Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp is a remake that includes both chapters of the series Advance Wars, military-style strategy games originally released on the Game Boy Advance in 2001 and 2003 respectively. Two very good titles and fondly remembered by those who played them, although strangely not as popular as one would have expected for a game on a console as widespread as the GBA. Will the remake for Nintendo Switch have been able to meet expectations? Let’s find out together in this review.
Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp – the perfect remake
Let’s not get around too much, Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp has virtually no flaws as a remake. It does everything a work of this kind should do, primarily recreating the mood of the original titles (albeit with a graphic sector clearly superior), going to enhance the gaming experience. Advance Wars are military-themed strategy games, but they’re anything but serious. The mood is very light-hearted, the characters are extremely caricatured and it is a game suitable for both children and adults, also thanks to a double level of difficulty (Easy and Normal) which makes the game more accessible gameplay-wise. After all, these are strategy games and, perhaps, it could have been this factor that frightened the owners of the more casual GBA. If we think that series now very famous everywhere, such as Fire Emblem, took years to take off in the West, in this specific case thanks to the 3DS releases, it is not difficult to give the same explanation in this case too.
Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp obviously has a like main strength the gameplay, which has a structure in perfect easy to learn hard to master style, so it is easy to understand all the mechanics and basic information, but on the other hand it may not be as easy to master it at best, even more so if we consider that it is still a strategy game. Advance Wars gameplay unfolds inside small maps with various types of items inside themdivided into three macro categories: biomes, objectives and the units that move on both.
THE biomes they are of various types (road, plain, mountain, and so on) and affect the movement of units on the battlefield. Some move faster/slower depending on the biome encountered in specific tiles (such as the tank advancing many tiles on the road but very few off it), which makes it very important choose the right unit for the right context, trying as much as possible not to use units that are less suitable for them in certain biomes. Then there are biomes that are inaccessible except for specific units, such as the sea which necessarily requires either ships / submarines or aircraft, to be preserved in order not to find yourself limited in some specific maps.
Going into the specifics of unitthey all have some statistics and parameters in common, such as the maximum number of boxes to advance (as if they were chess pieces) and the minimum and maximum range for attacks. Units also have ammo, fuel (which is practically the stamina) and above all a peculiar bar of “health points”. We use quotes because it doesn’t work exactly like any PS bar, it it also determines the “strength” of the unit. In reality, each unit is as if it were divided into several components and damaging it means removing part of those components, like an infantry unit that loses soldiers in battle (if you read our Langrisser review at the time, you already know what let’s talk). Damaging units therefore also reduces their offensive danger and this adds a remarkable level of depth to the game, as to win in Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp sacrificing a unit to damage another takes on a distinctly different meaning than usual.
Reducing a group of tanks to 1 life, for example, effectively renders that unit completely harmless. The final factor to consider with units, to come full circle, is that during a battle lThe attacked unit returns enemy fire if possible (as in the case of two tank units) and clearly after taking damage the return fire will be as weakened as the damage was taken. The strategic key in this case is therefore to have the strongest unit make the first attack against the enemy unit, so as to maximize the initial damage and minimize that suffered by all the others. Attacking a medium tank unit with a small tank as a first attack is not a great idea, you would do little damage and receive a huge one in response, while doing it after damaging it with another medium tank is definitely the best choice .
Surprisingly though the most valuable units of all are not the most powerful ones like those mentioned a little while ago, but those of infantry. Only with those is it possible conquer goals, i.e. structures present within the battlefield that can act as a home base for their units, recharging their health points, fuel and ammunition if they start the turn inside them. The objectives range from basic cities to points of creation of new units (essential for the success of long-term battles) up to Headquarters HQ sayings covering a crucial role. In Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp indeed you win in two ways: eliminating all enemy units or conquering the opponent’s HQwhich is sometimes the easiest way to win if your opponent manages to churn out unit after unit, or if you can’t sustain a long-term head-on confrontation.
Each target has its own health points, and conquest works similar to battle, with the infantry unit “attacking” the target doing damage equal to the unit’s remaining health points. If the unit is eliminated or generally leaves the objective, the conquest must be restarted. It therefore becomes important to prioritize territorial conquest of goals, to have as many bases as possible and consequently be able to heal their damaged units. How to perform all these actions is obviously explained directly in the game and in words it would be much more complicated than it really is, so for the actual “tutorial” the advice is to play Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp directly, in how everything is explained perfectly.
Also noteworthy is the presence of Virtuei.e. of special character abilities who lead the battle and that they are of various types, from partially healing all units and boosting them for the current turn (ability of the main protagonist) to increasing the range of units that strike from a distance and so on. Apparently it could be done without it, but in Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp there is also PvP, so having the Virtues helps make the games less monotonous. Furthermore, the problem of balancing does not arise too much, therefore it is not a game with an effective competitive system it is played for fun. Ultimately the gameplay of Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp is excellent from practically all points of view, with also a very high level of fluidity and polishing which never hurts in similar projects. The feeling of the arcade game has remained unchanged and above all there are many game modes which add variety and longevity. In addition to the Campaign, which includes those of both games, there are also others: the Battle, a single challenge against the CPU to get the highest score possible; L’Online to play with friends also via internet connection; there Challenge to play locally with friends and CPU, and the Graphic Room, which in our opinion is the most interesting since it allows you to create and share your own personalized map. A wealth and quality of content that raises the value of production quite a bit.
The technical sector of Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp
Graphically Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp is simply flawless, very nice to look at and extraordinarily solid from the point of view of polishing. Every little detail, animation and feel with the controls (even in the menus) is polished and flawless in every respect. A very nice remake to play but also very nice to look at, perhaps not graphically ambitious as it is a caricature and not tending towards realistic, but extremely well-finished. Hats off to the development team for the excellent work done.
Ultimately, is Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp worth promoting? Obviously yes, but also a little more than usual. It is a very well made remake and the game formula remains very solid, if we want to be enhanced by being a game for Nintendo Switch, as it lends itself very well to portable use and hit and run. If you missed the two Advance Wars at the time, we advise you to consider this remake, one of the best Nintendo Switch games of the last period without a shadow of a doubt.
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