The economy is failing and Intelligent Systems laid off Andy, Max, Grimm and Hachi to reduce operating costs?  The replacements literally do not have the same skills either.  Say it isn't so!

The release of Advance Wars Days Of Ruin was highly anticipated because every other game in the series has built on the original theme with tremendous success.  Unfortunately for the gaming community, this version of the series has no familiar characters is actually a depressing game that has little replay value because the RPG elements has been removed.  The game still tracks your progress in the game.

The main menu of the game has six different modes to select from:  Single DS Play, Multi-Card Play, Nintendo WFC, Design Room, Records and Options.  While this may seem like a bountiful selection of options, you should remember that Advance Wars Dual Strike has over twice this amount.

In Singe DS Play mode you can choose two additional modes Campaign and Free battle.  Campaign is essentially the story mode of the game could easily be described as bland by those seeking an engaging experience.  The NPC discussions between battles are text only and feature storyboard style action rather than videos like you would see in a Final Fantasy game. 

Gameplay
At the heart of game you are given a variety of over a dozen different military units to wage a battle against a computer or fellow player foe.  The units range from infantry to tanks and then aircraft.  Just like in chess, each unit has a counter unit that can destroy it.  For example infantry are cheap to build and can swarm a game map but a simple anti-aircraft unit can destroy infantry with one fire. 

The game has a campaign mode with over 30 challenging maps for you to play on your path to conquest against a foe that develops through a dizzying maze of dialogue between NPC (non player characters).  I was able to defeat the campaign mode in 20 hours of game play at a laid back pace.  I will caution you that these maps are very challenging. 

At the end of all the campaign modes, you can only collect new CO’s for use in the free map modes.  The game does not have the replay ability of the older DS releases like Advance Wars Dual Strike, because the fun mini games are not in this game.

Graphics
Advance Wars is all about 2D turn based strategy so do not expect to find any stunning 3D visuals here.  The only full screen animations are the battle sequences, which can thankfully turned off since they get repetitive after the first dozen battles.  The game developers made smart use of the bottom touch screen as your playing field where each tile you touch causes the top screen to show an easy to read statistics screen about the unit's capabilities.  Overall the game is interface is very easy to read and use.

Sound
I will admit that I normally play my Nintendo DS without sound because I often play while on business trips or while watching tv.  Yet, I did turn on the sound for this game and was not that impressed.  They decided to go heavy metal to keep with the apocalyptic theme of the game and the BGM music could be best described as goth.  Do not get me wrong, I really do enjoy Metallica  but this game just feels like it was cheaply made.  The sounds are all poorly mixed and do not seamlessly mix into each other like the other titles in the series do.

Summary
Just like the airlines removing food service on most flights, we still remember the RPG elements from Advance Wars Dual Strike and losing these features inspires discontent with the whole franchise.

Only a die-hard fan of the Advance Wars Series should pick up this game unless you can find it at bargain bin prices in the range of $5 because the game does not offer the flexibility of previous releases of the game.  Instead I recommend picking up a copy of Advance Wars Dual Strike or trying out Age Of Empires another DS game.

Recommended: No