusters and B Copters not being good against Anti-Tank units is perplexing, to be fair, as well as B Copters dealing 10% to Anti Air (and then getting demolished) compared to, in previous installments, B Copters dealing 30% to Anti Air (and also getting demolished); I don't think there's any other damage misattributions. I think they took those specific unit counters a little too far, in that regard. Still, the revamped unit balance, tile properties, and CO mechanics in DoR are undeniable improvements (with that small number of exceptions) from a competitive balance standpoint.
Seriously, Ride-Along COs are much, much more interesting than just inevitably filling meters. Also a lot harder to get the most out of, but that's the point. Whether the next Advance Wars goes back to Wars World or stays in DoR's universe, I, for one, hope the mechanics are based on DoR's take and not AWDS's. Also, more metal.
I am a huge turn-based strategy fan, and have come close to beating every Advance Wars prior to Days of Ruin, which I own, but is in my huge DS backlog. The only one I actually beat was the first, after many many reattempts of the final battle. All I have to say in that regard is Sturm can take his Meteor Strike and shove it up his Snifit ass!
I never once looked anything up, and S-ranks were never a concern, as beating some of the missions was often satisfying enough for me, but man if I don't love this series.
That marks 4 Advance Wars and 6 Fire Emblem on a handheld console (4 discounting Japan-only, but 6 counting home consoles). The next one better be Advance Wars!
One of my favorite series. I was just playing Advance Wars Dual Strike last week.
0
DietarySupplementStill not approved by the FDADublin, OHRegistered Userregular
As much as I loved these games, for me, there will always be one game that really stood out prior to these: does anyone remember, back on the SNES, the strategy game where you were basically the US v. USSR? It was a hex based strategy game, and you could control what weapons you used in the battles?
Man Lash was nerfed to high hell from AW2-AWDS , she really lost a lot of her terrain firepower. It was needed since she was way too good but they kinda left her a bit weak.
I love Lash and her theme. I think I still have her top high score in Banker Hills in AW2. Her mechs just attack for terrible, terrible damage on mountains. Not as zerg rushy as Sami, but highly effective nonetheless.
the online was horribly implemented. If you wanted to do random games, you couldn't pick any air or naval CO for fear of the map just randomly being one without ports or air bases.
Random wi-fi was indeed horribly implemented. There were two solutions: friend code game, or if you had to do random, you could hack the ROM and "turn off" as many of the 75 maps in the rotation as you wanted. Ideally, you'd want to remove all the predeployed and handicap maps, thus leaving you with a core group of 5-10 maps that are decent.
I just hope that if they make a new one, the balancing isn't as stupid as it was for Days of Ruin. "Hey, lets buff Battleships, and nerf Submarines!" or "Lets make the anti-tank weak only to rifle infantry, but not to things like Recon or Dusters!" And the game pretty much penalizes you horribly for not taking defensive postures. Imbalance or not, I preferred DS' Blitzkrieg like strategy.
What? Sea maps are not played in the pvp metagame. Sea units are inherently flawed due to its slippery slope factor, positional issues, and lack of interaction with land/air. Also, sub vs battleship was increased from 65 to 80.
The antitank is a niche unit that sees little (<2% budget) play. It's funny when people want it nerfed when it's barely used anyway. Antitank vs mech =65 which is much worse than artillery vs mech =85. There are two uses for the antitank: a rather unexplored response to defend Waylon's "copters 'n tanks" strategy (in which its b-copter resistance is useful) or as an emergency defensive unit if a b-copter cannot defend. The b-copter is usually a better response if someone is tank spamming.
As for defensive posturing, that's AW2/AWBW territory due to its slow charge rate and superior terrain defense. Dual Strike never had this because of the black bomb. In Days of Ruin, it's much easier to break a defensive position because your CO unit acts as a battering ram, delivering key hits that allow the rest of your army to push through.
Dual Strike pvp was all about building at least 75% infantry and ramming them at each other. That's not blitzkrieg.
