Advance Wars Days of Ruin Act 2: Another Name For Murder

Well, that sure seemed to run the gamut there. We've seen quite a bit, and the transition between Acts 2 and 3 is a little more muddied as a result. Partially because of how long, or otherwise, Act 3 will be left if you cut it at the natural stopping point. So, what have the last few chapters been about?

After a timeskip, the bunker we've spent all of Act 1 claiming has reached the end of its resources, with no sustainable situation in sight. Almost immediately, Waylon comes along, claiming Brenner's- or rather, Lin's by proxy- tactical acumen for use in Greyfield's half-baked war with Rubinelle, using an extension of resources as bait. Almost immediately, we can start to see fallibility in Brenner, although we certainly haven't been encouraged to look for it yet. A true heroic commander would have turned that bunker into the formation of a new society, and would've turned away Waylon immediately. Brenner says he does the right thing, but he doesn't seem to have thought all the way long term about it.

We get a few missions fighting Lazuria here, and Tasha's single-minded revenge has allowed her to fake being an evil CO to transition from The Beast with. With that said, Waylon and Greyfield's definitions of heroics leave a lot to be desired, and the player is probably asking questions about which side they really sympathise more with long before Will and Brenner start to question that. Using just Tasha to form our opinion of Lazuria, perhaps "both are assholes" was the intended reading, but Tasha even takes the time to calmly explain her reasons for hating Rubinelle to Will, and in hindsight of "what kind of a monster Greyfield is", her story would make an excellent motivation for a hero. Gage, meanwhile, is a Lin found on the opposite side, and while Lin's not exactly winning prizes for being a good person, having Lin around helps explain the kind of character Gage has.

And then we are introduced to Forsythe, and in a single map, we are kind of retroactively given a justification for why Brenner was so happy to take Rubinelle's side in the war even as Greyfield threatened to murder him over it. Brenner's father was murdered by Lazuria's still serving general, and his death was responsible for a stigma he carried around in Rubinelle's army. This backstory bomb comes out of nowhere, and while revealing it earlier might have tarnished the pedestal the story's spent so long putting Brenner on, it's kinda too perfect an explanation for Brenner's ruby-tinted glasses to be thrown out almost when Brenner's ready to take them off. Forsythe, for his part, spends his time firmly characterising himself as exactly the kind of man who could be forgiven for killing a man's father, so much so that Lin's already talking about it before the scene where Brenner and Forsythe bury the hatchet. Now granted, the War Room is of questionable narrative value, but it does highlight how little time these COs are getting.

And then comes the twist in the story- Greyfield and Waylon cast aside all plausible deniability and start killing PoWs. They kinda spent a lot of time talking about how Lazuria needed to stop existing for them to be happy for this to come as a surprise, but there is a world of difference between talking about it and actually doing it. Brenner, as is his character, is quick to declare that the right side to be on is with the Lazurians, and in doing so, sacrifices his own life to let them escape. Given his role as a mentor, idol, and a "grizzled brunette father figure in an Intsys game", it's frankly a small miracle that it took this long for the game to kill him, but to be fair, the only CO that dies in the Wars World trilogy is Sturm. The real question here is why Brenner seems so insistent on it. Yeah, he's the one Greyfield wants, and giving it to him is the best way to get everyone else out alive, but Brenner's never let a life be sacrificed on his watch, why is his own on the line? Somehow, I get the feeling there's supposed to be an entire arc Brenner's going through to get to this point that just... never turns up because Advance Wars isn't big on this sort of thing. Chalk one up to the differences between Advance Wars and Fire Emblem here.

Gameplay-wise, this is mostly a continuation on the tutorial. We get three missions in sequence introducing us to various naval units, with the final one being a halfway-decent production battle on its own merits. Tasha's navy-only battle was one hell of a matchup for a tutorial, though. After all this navy, we get a final showdown kind of map with Forsythe, which also doubles as an introduction to meteors and plasma- surprisingly, the fact it's a tutorial doesn't really matter that much. And then next mission, we finally get to see the main draw of Advance Wars- COs! Not really sure on how they went about introducing them, though. It's a very powerful narrative technique, particularly when paired with next mission, but this results in introducing CO Units, and their somewhat unintuitive and original mechanics, in a weird order for getting the player used to them. CO Units are considerably less important to DoR combat than COs were to Wars World, but still, I kinda wish they had a better tutorial. Oh well, they hit it out of the park with Chapter 15, they get a pass.

AWDoR Chapter 15: No Matter Where It Goes

Our next map is a bit of an interesting one, with a bunch of meteors and plasma at our backs, no HQs, and... wait a second, am I seeing that right? Yellow opponents?

Well, I suppose it's not like the Lazurians have much in the way of resources here.

...Were these two not there? It feels weird for one of them to know but not the other.

Tasha, of course, is ready to start shooting. Gage points out that right now, they're victims, not capable of enacting their own vengeance.

Tasha then jumps to this conclusion. As conclusions go... honestly, it's not that far out of line, either. Greyfield was certainly not planning on letting any Lazurian keep breathing.

Will steps up with his hero defence of Brenner, and it sounds a heck of a lot more limp when we've already seen Brenner fail at exactly this.

Although it does kinda feel like this is a line where Tasha was here to witness Brenner's futile efforts.

Gonna be honest, we're doing a really shit job at convincing her Rubinelle is capable of doing good things.

AWDoR Chapter 14: With One's Own Hands

Our next mission takes us close to the icy homeland of Lazuria, and we get a map with all three types of unit production. It also seems to have a brand new terrain type there.

The mission's title, though... that's a very concerning omen indeed.

