Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising is the sequel to Advance Wars. In the previous game, the four armies of Orange Star, Blue Moon, Yellow Comet, and Green Earth had managed to fight off Sturm and the Black Hole army. Sturm has come back, and has brought along four new COs to try and take over Wars World. Your mission is to drive these aliens off of Wars World once and for all.
For those that have never played any game in the series, this is actually a good one to start off with despite it being a sequel to the last one, which had AI you could manipulate too well. (APC diversion, anyone?) This is a turn based strategy game where your objective (under normal circumstances) is to either rout the enemy (eliminate all the enemy units) or capture their HQ, though the campaign mode missions can have different terms of victory or defeat.
First timers may want to check out the campaign mode before playing anywhere else, as the first several missions are pretty much the game's tutorial. They slowly introduce you to different unit types, what they can do, and other game mechanics such as using CO Powers and fighting in fog (which isn't as cheap as it is in most games since the AI has to legally see your unit to attack it, though it still knows where all your units are). The only problem is... there's no way to turn off the tutorial, so if you want to play the whole campaign again, you have no choice but to sit through it. Rumor has it that there is a more difficult campaign mode you can play... but unless you're really good at this game, I wouldn't advise playing it more than one time.
There are other maps in this game outside of the campaign mode which can be played in the War Room (where you have to clear the maps given preset conditions, but you choose which CO you want to use) and in Versus mode. The War Room is single player only, but versus mode can be played with up to four players (depending on how many different factions there are on the map by default) on a single GBA. So even though the link mode is useless on Vizzed due to an inability to link up with others online, if you know a few people who enjoy this type of game, you can play the game with them and take turns.
But that's enough of my ranting about the game modes. The graphics of this game are a little cartoonish, but that's what gives the game its charm in my opinion, and the way the story is told follows in the graphical style. It's a war game, but it doesn't try to be serious all the time. Considering this is on the GBA, the graphics for this game are very well done, the animations are quite detailed, and nothing really seems out of place.
The music in this game is really good. Actually gets quite catchy if you sit on your turn for a while, and I've actually delayed ending my turns just to listen to the music for one more loop. In fact, I have Kanbei's theme and Eagle's theme stuck in my head as I'm typing this. The sound effects aren't out of place. Gunfire sounds like gunfire, fighter jets sound like fighter jets, it all just fits.
As for difficulty... the game starts out easy, but once you complete Orange Star's campaign, some of the missions can be real pains in the butt. Take for example T-Minus 15, one of the early Blue Moon missions. The task in that one is to capture the eight properties around a giant missile within 15 days. The problem? Your units are split into three and are cut off by pipes, and your capturing units are stuck at the wrong side of those pipes. And you have to contend with a fairly large enemy force. So yeah... the difficulty curve can get kinda weird, and that's really the only reason for the somewhat high difficulty rating. Though it may just be my lack of experience at this genre.
Overall, I would give this game a 9.5 out of 10. Should you play it? I would say... if you aren't good at turn-based strategy games, avoid this title since you need to be able to plan ahead for every possible situation inside and outside of the campaign. If this is your first time playing a turn-based strategy game, I would definitely recommend you try this one. For all others, this is a definite buy if you can find it at Gamestop or someplace that still sells GBA games. Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising is the sequel to Advance Wars. In the previous game, the four armies of Orange Star, Blue Moon, Yellow Comet, and Green Earth had managed to fight off Sturm and the Black Hole army. Sturm has come back, and has brought along four new COs to try and take over Wars World. Your mission is to drive these aliens off of Wars World once and for all.
For those that have never played any game in the series, this is actually a good one to start off with despite it being a sequel to the last one, which had AI you could manipulate too well. (APC diversion, anyone?) This is a turn based strategy game where your objective (under normal circumstances) is to either rout the enemy (eliminate all the enemy units) or capture their HQ, though the campaign mode missions can have different terms of victory or defeat.
First timers may want to check out the campaign mode before playing anywhere else, as the first several missions are pretty much the game's tutorial. They slowly introduce you to different unit types, what they can do, and other game mechanics such as using CO Powers and fighting in fog (which isn't as cheap as it is in most games since the AI has to legally see your unit to attack it, though it still knows where all your units are). The only problem is... there's no way to turn off the tutorial, so if you want to play the whole campaign again, you have no choice but to sit through it. Rumor has it that there is a more difficult campaign mode you can play... but unless you're really good at this game, I wouldn't advise playing it more than one time.
There are other maps in this game outside of the campaign mode which can be played in the War Room (where you have to clear the maps given preset conditions, but you choose which CO you want to use) and in Versus mode. The War Room is single player only, but versus mode can be played with up to four players (depending on how many different factions there are on the map by default) on a single GBA. So even though the link mode is useless on Vizzed due to an inability to link up with others online, if you know a few people who enjoy this type of game, you can play the game with them and take turns.
But that's enough of my ranting about the game modes. The graphics of this game are a little cartoonish, but that's what gives the game its charm in my opinion, and the way the story is told follows in the graphical style. It's a war game, but it doesn't try to be serious all the time. Considering this is on the GBA, the graphics for this game are very well done, the animations are quite detailed, and nothing really seems out of place.
The music in this game is really good. Actually gets quite catchy if you sit on your turn for a while, and I've actually delayed ending my turns just to listen to the music for one more loop. In fact, I have Kanbei's theme and Eagle's theme stuck in my head as I'm typing this. The sound effects aren't out of place. Gunfire sounds like gunfire, fighter jets sound like fighter jets, it all just fits.
As for difficulty... the game starts out easy, but once you complete Orange Star's campaign, some of the missions can be real pains in the butt. Take for example T-Minus 15, one of the early Blue Moon missions. The task in that one is to capture the eight properties around a giant missile within 15 days. The problem? Your units are split into three and are cut off by pipes, and your capturing units are stuck at the wrong side of those pipes. And you have to contend with a fairly large enemy force. So yeah... the difficulty curve can get kinda weird, and that's really the only reason for the somewhat high difficulty rating. Though it may just be my lack of experience at this genre.
Overall, I would give this game a 9.5 out of 10. Should you play it? I would say... if you aren't good at turn-based strategy games, avoid this title since you need to be able to plan ahead for every possible situation inside and outside of the campaign. If this is your first time playing a turn-based strategy game, I would definitely recommend you try this one. For all others, this is a definite buy if you can find it at Gamestop or someplace that still sells GBA games. |
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