Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is a very fascinating entry in the Advance Wars series on account of how it fits in next to the rest of its series- or perhaps more accurately, how it does not. The "Wars" series is the first of Intelligent System's forays into the turn-based strategy gameplay now commonly associated with Fire Emblem, with Famicom Wars predating Fire Emblem 1 by just shy of two years, and Advance Wars being released in the West more than two years before Blazing Blade. As franchises, the two are just as distinct as they are alike- Fire Emblem is set in the "swords and sorcery" era of warfare, Nintendo Wars is set in the modern day "guns and tanks" era. Each unit in a Fire Emblem map is a character unto themselves, while units in Nintendo Wars are interchangeable and disposable. Fire Emblem rewards playing safe and ensuring your team is ready for any challenge you throw at them, while Nintendo Wars rewards going on the offensive and seizing ground before your opponent can get entrenched.
Days of Ruin... in many ways, adopts more of Fire Emblem's philosophies than Nintendo Wars'. While all of Advance Wars' obvious mechanics remain intact, Days of Ruin rejiggers the balance to give this game more of a Fire Emblem flavour. It also takes away the Advance Wars trilogy's distinct, carefree "war is fun!" attitude for a darker aesthetic, a decision that has had a distinct impact on the game's reception. The developers' decision to go for this tone was done out of a desire to not keep Advance Wars stale, and for what it's worth, Days of Ruin has a very unique tone out of IS's properties. With that said, this was the last Nintendo Wars game until the remake of the first two Advance Wars games- it seems aesthetic was not enough to keep people enticed. And they almost forgot to release this in Japan- it wasn't for four years until they finally released a version of this on Club Nintendo for the JP audience.
As for why I'm coming around to this game? Well, this game has plenty of fun with its setting, and some solid characters and moments worth highlighting. And more importantly, I wanted to come back to a game that was taking things seriously. This is a game that is telling a story on purpose, and while the stakes can inspire a bit of 'doom and gloom', they also know just the right levity to keep things at a suitable emotional level. This thing is still Advance Wars at heart, and Advance Wars always loved its comedy.
(As an aside, the series name "Nintendo Wars" is because most games are named after the console they appeared on. They apparently weren't super fond of continuing that naming scheme on DS, so it maintained the 'Advance Wars' moniker. The first DS Advance Wars game, Dual Strike, probably benefited by keeping its naming association with the other games that share its characters, but with this game having brand new characters and no longer having the cute "DS" wordplay, the old title is a complete artifact.)
Like, look at this description of the Campaign. This almost feels trite, although I feel like this wasn't quite as common a sell back in 2008 as it is today. Unlike most of the worst kind of post-apocalyptic stories, DoR does have an idea of what the antagonistic force will be, and the thematic purposes of the characters.
As an aside before we get started, Advance Wars has always allowed the player the option of changing the colours of each character, and Days of Ruin keeps this up. On a clean cart, which is what I'm playing, you only start with the options of changing the colours of the four main heroes, out of the twelve possible "COs" (or characters). I won't be doing this, because it won't affect the artwork, but it's a nice little bit of customisation I'm disproportionately fond of.
Well, we can't say we're burying the title drop.
Admittedly, "Days of Ruin" is the title of this game only in North America. The European regions call the game "Dark Conflict", while the eventual Japanese port called it "Lost Light". As for why I am uncharacteristically playing on NA instead of my home region, the answer is that the North American localisation alone has many of the qualities that make me look so fondly at this game. The European localisation had a vastly different, more serious tone, and I don't think that's what this game really wanted. In many cases, Europe does prefer to stick closer to the text while North America takes liberties, and this is one of those cases where I think the Americans were onto something.