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.
