This side of the Greyfield story is much more clear about what it is about and what it aims to do. And at the same time, there remain a few distinct holes in the pacing department.
We start with Will stepping up to the position of Commander of the Wolves, in a literal fashion fighting back Brenner from the brink of defeat. This is precisely the situation Will needs to establish himself as a viable candidate, and yet Will also maintains a veneer of newness. Will has, up to this point, been treated like a kid to be looked after, and while a lot of that has been in his particular personality, this does also suggest that not enough of the plot has really been devoted to setting Will up as someone to be trusted with jobs. Lin makes a pretty good snark at his expense on the subject, but all it does is remind us that Will isn't particularly far out from being a civilian to be looked after.
The next chapter is a complete change of pace from the story so far, being a bit of a dumping ground for an assortment of plot points. We are introduced to Tabitha, Caulder's older daughter and the one with a bit more agency over his desires, and the Talon Gun, one of IDS's toys that they left lying around to be used against us. And while we are here, we are also given the reinvigorated Creeping Derangea, to become a spectre hanging over the army. One of these stuck around in the plot, with Tabitha joining Penny in not really developing or doing anything until the game is ready for them. There's some times where I feel like a few plot points could be given more time to breathe, and maps like this are probably what they were looking for, and yet we won't hear from Tabitha again until after this arc. Despite, you know, Tabitha being the one to pull the trigger on killing Brenner. I also find it interesting that the only times the Lazurians are playable in here are the breather chapters. Will must really need that time to cook.
Chapter 18 has the breakdown amongst our army as a result of the Creeping Derangea, Will stepping up to knock some heads together, and then almost as quickly, the revelation that Creeping Derangea is affected Greyfield's army too. We are invited to compare and contrast Will's response to the situation- telling people that while their emotions are valid, that the smart thing to do is stick together and trust in Dr. Morris- with Greyfield's, and watch Will's army hold together while Greyfield's buckles. This is probably the key piece of the arc, trying to explain how the dire straits we started with are converted into a strike against our oppressors so quickly, but there's a certain tone that's expected of the final maps that doesn't quite show as a result. The plot didn't really want to linger in this arc long, but something about the rush takes away from the moment.
Chapter 19 is another breather moment, this time with the town of Salvation and The Worm. We get yet another insight into how Creeping Derangea affects the populace, this time with a genuine populace rather than that of one of our two armies, and it lies in the middle- and yet somehow, closer to ours than to Greyfield's. The cultish devotion to an authority figure feels like something that Greyfield needs in order to establish himself as the fascist commander he believes he is, and yet his habit of shooting anyone who so much as looks at him funny prevents one from forming. We also see that at least Davis of Greyfield's army defects into Salvation, but his single conversation prevents us from seeing if this is something happening in great numbers- or indeed, if Davis was intended to have been killed as part of his devotion to The Worm.
In one of the biggest swerves in the story, the immediate next map is our climactic battle with Waylon, murderer of Forsythe, Greyfield's most "trusted" soldier, and a general pain in the ass. See what I mean about how quickly we go from being on the backfoot to plunging into the heart of the enemy? Waylon at least makes up for his lack of narrative buildup with a map and playstyle that give him a final fight to remember, but I can't help but feel as if something is missing in the jump from Salvation to Waylon. It certainly doesn't help that the whole lack of choice in CO rears up for one major disappointment- Waylon's biggest crime in the story is murdering Forsythe, and he is an air CO. This should have been a Tasha map. They brought Tasha, of course, but in such a supporting role that she's not even allowed air units of her own to match Waylon's. Climactic maps in the Wars World games often involved the player controlling more than one army, but I think DoR deliberately chooses not to include such maps for the sake of its story tone. Still, I wish I was playing as Tasha.
Waylon is followed up with the final map with Greyfield, and at the very least, they turned up the stakes appropriately. Caulder is given a direct impact on the story, and has given Greyfield something that allows him to be a threat without having that army that's slowly been driven away from him- and something the narrative can feel free to include in the form of a time limit. This map has two major stumbling blocks for me, though- it's our first map playing as Lin the CO, which pretty solidly confines it to being a Fog of War map, and the Caulder Missiles aren't a map feature, meaning that the standard play is what we need to defuse what the story spends quite a few words building up as a significant threat. AW2 and Dual Strike have big, world-shaping missiles to throw around and challenge us to stop, but these are map features, and we are given unique wincons to somehow disable these (usually by capturing properties "powering the structure" or blowing up a terrain feature), and I feel like it would help my state of mind on the status of the Caulder Missiles if victory here were done the same way. And yet, winning directly leads us in to the most impactful scene in the story- Lin doing to Greyfield what he did to Forysthe and Brenner. There's no way I'd give that up for anything, but a map where we go up against the Caulder Missiles would definitely invite Greyfield to slink away more easily. Plus, these superstructure maps don't really feel the same in Fog of War- which again, Lin needs for her CO Power.
As a package, this arc of the story represents the part of the story IS has always been worst at- the part where our ragtag bunch of randos turns into an army capable of turning back the organised empire that has been causing us so much trouble. Fire Emblem spends a lot of time coming up with maps that have unique goals, mixing it with a good excuse for EXP for our units that grow as the story progresses, helping to cover up for an overall lack of narrative flow. This is not something Advance Wars can rely on- since any given map will be the same no matter what maps have come before it, we only get unique setpieces to differentiate our various plot points. AW2 played to Advance Wars's strengths, giving each country a series of vignettes, with a variety of different schemes tailored to the personalities and abilities of each of the colourful cast of COs. But step back, and notice that each of that game's twelve heroic COs gets two maps each. We have four COs, and the way CO Units work differently to Wars World D2Ds mean that "unique abilities" of each CO can't make or break map design that way. We still clearly have a shortcoming compared to what AW2 did- we could have had another Lin or Gage map to play more effectively to their strengths (Gage didn't even get indirects...)- but being asked to fill a Fire Emblem story's narrative pacing with Advance Wars has worked against the game as a package. What this means for Advance Wars as a whole depends on why this game was using an FE structure to begin with- as an experiment, this was a pretty distinct failure, but did IS mean this solely as an experiment, or did they genuinely thing that AW should be heading in FE's direction, and saw this as reason against trying again with the series? Given the lack of any fresh AW content since, one can only imagine which answer is more likely...
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