Dusters and B Copters not being good against Anti-Tank units is perplexing, to be fair, as well as B Copters dealing 10% to Anti Air (and then getting demolished) compared to, in previous installments, B Copters dealing 30% to Anti Air (and also getting demolished); I don't think there's any other damage misattributions. I think they took those specific unit counters a little too far, in that regard. Still, the revamped unit balance, tile properties, and CO mechanics in DoR are undeniable improvements (with that small number of exceptions) from a competitive balance standpoint.
Seriously, Ride-Along COs are much, much more interesting than just inevitably filling meters. Also a lot harder to get the most out of, but that's the point. Whether the next Advance Wars goes back to Wars World or stays in DoR's universe, I, for one, hope the mechanics are based on DoR's take and not AWDS's. Also, more metal.
Re antitank: See above.
Funny you should mention the b-copter. The b-copter change was actually the KEY to total balance in the pvp metagame. In addition the tank vs. antiair matchup, the b-copter itself had 9 matchups tweaked from Dual Strike. In fact, if it weren't for the hard countering, you wouldn't see so much unit diversity. In fact, I wrote a very long article as part of the tenth anniversary celebration at Wars World News that mentioned this. See http://www.warsworldnews.com/index.php?page=/10th/gipface.html
Finally, I'll end with a quote from Xenesis, a well-known hacker in the Advance Wars scene: Shame that so many people seem to hate DoR. It fixed pretty much every single problem with Advance Wars multiplayer. Damn nostalgic kids. There are legitimate criticisms of DoR, but I think people are just butthurt that they got a reboot rather than Dual-Strike-2 with triple-tag powers, 80 COs and the return of a Sturm-Von Bolt Hybrid clone with OH NO BLACK HOLE IS HERE AGAIN.
Playing around this morning I remember why I hate naval only maps. Not only does it take forever to build up a decent navy but it is hard as hell to invade due to the beaches being natural chokepoints. Its even worse when the maps are made of islands then you practically have to mass battleships and shell the living hell out of something just to be able to start dropping units. Don't get me wrong I like navy units and would always prefer to have both airports and seaports on a map but when its navy only on an island map everything takes way too long. Still after playing it again after all this time I am kind of shocked how much I love AWDS.
Hey @gipface, I remember watching some of your videos on youtube a long time ago. Never knew about the b-copter changes, even after all this time. Great article. Sad to see the community fall away though.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
Dual Strike pvp was all about building at least 75% infantry and ramming them at each other. That's not blitzkrieg.
Not on moderately sized 2v2 maps. Unlesss you're Grit, you usually can't sit back, turtle and let your opponents partner up against your partner. That's why I loved 2v2. Most of my multiplayer experience came from AWBW without Tag Powers though. Using Eagle, Max or Kanbei to demolish frontlines with brute force was always strangely satisfying. Eagle's base abilities doesn't seem special, but his SCOP allows him to break stalemates by letting his indirect units fire at other indirect units.
These COs usually fail on bigger maps against the better COs, but that's why I prefer small-to-medium maps. On bigger maps, I often pick Sami and get into capturing wars to essentially starve the opponent out. I was never a fan of the big four (Grit, Colin, Hachi, Sensei), precisely because they rely on infantry spamming. Sami too I suppose, but she doesn't have an overwhelming economy to back it up. Plus, capturing 5+ bases out of nowhere to turn the tides feels super good.
Also, b-copters in DoS are totally awesome. Won so many matches with a CO'd b-copter. Thank you, Waylon!
I started on Advanced Wars 2: Black Hole Rising! and fell in love with the game almost immediately. I must have pestered my friends to death, humming the music while playing D&D and challenging them to matches throughout school. Oh man.
I never tried to look back and play AW1 but the OP Chen whipped up definitely made me want to. I'm a glutton for brutal challenges, I used to design my own maps to try and beat. Having it be downloadable on the 3DS would be pretty bitchin'...
The fact that Fire Emblem is the next offering that intelligent systems will be bringing out is okay with me because I love both series.
Ha, that was the map I used Jake's CO power to mortar it without going beyond the pipeline.
