Preview: Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp

Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp has certainly been a long time coming. When it was first announced back during E3 in 2021, it was originally planned for a release in December of that year, but was delayed to April 2022 for some fine-tuning. It was then delayed a second time due to world events, and for the next several months, no news was forthcoming, causing many to speculate if we would see the game release at all. Whilst the events that prompted its delay unfortunately still haven’t reached a conclusion, the game will finally release over a year later than planned, with Nintendo plugging in the April gap between March’s Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon and May’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The game is a remastered collection of Advance Wars (2001) and Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising (2003), both of which were originally released on Gameboy Advance. Having spent a significant number of hours now playing my way through the campaign of the first game, I can safely say that this is going to be exactly what people have come to expect from a Switch remaster, with all the positives and negatives that come with that.

The main mode of Advance Wars is the Campaign, which plays out from the perspective of the Orange Star and the various Commanding Officers (COs) who serve it. The neighboring country of Blue Moon has started attacking Orange Star territory without warning after many years of peace, and your task is to guide the Orange Star COs as they defend their territory and try to figure out what’s going on. Whilst a brief dialogue between COs will play out between missions to explain the next objective and introduce new characters, the story serves primarily as a vehicle for the gameplay. Players looking for something similar to Fire Emblem in terms of narrative depth will not find it here, as the game keeps the focus squarely on the gameplay.

That gameplay is what sets Advance Wars apart from the crowd, despite it now being over two decades old. Unlike many strategy RPGs, where your forces in battle consist of the characters that you encounter during the story, Advance Wars features a variety of generic unit types, such as Infantry and Tanks. All units have 10 hit points to start, and each time they battle, both sides will (usually) lose hit points. The fewer hit points a unit has, the weaker their attacks become, making them less useful each time they attack. You can recover a unit’s hit points by placing them in a building you control, but this is a slow process that is often not worth the time it would take. The emphasis is more on using your units strategically to do as much damage as possible, rather than conserving them over the course of an entire battle.

All units have strengths and weaknesses against other unit types that determine how many hit points they lose in battle, as well as some limitations. Most units have a limited number of ammo, and will be unable to attack unless resupplied, and vehicles will also need to be resupplied with fuel or they will become unable to move. Not all units can target other unit types; for instance, Submarines can only attack other sea-based units. There is a lot to take in and consider when planning your strategy, although thankfully, the game does not expect you to remember the particulars. Highlighting any unit will show its stats, and like in many other strategy RPGs, selecting any enemy unit will show its movement and attack range.

Terrain also plays a large role, because it determines your unit’s effectiveness and move range. For example, taking cover in forests and cities can reduce damage taken, and fog of war can end your unit’s turn if you try to move into a space occupied by an enemy. Vehicles such as Tanks have reduced mobility when off roads, and cannot cross mountain terrain, forcing them to move around it. Many maps also feature buildings which can be captured to generate income that can be used to create more units. Capturing an enemy’s main base will result in an automatic victory, and of course, enemies can also take advantage of buildings if they capture them.

Advance Wars features a lot of quality-of-life improvements that have become standard to the genre, making it a much faster-paced and more enjoyable experience than it was on the Gameboy Advance. Alongside the windows of information that show your unit’s statistics, you can also fast-forward animations or turn them off entirely. You can reset the current turn if you make a mistake, although unfortunately, you cannot go back any farther than the start of the current turn, nor can you undo single actions. The game also features a very helpful guide that you can access at any time, and each time a new unit or game mechanic is introduced, you will be asked if you wish to view the accompanying tutorial or skip over it.

After completing the Campaign’s tutorial missions, you will unlock the other game modes that Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp has to offer. First of these is the Design Room, which lets you create your own custom maps using any terrain or units from the game, and these can be uploaded and shared with other players online. Versus and Online allow you to play with up to 4 players on both single and multiple consoles, with the ability to play with three other players locally on a single console being a noteworthy inclusion. The War Room gives you a set of maps to play with any of the COs that you have unlocked from the Campaign, with more being available to purchase via Hachi’s Shop. You can also purchase music tracks and artwork from Hachi’s Shop to fill out the in-game Gallery, using the coins you will receive whilst playing Campaign missions.

Advance Wars takes full advantage of the now aging Switch hardware by adopting a more simple visual style which is very similar to the Link’s Awakening remake, having a toy-box aesthetic that makes units and the scenery look like traditional plastic toys. COs have a more detailed animated style to them however, and dynamic animated cutscenes when unleashing their Power in combat. This gives the game the feeling of a Saturday-morning cartoon. The overall effect is a visual style that will feel very nostalgic to those who have played the Gameboy Advance originals. The game also features partial voice acting, both to its credit and its detriment, as there is so little dialogue here that it could (and some might argue should) have been fully voice acted, but it nonetheless gives each character a little more personality when you hear each of them speak.

Despite being a very faithful remake of a game that’s over two decades old, Advance Wars stands out for its unique (and often punishing) approach to strategy RPG gameplay, where the emphasis is more on strategy than it is on story. Outside of the expected quality-of-life improvements, the focus on bringing these titles up to a more modern standard has been by capitalizing on their multiplayer potential, rather than expanding upon the single-player content. Whilst this will appeal to a certain demographic of players, as there is huge potential here thanks to the map editor and ability to play with multiple people with a single copy of the game, it’s a decision that may not sit well with others, especially those who are used to more narrative-focused experiences such as Fire Emblem: Engage. Make sure to keep an eye out here at My Nintendo News for our final review before Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp launches for Switch on 21st April, 2023.

A copy of Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp for preview purposes was provided by Nintendo UK. A full review of the game will be published in due course.