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#16. Advance Wars (2001)
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Writeup provided by OrangeCrush980
Advance Wars is a turn-based strategy game released in 2001. It was the first turn-based strategy game I played, and the Advance Wars series might be the only pure turn-based strategy series Ive played. Ive played plenty of SRPGs and a few RTSs, but nothing thats quite the same as Advance Wars.

In Advance Wars, you command land, air, and sea units which are based on real life military vehicles and infantry. You and your opponent take turns moving your troops around the map and attacking your opponent. Many battles also give both players the ability to build new units mid-battle. To build units, you need money, and to get money you need to capture cities and other properties. You can also capture your opponents headquarters to win the battle early. Deciding what to build, what to attack, when to attack, how to position your units, what to capture, and so on are all important to succeeding in battle.

The gameplay is very similar to Fire Emblem, but Advance Wars can be more relaxing and sophisticated overall. Since all of your units are generic, you dont have to overly worry about keeping them alive or getting them experience or anything. And you and your opponent both use the same set of units with similar stats, so theres no training up a unit take out half the opponents army on their own. I think the best Fire Emblem games are better than Advance Wars, but Advance Wars is more consistently good on average.

Theres still one big way to customize your army. Before each battle, you can choose a commanding officer (CO) to command your army. Each CO has different strengths and weaknesses which apply to your whole army. For example, Max has much stronger direct units such as Tanks and Bombers, but his indirect units such as Artillery and Battleships have less power and range than normal. Each CO also has a CO Power which they can use to further power up their army for one turn.

Despite the potentially serious premise, Advance Wars has a cartoony aesthetic. This isnt Call of Duty or anything like that. When you or your opponent orders a unit to attack, youll see the commanding officers react to the fight with cute expressions. The campaigns story is kinda serious, but not in a bloody, gritty way.

Some other cool features in Advance Wars are multiplayer support and the ability to design your own maps. So if you ever get bored of the base single player features, these modes can supply a lot more ways to have fun with the game.

Advance Wars isnt the most exciting game to talk about, but its still a lot of fun and one of the best GBA games out there. Anyone who really loves Fire Emblem should check out Advance Wars at some point. And while Black Hole Rising might be objectively better, the first Advance Wars is still great and has a lot of charm to it which its sequel lacks.