Advance Wars is a series of turn-based strategy games made by Intelligent Systems, the developers behind games such as Fire Emblem and Metroid. Advance Wars was one of their earliest series, making its debut on the Famicom and is credited for paving the way for future games like XCOM that share similar gameplay. While not as popular as other Intelligent Systems series, Advance Wars still garnered a sizeable following.

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The series' last game was released in 2008 for the Nintendo DS, and had been radio silent until Nintendo's E3 2021 Direct where a remake of the two Gameboy Advance games in the form of Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp was announced. With this remake on the horizon, and many comparisons being drawn to other Intelligent Systems series, it's worth taking a look at what makes Advance Wars unique amongst the other games in Intelligent Systems' library.

10 You Can Win A Battle Through Sheer Numbers

A battle in Advance Wars where the protagonist outnumbers the enemy

While it's not recommended, it is possible to beat a battle in Advance Wars simply by overwhelming your opponent's army. Units in Advance Wars are produced from a variety of buildings by spending resources. The only limit to how many units you can make is how big your resource pool is, making it possible to rapidly construct a massive army to overwhelm opponents in an instant.

Advance Wars' numbers game is in stark contrast to games like Fire Emblem and Codename S.T.E.A.M. which have set, almost equal forces, or have the player being the one who's outnumbered.

9 Advance Wars Puts More Emphasis On Strategy Than Action

An in-progress battle in Advance Wars

A bit of an obvious comparison to games like Metroid or WarioWare but even Fire Emblem has more action-packed battles than Advance Wars. That's not to say battles in Advance Wars can't be exciting, but they are much slower with attack animations that are tamer than the mighty bursts of magic and flashy sword swings of Fire Emblem's attack animations.  Battles in Advance Wars can also turn against the player faster than other games thanks to CO abilities, special moves both the player's and the opponent's CO can unleash to buff their armies.

Overall, Advance Wars encourages players to stop and plan their next move more so than any other Intelligent Systems game.

8 Advance Wars Has Players Micro-Manage Their Army

A battle in Advance Wars where a unit is about to be selected

Fire Emblem is a series that often has players paying close attention to their army. Whether it's deciding which units to level up, what new class to promote a unit to, or even what weapons to give them, taking care of your troops is important for success. Advance Wars takes this to a new level though. Ammo and fuel are both depletable resources that need to be refilled in order for the unit to continue fighting, and injured units of the same type can be merged together to create a new unit with more health.

These are just a few examples of what a player has to keep in mind while playing Advance Wars as battles become increasingly multifaceted, and managing an army becomes steadily more complex.

7 Advance Wars Features Technology More Akin To Our Own

Characters from different Intelligent Systems games with different technology levels

Barring the ability to create perfect clones of people, Advance Wars largely exists with a technology level like that of our own. This is in stark contrast to the sci-fi technology of Metroid or the swords and bows of Fire Emblem or even the steampunk tech of Codename S.T.E.A.M.  In Advance Wars tanks, planes, and rifles are the weapons of war soldiers utilize.

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The more modern technology of Advance Wars gives the series a very unique flavor that is often overlooked in more mainstream strategy games.

6 Advance Wars Sometimes Is More RTS Than Turn-Based Strategy

A battle in Advance Wars with units gathered together

A lot of the mechanics of Advance Wars lends the game to having a playstyle more akin to that of a Real-Time Strategy game than a turn-based strategy game. The generic units, resource management, and capturing and defending of buildings that provide resources and units are all very similar to RTS games like StarCraft or Command and Conquer.

While Advance Wars is classified as a turn-based strategy RPG those RTS aspects of the series make it a unique standout amongst the competition, and once again give the series a very unique feeling.

5 Advance Wars Pits Humans Against Humans As Much As It Does Humans Against Aliens

An antagonist and protagonist from Advance Wars

It's interesting to look at other games in Intelligent Systems' lineup and see who the villains are. Metroid often pits Samus against Ridley or Mother Brain or some other evil alienCodename S.T.E.A.M. follows a similar trend of aliens invading Earth. Paper Mario meanwhile has the plumber facing Bowser or some other inhuman threat, and Fire Emblem games often see the ultimate villain being an ancient evil dragon or other divine entity.

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Advance Wars stands apart by having the player fight other humans as often, if not sometimes more, than it does aliens. It's an interesting facet of the series that only further helps it to stand out and allows the story to have more of its own identity.

4 The Death Of A Unit In Advance Wars Means Very Little

The player losing units in Advance Wars

Permadeath is a mechanic in a game where when a unit dies, they stay dead with no way to get them back. This feature is most well known in the Fire Emblem games where losing a unit doesn't just mean losing a sword, it means losing a person with a face, name, personality, and history that you'll never see again. Advance Wars technically has this, when a unit dies it's gone completely, but units don't have names and can easily be replaced.

Advance Wars has players face the death of soldiers in a colder, more calculating light than other Intelligent Systems games. In Advance Wars, losing a unit means losing a gun, and maybe a tactical edge, nothing more.

3 Advance Wars Is Arguably More Difficult Than Other Intelligent Systems Games

A battle in Advance Wars where the player is outnumbered

In most games, a character gets more powerful as the game progresses. In Fire Emblem units level up and achieve more powerful classes, Metroid gives Samus new weapons and abilities, and Codename S.T.E.A.M. gives stronger weapons and equipment to power up units.  While COs in Advance Wars can rank up to gain new CO abilities, there's only so far they can go, and the units that do the actual fighting will never level up. While players will gain access to new and stronger units as the game progresses, they can't be improved on or made stronger.

What you see is what you get when it comes to units in Advance Wars and without the ability to make units so strong one can take on ten like in Fire Emblem, Advance Wars challenges players with harder battles and weaker soldiers.

2 The Armies Of Advance Wars Are Faceless

Two units from Fire Emblem with Infantry units from Advance Wars

One of the draws to Fire Emblem, as well as one of the reasons death hits so hard in those games, is that a swordsman is never just a swordsman. They have identities, names, and stories to be told. One might have been a mercenary who swore loyalty to another character after they saved them from a terrible fate, another might be fighting just to see what kind of powers they can cultivate on the battlefield. Advance Wars goes a very different direction by having units be generic soldiers that don't have any identity beyond their unit type.

While this works perfectly well for Advance Wars the contrast between having to sacrifice a unit in Fire Emblem and sacrificing a unit in Advance Wars is striking.

1 Player's Don't Actually Control The Main Protagonist

Units in Advance Wars Battling

While the story of Advance Wars does have main characters to follow, the player never actually takes control of them. The most a player can do is activate a CO ability. This is unlike every other Intelligent Systems game from Metroid to Paper Mario. Even in Fire Emblem, the main protagonist is always a playable unit in the army.

It's rare to have a game where the player can't actively take command of the main protagonist, but Advance Wars does it, and once again it only adds to the uniqueness of this excellent series of games.

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