I just couldn't find any of DS really that hard, the "skills" system or whatever it was called was just too overpowered. You could rig out COs with crazy abilities and overpower almost every map with ease in my experience. I didn't even use those silly level 10 ones that make your entire army able to cloak.
I also agree that DoR was so excellent, aside from its lack of a hard campaign. The balance changes and fluidity of the game was great. CO vehicles were pretty cool too. I didn't really like the place that anti-tanks were at though. Their one counter, mechs, had equal attack range as them? They were just so annoying to deal with in a cost efficient manner. Still, they weren't horrible, I just would have liked something else a bit faster to hurt them. It was either Rockets or mass mech or a bomber, all of which are slow to setup/expensive and you can't even always rely on air.
Luckily, War Room divided leaderboards into skills and no skills. I think the map I had the most trouble 300'ing was Missile Plains, the one where Sturm/Von Bolt has like twelve Neo Tanks against nothing of yours except bases, with missile silos spread over the map. It was one hell of a challenge to not let more than two units die. I think the Sturm version was a fair bit harder, since well, it's Sturm. Ironically, I used Sturm to 300 it the first time. Also, Risky Vale. Thank you, Kanbei!
So I went ahead and looked up the medal requirements in AWDS out of curiosity and some are just insane, but I guess that's part of the fun . Also hope if they make a new game that they keep the medals its fun to look through the history from time to time.
Posts
Even then, it still didn't always work.
In Dual Strike we get SEVERAL COs that are +10% on [TERRAIN] and that's it. Javier had no weakness at all. We even had some pretty lazy COs like Sasha who is a twist on Colin. Only no weakness again. Just very bland design. They even did this retroactively with COs like Olaf.
That said, Javier was a pretty awesome character.
Ha, that was the map I used Jake's CO power to mortar it without going beyond the pipeline.
We are talking about the one with 4 people FFA and everyones' base is surrounded by a river except one road entrance and there are no airports or seaports right?
Because whatever it's called it needs to burn in hell.
Not actually hard but so freaking random. Ugh.
And I didn't have a DS until Dual Strike had pretty much completely disappeared from shelves everywhere. I never understood why that game was as rare as it seemed to be.
But the first two games, oh man that was some damn good fun. I beat both of them... and I rarely beat games.
I'll raise my hand to that one as well. S-Ranked all of the missions. It was fine once I worked out the route to the cannons and lasers. I think Dark Conflict(as it was called here)'s ranking system made it many times easier to actually get S-Ranks. I only ever had to retry a couple of the maps to get the rank. Maybe 25%.
I'd love a console version of AW. The SNES one looks totally sweet. I'd love to see one on Wii (not happening) or on WiiU (unlikely also).
I had completely S Ranked everything in AW 1 and yet I couldn't beat that map on normal.
... I don't know what to tell you.
I S ranked it the first time I got to it on hard mode though.
Mission 8: Sami's Debut! (AC)
Took me so long to S-rank it.
Seriously, Ride-Along COs are much, much more interesting than just inevitably filling meters. Also a lot harder to get the most out of, but that's the point. Whether the next Advance Wars goes back to Wars World or stays in DoR's universe, I, for one, hope the mechanics are based on DoR's take and not AWDS's. Also, more metal.
I never once looked anything up, and S-ranks were never a concern, as beating some of the missions was often satisfying enough for me, but man if I don't love this series.
That marks 4 Advance Wars and 6 Fire Emblem on a handheld console (4 discounting Japan-only, but 6 counting home consoles). The next one better be Advance Wars!
lol I have the Sasha's Theme mp3 on my desktop.
loves it
Random wi-fi was indeed horribly implemented. There were two solutions: friend code game, or if you had to do random, you could hack the ROM and "turn off" as many of the 75 maps in the rotation as you wanted. Ideally, you'd want to remove all the predeployed and handicap maps, thus leaving you with a core group of 5-10 maps that are decent.
What? Sea maps are not played in the pvp metagame. Sea units are inherently flawed due to its slippery slope factor, positional issues, and lack of interaction with land/air. Also, sub vs battleship was increased from 65 to 80.
