Collection essentials #604: Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (DS)

The first Advance Wars on DS had changed things up more than Advance Wars 2 had. But there were some that perhaps felt it was a bit too similar to the previous entries. And it seems that Intelligent Systems may have had those players in mind when they came up with the next entry, Days of Ruin, which does keep most of the same basic gameplay elements intact but otherwise is quite a departure in various ways from its predecessors.

Despite being about war, the previous Advance Wars games didn’t take themselves very seriously. The characters looked like something out of a cartoon, the music was often upbeat, and the story had very little to relate to any sort of real-life experience of warfare. Days of Ruin flips that on its head, which is extremely obvious from the get-go. The art style is completely different, the game takes place in a ruinous post-apocalyptic world, and the general tone and vibes are nothing but serious. No characters or story elements from the previous games appear in any way, as they would feel completely out of place.

Days of Ruin takes place after a series of meteors have hit the earth to a devastating degree, resulting in a ruined environment and the eradication of most humans. Among the survivors, unfortunately there are some factions who take no qualms with trampling on the weak to their own advantage. The main characters belong to a group of heroes who aim to help the helpless and resist the forces of evil. Early in the game, they come across a young girl who is an amnesiac (honk if you’ve heard that one before), but nonetheless seems to possess valuable information. While the story isn’t going to knock your socks off, it does take itself more serious than any previous Advance Wars story and that’s pretty cool.

In terms of gameplay, Days of Ruin still very much feels like an Advance Wars game, but there are many changes. Plenty of units from previous games don’t make a return, and there are a share of new ones too. For example, this game introduces the Bike unit, which can capture properties and is much more mobile than previous property-catching units in the series. Units can now temporarily “level up” and become a little stronger if they defeat enemies in combat.

Commander officers, or COs, are a big part of Advance Wars, and the way they work here is quite different too. CO powers, which are powerful one-time effects that can be used when the meter for it fills up, are less potent. A big new gameplay mechanic is that now your CO can be deployed to a specific unit on the map. There will be an area around the CO’s unit called the “CO zone” in which there will be some kind of buff to allied units. Combat within that zone causes both the CO zone and the CO power meter to increase. But, again, there is much less emphasis on CO powers in this game, so much so that one CO only has CO zone effects and no power at all. If the CO’s unit is destroyed, the CO does not die, and can instead be re-deployed to a new unit, only with the CO zone and CO power meter reset.

Unfortunately, Days of Ruin has fewer modes than the previous game. There’s still a Design Room where you can create your own maps. But the War Room doesn’t really exist anymore, instead sort of being absorbed into campaign and free battle modes. Free battle doesn’t keep a scoreboard like the old War Room, so it feels very low-stakes. The single-player campaign is now no longer strictly linear, but has a series of missions that can be freely selected on a map, which includes a series of optional “Trial Maps” that do save the highest score available…but only one top score, and there aren’t as many of them as battles to be fought in the old War Room. 

Now, one major thing that Days of Ruin did offer as a series first was online play! However…it was pretty flawed. You were really restricted in which maps you could play on, and the ones that you’d get stuck with were often terrible, being way too small or giving a huge advantage to one player. I’m not sure how they screwed it up so badly. Regardless, though, the online services for this game are long gone.

This game came out in 2008, and I’m pretty sure I got the game sometime during that year even though I hadn’t fully gotten into Advance Wars yet. I wound up beating Days of Ruin and clearing all the trial maps a little later, in 2011, and greatly enjoyed it. 

If you can’t already tell, I don’t think Days of Ruin is as good as Dual Strike. However, that’s a very high bar to reach. On its own, Days of Ruin is still a really excellent game. Even if it’s not as good, it’s very different and therefore well worth playing. The new style and gameplay differences are refreshing. 

Sadly, this is still to this date the most recent brand new Advance Wars game that has ever been released, which is a shame. I’m not really confident we’ll ever get another new official sequel ever again, but let’s hope I’m wrong. Until then, I think it’s more than worth getting your hands on a DS to play these games if you haven’t before. They’re among my favorites, and Days of Ruin like all the others is absolutely an essential in my game collection.