This one has even less preamble than last time. We're already on the map.

The time has already come for us to go toe to toe with Forsythe personally.

AWDoR Chapter 13: But Not Too Keen

Nice, we've finally got some properties again! I must say, it feels loads better to have a Plan B.

I don't think I like that title, though. When a "Strikes" title is about someone other than a main character, it's usually a villain.

We begin with Greyfield receiving a report.

...The part that confuses me, though, is that Greyfield was already aware of the results of last mission's battle. He talked to Will about them. Perhaps this is meant to be a different battle in between? I dunno, I'm not really getting that impression with the setup of Will insulting him.

Hearing the story told that Brenner is the one winning this war Greyfield fancied irritates him.

Despite, you know, Brenner being recruited for his capacity to win things.

AW:DoR Chapter 12: Admiral Destruction

Another navy map, this one to introduce us to a few more units. No properties of any kind, so we'll have to win this map on the high seas.

And this title isn't exactly inspiring confidene for what the narrative is going to be pulling on us.

Anyway, when last we left of, Davis was voluntelling us to go have a chinwag with his boss Greyfield. We're wasting no time this time and, well...

Some designs are just a bit on the nose. For what it's worth, this design makes Greyfield look like the CO of the Yellow Comet army in Super Famicom Wars... not that this helps.

AW:DoR Chapter 11: Putting Out The Doormat

That is a lot of water on that map. Sounds like it's time to learn about a brand new type of unit!

And also have a complete and total upheaval of our status quo.

Since last chapter, we've had a bit of a timeskip.

Advance Wars Days of Ruin Act 1: Struggle to Survive

Days of Ruin has a bit of an issue trying to squeeze itself into an act structure of any kind, but I think we can all agree what we just did was definitely an Act Break. So then... what's going on here, then?

We start off directly in the apocalypse, with Will getting absolutely no time to establish himself before Brenner and Lin jump in and take him under their wing. And you know what? Fair. Will hardly seemed like he had a self to establish, owing to being in the academy that would have guided him along that path, and much of his characterisation in Act 1- and to a lesser extent Acts 2 and 3- is about finding his self. And he could certainly do far worse than emulating Captain Brenner's heroism and selflessness. Act 1 hasn't yet concluded this arc, but there are some events in Act 2 that are definitely aimed at challenging him on this.

Brenner and Lin themselves serve as de facto main characters for the opening stretch, and all of the challenges involved are posed for them. Or rather, Brenner in particular. Lin has been a hanger-on, making her particular attitude known when required, but she has not actually impacted the plot yet. Another clear indicator of a character being saved for later, Lin's job has been to do off-screen things and it's high praise that she hasn't needed to contribute directly yet. Brenner is able to heroically do everything he wants to because Lin knows how to get it done, and Brenner has not set himself impossible goals because he knows Lin's capabilities. Without even having to acknowledge it, the two are established as a good team.

Our heroism, then... we go to Freehaven, help them, and nothing happens because the Mayor's a jerk. We go to Morris's town, recruit them, and are introduced in passing to Caulder and his as-yet-unnamed daughter, and their aims in destroying our factory are met. We then escort both villages to a bunker on Isabella's say-so. All the while, we fend of a persistent yet singular raider and his army of tanks. The only clue as to where the plot will go from here, other than Caulder himself, is a misson where we save a different self-satisfied prick from someone other than The Beast, and we hear rumblings of national friction predating the meteors. Sound familiar? That's a pretty bog-standard Fire Emblem opening, minus the part where all the Brigand Bosses are played by the same actor. Surprisingly, Advance Wars gets a lot of mileage out of the pacing, given all the unique units we have to be introduced to. Yeah, Fire Emblem uses its opening stretches for the same reason, but they don't have quite as many units to go through. Compare this to some of the openings of the Advance Wars trilogy games, and you'll notice a few climactic maps pause to explain new units.

On the other hand, meanwhile, there is one... weird bit to the pacing here, and it might help if I mention a few statistics and details from future maps to illustrate my point. For one thing, this game has 26 chapters. For a second, The Beast has by far the most maps where he is the opposing CO, at eight- the next-most frequent opposing COs (it is a tie) don't even make it to five. And finally, one of this series' most important mechanics hasn't even been introduced to us yet. The pacing of the opening is fine enough in a vacuum, but when we look back on this after the next ten chapters, I can't help but feel like there were a few Beast chapters that could've perhaps been pared down, making some breathing room for later enemy factions to establish their credibilities. At the same time, though, I'm not necessarily going to say they needed it. Something to think about, perhaps.

Mechanically, what have we seen? All of the ground units and their functions (we haven't used any War Tanks ourselves yet), and most of the air units. We've also gotten a fair taste of their strengths and weaknesses, both on the offense and defense. There is one more type of unit we have yet to meet, and the first part of Act 2 is going to be giving us a few maps worth of introducing us to this unit type- a fairly standard Advance Wars order of operations. We have also been introduced to unit production, and have been made to use it on offense and defence- although not that often on defence. There has also been a nice helping of Fog of War- Advance Wars' fog mechanics make playing in it much more bearable, and it uses it more liberally as a result. A Fire Emblem game wouldn't give us more than one Fog map by this point. Of course, we are still missing the major mechanic alluded to previously, and with it, any reason to want to play one CO over another. This wouldn't have been the case in the Advance Wars trilogy, but it does somewhat impact the player by making Brenner, Lin, and Will feel more samey than you'd want. Admittedly, even with that later mechanic, DoR downplays the differences between different COs, but it's still not a great feeling. At least it doesn't feel bad that you're not allowed to choose.