"Nintendo Power" awarded the game a perfect 5 star rating, stating that ""Advance Wars" treads on new ground, taking the strategy genre to a place where gamers of all tastes will be gung-ho for it". "The Electric Playground" called the game "a deep, quite cartoony and consummately Japanese turn-based wargame with depth, character and replayability to burn". IGN called the game "incredibly intense and amazingly addictive... especially when you learn every little nuance of the game design". Gaming Age wrote: "There is a perfect blend of simplicity and complexity that makes this game so highly addictive". GameSpot said that the game is "deep and easy to learn, and it contains a level of replay rarely witnessed in handheld gaming". Total Video Games noted: "For a handheld, the AI of your computer-controlled opponents is surprisingly diverse and complex". AllGame commented: "Ingeniously designed, "Advance Wars" manages to be both in-depth, and instantly accessible, simply because it presents the game in easily manageable chunks". "GameSpot" named "Advance Wars" the best Game Boy Advance game of 2001. It was nominated for the publication's annual "Biggest Surprise" prize among console games, but lost to "Metal Gear Solid 2".