Review by iammaxhailme

"In the war of the game, this beat almost all."

Welcome to my review of Advance Wars DS: Dial Strike. I know that some of you who ask "Should I buy this game?" Get told to lok at the reviews. Well, they're right. I didn't write this for nothing. ;-) Plus, you might get biased reveiws on the message boards anyway. But seriously, buy this game if you like Strategy games.

OK, this is the third game in the Advance Wars series. There's also Famicon and Game Boy wars, but you'll have to import those, or just move to Japan. All 3 are great strategy games. Basically, what you do in this game is direct an army of troops and try to either A: Kill all the enemy troops, which gets harder on maps with Bases, Airports, and Ports, which make Infintry and Vehicles, Place and Copter, and Boats respectively, or B: Capture the opponent's Headquarters. But to do this, you'll have to think out plans, and sometimes use special CO Powers, which I'll explain later. Also, there's a few missions with other special objectives, but not many. OK....

Gameplay 10/10
The whole point of this game is to offer great gameplay, which they do perfectly. There isn't much story, but it definently offers a challenge if you're smart. Some of the later levels can be very difficult if you don't think of a good plan, which is the point of strategy games like this. Of course, there's a few levels where there aren't any bases or airports or ports where you just have to kill everyone, and those are good too.

Another thing is Combat mode. Campaign, Versus, everything else is turn based. But combat mode is real time, a new addition to the series. In this mode, you have a certain amount of money, buy from Mechs, who can capture cities fast, Recons, who can move and shoot quickly, but weakly, Tanks, who.... are tanks, and Artillery, which rather then fire shells, the lob bombs. But they get killed easily by Tanks. This is the same as the other modes in the sense that you have to kill everyone or capture their HQ to win, but it's a lot different. This is hard if you can't think fast.

Story: 8/10
There isn't much story in the Advance wars series, nor in many strategy games, but for one of them, this has a pretty good story. Pretty much, someone's trying to wreck the plant, invade territory, you have to find out why and kill thousands of random troops to do so. You know, the usual.

Characters: 9/10
Whenever you start a battle, you choose what CO, or Commanding Officer, you want to be. Each CO has their own special abilities, for example, Jake fights better on the plains, and Kindle fights better in the city, etc. The CO's all her their own personality. I like Jake's he's always saying stuff like "Get out the plates, 'Cuz you just got served!" And other things like that. However, the soldiers are nameless people who you can send to their death without remorse.

Unit and Animation creativity: 9/10
I like the units in this game. In the first Advance Wars, you jsut had the basic stuff, Rocket Launchers, Tanks, Submarines, Bomber Planes, Etc. In this one, there are some other things added. Here's a list:

Infintry & Mech: Foot soldiers. Mech can use Bazookas on vehicles, but infintry are pretty screwed against anything except other infintry.

Vehicles: There are many kinda of Vehicles. There are Recon Jeeps, which can see very far in fog of war, and can move very far. There are Tanks, who ust blow up stuff with great force. There are regular Tanks, Medium Tanks, Neotanks, and Megatanks (New). The weaker ones can generally moce farther, like, the regular tank can move 6 spaces, but the megatank can only move 4. Also, the weaker ones are more cheap, so some people prefer Neotanks over Megatanks, because their movement range is a lot better, and so is their price, although in straight combat, a Megatank is the strongest ground unit ever. There are also thinks like Anti Air Vulcan Cannon tanks and Anti-Air Missles, and there are Surface to Surface rockets and Artillery, which are useful for taking out tanks.

Boats: Uhh... they go in the water. There are Landers, which Carry ground units, and can drop them of at shoals, Submarines, who can torpedo other boats and hide underwater, Battleships, which can shoot cannonballs at ground and naval units from a great distance, Aircraft Carriers, which can carry planes and shoot down enemy planes from a great distance, there are Black Boats, a new class that can repair other units, and there are Cruisers, which can carry helicopters, and have an Anti-Air vulcan cannon on its deck, and very power anti-sub missles, which can be shot at other naval units but don't do much damage.

Planes and Copters: Yep, air units. For copters, there's Battle copters and Transport copters, which battle ground units and other copters and a few boats(with great defence against machine guns) and transport foot soldiers respectivley, and for planes, there are Bombers, who bomb ground units, Fighters, who shoot down other flying units, and Stealth Fighters, who can shoot down other flyers and can shoot most ground units and some boats, but are less effective then fighters and bombers, and can carry less fuel and ammo. But they can cloak themselves, having the same effect as the sub has while it's underwater. It's very good to use, if you use it strategicailly. Of course, this uses a lot of fuel and money, so, careful.

There's one more: The black bomb. It's a kamikaze bomb controlled my remote. Pretty simple.

The animation is pretty simple; This guy shoots that guy, rocket go up, rocket hit copters, etc.

Overall: 9/10

Yeah, this is a great game. You should get it, if you're looking for a good game that will make you think. Of course, you should get Advance Wars 1 and 2, for the GBA too, because if you put This game and one of those in the GBA slot for DS, you'll get a little present.... some secret maps that you can buy for 1 point.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10 | Originally Posted: 09/01/05

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