Squint a little, buy into the nostalgia and suddenly Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp feels like a new game. This, despite the fact Advance Wars 2 is 20 years old at this point. The turn-based rock-paper-scissors combat still feels fresh, and there’s something very satisfying
However, the game itself is very simple, and while it is tightly designed, it could feel a little constricting for players that expect their strategy games to be teeming with interconnected systems. Here, the strategy feels no less pressing, but it’s easy enough to master as soon as you understand the rules you’re given.
This isn’t a problem for me, an unashamed Advance Wars fan. One autumn my family decided in their infinite wisdom that we would go and holiday in Wisbech. Sorry if you’re from Wisbech, but I am not and the week I spent in a converted train carriage sleeping on a blow-up airbed listening to my family yelling at each other didn’t endear me to the place. Instead, it gave me an appreciation for Advance Wars 2, the game I was allowed to purchase on the drive up from the south coast with the understanding that I’d keep my mouth shut no matter what familial nonsense occurred. I did little else but play Advance Wars on my tiny pearl blue Game Boy Advance SP that week and a lifelong obsession with Intelligent Systems’ lesser-known turn-based tactics franchise followed.
Sadly, the series then vanished into the reeds in favour of Fire Emblem, no doubt because right-thinking gamers can’t get horny for tanks, so the relationship mechanics that were endearing fans to their Fire Emblem titles just weren’t applicable here. The series evaporated after 2008’s Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, leaving fans eager for more. Wargroove, a spiritual successor, emerged in 2019 but it didn’t capture the same thrill of rolling bright orange tanks around a battlefield, painting the map to your colour while a 13-year-old general yelled things like “I haven’t even cranked the engine yet!” and “I can fix anything!”
Big changes here, then, could have upset a lot of people. This is probably why developer WayForward (teaming up with publishers Nintendo on development duty) hasn’t changed too much at all, delivering the same feeling of the original game with a few additions.
The most obvious addition is the new art style, which replaces 2D art with 3D models viewed from the same angle. It’s a big step from the pixelly sprites of the original games, and is a change that put me off Re-Boot Camp at first, even if the spirit of the models is the same. However, given some time you’ll see it’s not all that different. The models are bright and simple, and serve to make the hideous loss of life more bearable through the magic of large brightly coloured models.
Still, the highlight of Re-Boot Camp from an aesthetic standpoint is when a commander uses their special commander power, bellowing it out like an anime character as they steal the spotlight.
The combat in Re-Boot Camp is easy to get to grips with. Infantry can capture towns, factories, docks and airfields. Your units can heal at towns and build units from the latter locations. In its simplest form, combat is a series of moving counters. Infantry can capture buildings, scale mountains and cross rivers. Tanks can easily kill infantry but are less mobile and both will be messed up at long range by artillery, although will find victory much easier if they can get close. Air units complicate matters somewhat, with helicopters effective at taking out most vehicles but incredibly weak to anti-air defences.
After putting a handful of hours into Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp, these counters are second nature and so my time is now spent trying to suss out the individual missions and their unique parameters to snatch wins. Advance Wars has always offered up approaches for players willing to take a gamble and go for a win, whether it’s shipping infantry behind enemy lines in a helicopter or using submarines to clear enemy battleships. It’s a lot of fun.
We haven’t put enough time into the game to talk about whether it’s truly a definitive remaster of all things Advance Wars, but for a series that’s been dormant for 15 years, at the moment it’s just fantastic to play again.
Whether this holds up for review, I can’t say. There are some new online battles and an in-game shop that sells collectibles that mostly seem to be maps and music for those online modes. This functionality has not been enabled for this preview, and it seems like this will be a core part of the game’s longevity, so I’m eager to play more of this and also see if the latter stages of the
For now though, Re-Boot Camp is fun and engaging, effortlessly proving that great game design really is eternal.
Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp launches globally on April 21, 2023, for Nintendo Switch.