Advance Wars: Dual Strike

Reviewed by CL on 12/10/2005

Advance Wars: Dual Strike is the next in the Advance Wars series and the first on the Nintendo DS. This pretty much follows the turn based strategy formula established by the first two games, Advance Wars and Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising on the Gameboy Advance. But since this is on a new system, there are some new feature included here which you won't find in the previous games. The most noticeable is the fact that some of the battles take place on both the top and bottom screens. Although this sounds cool, it really is just two parallel battles which are taking place. Although it is possible to send units from one screen to the other, it really doesn't affect the gameplay that much and the two battles are effectively decoupled. You can even elect to have the computer control the battle on the top screen if you like, but I always found it more fun to control both battles by myself. Another new feature is the ability to use two CO's at the same time. If you charge up enough CO power, you can unleash a "Dual Strike" which uses both CO powers at the same time for some devastating attacks which can really change the tide of battle. Besides that, the game plays almost identical to the previous two games and you can see their reviews to get a better idea of how the game plays.

In conclusion, this game really doesn't add too much to the Advance Wars series. If you're a fan, you'll have a great time playing, and if you're not a fan, you'll still have a great time playing it because at the core, this is a great game which practically invented the turn based strategy genre.