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.
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