The antitank is a niche unit that sees little (<2% budget) play. It's funny when people want it nerfed when it's barely used anyway. Antitank vs mech =65 which is much worse than artillery vs mech =85. There are two uses for the antitank: a rather unexplored response to defend Waylon's "copters 'n tanks" strategy (in which its b-copter resistance is useful) or as an emergency defensive unit if a b-copter cannot defend. The b-copter is usually a better response if someone is tank spamming.
As for defensive posturing, that's AW2/AWBW territory due to its slow charge rate and superior terrain defense. Dual Strike never had this because of the black bomb. In Days of Ruin, it's much easier to break a defensive position because your CO unit acts as a battering ram, delivering key hits that allow the rest of your army to push through.
Dual Strike pvp was all about building at least 75% infantry and ramming them at each other. That's not blitzkrieg.
Re antitank: See above.
Funny you should mention the b-copter. The b-copter change was actually the KEY to total balance in the pvp metagame. In addition the tank vs. antiair matchup, the b-copter itself had 9 matchups tweaked from Dual Strike. In fact, if it weren't for the hard countering, you wouldn't see so much unit diversity. In fact, I wrote a very long article as part of the tenth anniversary celebration at Wars World News that mentioned this. See http://www.warsworldnews.com/index.php?page=/10th/gipface.html
Finally, I'll end with a quote from Xenesis, a well-known hacker in the Advance Wars scene:
Shame that so many people seem to hate DoR. It fixed pretty much every single problem with Advance Wars multiplayer. Damn nostalgic kids. There are legitimate criticisms of DoR, but I think people are just butthurt that they got a reboot rather than Dual-Strike-2 with triple-tag powers, 80 COs and the return of a Sturm-Von Bolt Hybrid clone with OH NO BLACK HOLE IS HERE AGAIN.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
Not on moderately sized 2v2 maps. Unlesss you're Grit, you usually can't sit back, turtle and let your opponents partner up against your partner. That's why I loved 2v2. Most of my multiplayer experience came from AWBW without Tag Powers though. Using Eagle, Max or Kanbei to demolish frontlines with brute force was always strangely satisfying. Eagle's base abilities doesn't seem special, but his SCOP allows him to break stalemates by letting his indirect units fire at other indirect units.
These COs usually fail on bigger maps against the better COs, but that's why I prefer small-to-medium maps. On bigger maps, I often pick Sami and get into capturing wars to essentially starve the opponent out. I was never a fan of the big four (Grit, Colin, Hachi, Sensei), precisely because they rely on infantry spamming. Sami too I suppose, but she doesn't have an overwhelming economy to back it up. Plus, capturing 5+ bases out of nowhere to turn the tides feels super good.
Also, b-copters in DoS are totally awesome. Won so many matches with a CO'd b-copter. Thank you, Waylon!
I started on Advanced Wars 2: Black Hole Rising! and fell in love with the game almost immediately. I must have pestered my friends to death, humming the music while playing D&D and challenging them to matches throughout school. Oh man.
I never tried to look back and play AW1 but the OP Chen whipped up definitely made me want to. I'm a glutton for brutal challenges, I used to design my own maps to try and beat. Having it be downloadable on the 3DS would be pretty bitchin'...
The fact that Fire Emblem is the next offering that intelligent systems will be bringing out is okay with me because I love both series.
I just couldn't find any of DS really that hard, the "skills" system or whatever it was called was just too overpowered. You could rig out COs with crazy abilities and overpower almost every map with ease in my experience. I didn't even use those silly level 10 ones that make your entire army able to cloak.
I also agree that DoR was so excellent, aside from its lack of a hard campaign. The balance changes and fluidity of the game was great. CO vehicles were pretty cool too. I didn't really like the place that anti-tanks were at though. Their one counter, mechs, had equal attack range as them? They were just so annoying to deal with in a cost efficient manner. Still, they weren't horrible, I just would have liked something else a bit faster to hurt them. It was either Rockets or mass mech or a bomber, all of which are slow to setup/expensive and you can't even always rely on air.