Advance Wars 1 + 2 Re-Boot Camp

Genre: Compilation / Turn-Based Strategy

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local Alternating, Local Wireless Alternating), 2 Competitive (Online Alternating), Local Wireless / Online Content Sharing

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Review:

First, a bit of history. If you want to skip to the review proper, scroll farther down…

The “Wars” series is one of Nintendo’s longest-running franchises, though Western players didn’t get to play these games until the seventh title in the series, released in English-speaking regions as Advance Wars on the Game Boy Advance in 2001, with its sequel, Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising, releasing on Game Boy Advance a few years later in 2003. Interestingly, these releases flipped the tables on Japanese audiences, who weren’t able to play them until a Compilation release with the title Game Boy Wars Advance 1 + 2 was released on Game Boy Advance in Japan in 2004. Given this, I think it’s safe to assume that Advance Wars 1 + 2 Re-Boot Camp, released on Nintendo Switch in 2023 and featuring full remakes of these two Game Boy Advance games, was titled in such a way to call back to this.

The Wars series has fallen on some hard times over the last two decades. After the Game Boy Advance games, we received the excellent Advance Wars: Dual Strike on Nintendo DS, but this was followed by two spin-off games on the GameCube and Wii under the title Batallion Wars, which combined Strategy and Action elements, and were generally received well, but not with the sort of glowing reception the mainline series tended to get. Then, in 2008, we received Advance Wars: Days of Ruin on Nintendo DS, which had the same great Turn-Based Strategy gameplay the franchise was known for, but featured a darker story devoid of the beloved characters of the earlier games in the franchise. For a decade and a half, that was the last we would see of the Advance Wars series.

When Advance Wars 1 + 2 Re-Boot Camp was announced in 2021 with an intended release for later that year, it seemed like a welcome return not only to the long-abandoned franchise, but to the whimsical, colorful world and characters players most associated with it. Developed by WayForward, this game would take the two Game Boy Advance games, polish them up with new visuals, and update the features to give the series a proper refresh on a modern platform.

Well, that was the plan. Unfortunately, the game got delayed from 2021 to 2022, and then in 2022 the game became a victim of even more bad luck when real-life events unfolded. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Nintendo apparently decided (probably wisely) that it would be in poor taste to release a game that not only depicts a cartoony, lighthearted take on modern warfare, but one where the very first opponent you face is a nation that seems to have been based on Russia. For nearly a year, the game was in limbo, evidently finished but unreleased as Russia continued its horrible war in Ukraine.

After a year of waiting, Nintendo seemed to decide that enough time had passed to finally release the game, even though the Ukraine war was still raging on (and still is, as of this writing roughly a half a year later). However, there was a new problem this game faced. In the decades Advance Wars was absent, it had inspired other games designed to fill in the vacuum it had left in its wake, meaning Advance Wars now had direct competition. Most prominent among them was Wargroove, which made use of the same sort of game mechanics found in Advance Wars, but reimagined with a medieval fantasy setting, as well as having hero units. And even more impressively, Wargroove included content creation tools that not only allowed players to create and share their own maps online, but they could create and share entire campaigns, creating a wealth of new single- and multi-player content for those who enjoyed the game.

Personally, I loved Wargroove. I felt it was not only a great tribute to Advance Wars, but one that truly built on that game’s formula by giving players the tools to create their own stories. In fact, I loved this game so much, I designated it as my choice for Nintendo Switch Game of the Year in 2019.

With such a long time since the Wars series’ last game, and with such strong competition from Wargroove, how does Advance Wars 1 + 2 Re-Boot Camp measure up?

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Cadet Review

As noted above, Advance Wars 1 + 2 Re-Boot Camp is a Compilation of remakes of Advance Wars, released on the Game Boy Advance in 2001, and Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising, released on Game Boy Advance in 2003. These two colorful, accessible Turn-Based Strategy games have been re-imagined with updated visuals, a remade soundtrack, and some new features, but at their core, they still feature the same strong core gameplay.

When it was first shown off, the new look of Re-Boot Camp was somewhat divisive. Where the original games featured 2D pixel art, this remake now features full 3D visuals for its gameplay, with Flash-style animated character portraits and fully-animated cutscenes. Personally, I rather like the new 3D art, and in particular I appreciate how well-animated it is, though I’m a bit more mixed on the character portraits.

These visuals are backed by a synthesized soundtrack that puts more of a rock-style flair on the themes from the original game, as well as sound effects that do a great job of evoking those that were in the original games while adding more realistic heft to explosions and machine noises. Overall, I think the sound in particular here is great, and while I’m not outright thrilled with the soundtrack, I think it’s decent enough here.

The gameplay here is much as it was in the original games, which is to say it is phenomenally well-balanced, being both accessible yet incredibly deep, challenging but not so much as to intimidate newcomers. The Advance Wars series is one of the true greats of the Turn-Based Strategy genre, and I feel the games’ strengths are on full display here.

Having said that, I do have some complaints, both with features that seemed like they should have been included, and areas where this game falls short in comparison to Wargroove (a comparison that is unfortunately inevitable).

The first immediate complaint I have is that the two games here are listed separately on the game’s title screen, but players will have to go through the first Advance Wars game to unlock access to the second one, which is somewhat frustrating. What’s more, where the Nintendo DS entries in the series allowed players to use the touchscreen to command units, there is no such use of the Nintendo Switch’s touchscreen here.

Then there’s the map creator. I suppose it may have been too much to hope that Nintendo and WayForward would have felt spurred on to include a campaign builder to compete on the same level with Wargroove, and indeed no such feature exists here. However, the real disappointment is the lack of an online repository of shared user-created maps, something that Super Mario Maker and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate have shown that Nintendo is willing and capable of delivering, but that simply is not available here – you can only share maps with friends who own the game. It gets worse. Not only is content sharing restricted to friends, but so too is online play – there’s no way to challenge other players online unless you already have them added as a friend.

It pains me to say it, but Nintendo has been beaten at their own game, and they were beaten a whole four years ago. Make no mistake, Advance Wars 1 + 2 Re-Boot Camp is still a superb pair of remakes of a superb pair of Turn-Based Strategy games, and it’s not like Wargroove beats this game in every area – this game’s 3D visuals are definitely more visually-striking than Wargroove’s pixel art visuals, and Nintendo’s great characters and solid level design still truly shine here. But while it has its strengths, this game is absolutely trounced by the wealth of wonderful features offered in Wargroove. As such, while I still think this is absolutely a must-have game for Strategy fans on Nintendo Switch, it isn’t the first game in the genre I would recommend. And this isn’t even going into the impending release of Wargroove 2…

tl;dr – Advance Wars 1 + 2 Re-Boot Camp is a compilation of remakes of the Game Boy Advance Turn-Based Strategy games Advance Wars and Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising. These are two phenomenal games, and the revitalized presentation looks great. However, there are some important features that are missing here, and in particular this game looks especially feature-poor next to the highly-similar game, Wargroove. I do still highly recommend Advance Wars 1 + 2 Re-Boot Camp, but between the two titles I think Wargroove is the better choice.

Grade: A-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2023 Game Awards:

Winner:

Best Compilation/Collection – It’s wonderful to finally see the Advance Wars series get a new game after so many years of waiting, and in this collection we received two absolute classic games in a full new remake that does these great Strategy games justice. other bundles in 2023 gave gamers a good deal, or brought back beloved classics. Advance Wars 1 + 2 Re-Boot Camp did both of those things while also ensuring that these are the best versions of the included games.

Runner-Up: Best Strategy Game, Best Port/Remake

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