YMMV / Nintendo Wars

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Was Hawke always planning to usurp Sturm, or did he only do so because Sturm was going to kill everyone?
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • The Megatank. There were plans for a tank the size of a small house — the Landkreuzer P1000 "Ratte". It even had multiple turrets and huge battleship cannons on top like the Megatank. Some multi-turreted tanks did exist, but they tended to be a lot smaller.
  • The missions that pit allied nations against each other for training, such as "Rivals" in the first game and "Lightning Strikes" and "Verdant Hills" in Dual Strike get a lot of mocking from players, but real-life allied militaries really do carry out simulated military operations or "war games" as training exercises, to ensure forces are combat-ready, and to analyze the outcome of hypothetical wartime decisions.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: Re-Boot Camp received backlash for its art style when first revealed, and horrible release timing lead to a year-long delay (and sandwiched its final release between its more popular Nintendo strategy relative and the juggernaut The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom), so a lot was against the game when it finally dropped. On release, it received positive word-of-mouth due to its surprisingly charming animations, music and voice acting, and for keeping everything great about the originals while adding some much-needed Anti-Frustration Features. The game achieved decent sales and sparked more interest in the once-declining franchise.
• Annoying Video Game Helper: Olaf's snow powers can screw over allies as badly as they do enemies. He also EXERTS this personality several times, notably the T-Minus 15 mission in AW2.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Whereas his predecessor Sturm was horribly overpowered, Von Bolt from Advance Wars: Dual Strike is nowhere near that powerful. Intelligent Systems learned from this and made doubly sure Caulder/Stolos from Days of Ruin didn't fall into the same pit trap. As for Von Bolt, he does sport a nice 110/110 stat overall and day-to-day and his Ex Machina can cripple an opponent's strategy if they missplan due to paralysis (hit units in factories and they can't produce or hit the frontlines and the frontlines will struggle to survive). However, take the following into consideration:
    • He does not ignore terrain movement penalties, unlike Sturm.
    • Most players can get around Ex Machina's paralysis super, hitting filler targets that can move next turn.
    • Due to the leveling up system in Dual Strike, you can completely make a CO so overpowered that it overlaps Von Bolt's ability. The catch? Your opponent never use the additional abilities in any part of the game.
    • Von Bolt does not have a tag partner in any of the maps.
    • In the first map you face him, For the Future, he may seem overpowered due to him starting with 3 COM Towers, making him 140/110. Additionally, the narrow path in the center would presume the map was supposed to derail the ground units with Ex Machina. However, the map and level design goes completely against him. Those 3 COM Towers are right in front of you, meaning you can quickly capture them and use it against him with your 130/100 units. If you somehow lose this match, Rachel would advise you next time to have Javier capture those COM Towers to make him 130/130. Also, you get to utilize 6 COs of your choice in this map, meaning you have way more options to deal with Von Bolt. Even better: Von Bolt does not have a Tag Partner, meaning you can easily spam Tag Breaks a lot in the match; something Von Bolt can't do in this map. If Sasha is in either the left or right side, she can shutdown Von Bolt's long Star Power, making Von Bolt almost unable to use his Ex Machina.
    • The next map after that is Means to an End. Because of its empty nature and you being able to produce units much faster than him. You can simply send a B-Copter below, capture the 2 COM Towers in the edge and be more powerful than him with 120/100. Once you wipe out Kindle on the autoplay map, you get your 2nd CO back for a Tag Break. The developers probably assume that the Oozium would be difficult to fight, but veteran players can just wait until they are ready.
  • When taking the Max route in the first game, "History Lesson!" is the Climax Boss of the Blue Moon arc, your last fight with Grit before his Heel–Face Turn, and one of the most emotionally-charged missions in the otherwise story-lite first campaign. It's also fairly easy: you're forced to use Max and the only real threat is a Battleship covering the HQ, and Re-Boot Camp nerfs its difficulty further as now Grit's indirects can't shoot units they can't see. (Re-Boot Camp even makes the map a partial tutorial on Cruisers) It being sandwiched between the far more difficult "Blizzard Battle!" and the Wake-Up Call Boss that is "Sami's Debut!" doesn't help matters.
  • In both the original Black Hole Rising and Re-Boot Camp, the Hard/Challenge version of "Final Front" is generally considered easier than its Normal/Classic version, making the conclusion to the harder campaign a Breather Level. This is mostly due to the two cannons pointing away from the central army, allowing them to destroy them unopposed, along with Sturm's Bases being spread across the map, meaning you're less likely to deal with a massed assault. Some suspect the maps were swapped by accident.
  • Greyfield/Sigismundo in Days of Ruin is a mad dictator and The Heavy of the story, but he's arguably the worst CO in the game gameplay-wise, being a defensive navy specialist with an incredibly underwhelming CO Power (Simply resupplying all units). The final fight against him in "Lin's Gambit" is the only mission where he's capable of bringing his CO zone into the battle, and given that he's a navy specialist, it takes a lot of resources for him to do so, something that will likely never happen if Lin intercepts his navy and stops his economy dead in its tracks. It's Gameplay and Story Integration, as Lin reveals he was always a General Failure who had to fudge his results to get his rank, but it's still a bit of a letdown for one of the main villains.
• Awesome Art: Re-Boot Camp touches up the character designs and adds fully-animated clips for each CO's Power and Super Power, and they're absolutely gorgeous to watch. The cutscenes, while few and far between, are also very well-animated.
• Awesome Music: Has its own page here.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: It's pretty obvious that the War Room scenes in the American English version of Days of Ruin are there for the player's benefit and have nothing to do with the game's canon. It's the only explanation for things like Isabella doing a television show routine with Lin in Chapter 10 when the former is supposed to be bedridden and dying of the Creeper, or enemy CO's like General Forsythe and Tabitha stopping by to give you extensive tactical advice on how to defeat... their own armies.
• Breather Level:
  • Any Hold the Line mission in the first game's campaign, as due to Artificial Stupidity, the AI won't actively pursue its objective. (Andy's "Naval Clash!" is especially infamous; Drake will never find the Missile unit you need to protect if you put it in a Lander and hide the Lander in a reef (though this doesn't work in Re-Boot Camp). Not only are these missions difficult to outright lose, they're also a major breather for ranked Advanced Campaign runs. Since only Speed matters in this difficulty, you're guaranteed a perfect S Rank as long as you win.
  • The Max version of "Max Strikes" in the first game comes after the Wake-Up Call Boss that is "Gun Fighter" and Eagle's terrifying CO Power in "Air Ace". It gives you control of a Game-Breaker in a map that's essentially an all-out slugfest where you charge your units forward and win. Very cathartic if you struggled with the Early Game Hell.
  • Kanbei's Error in the first game, compared to the last two. Kanbei has a factory, but it's useless and his other troops are spread out far enough to be taken care of one at a time. It's not even that hard to control the required properties (unless it's on the Advanced Difficulty).
  • After the tough introduction to the Green Earth missions, especially the fairly difficult (on Andy and Sami's routes) "Wings of Victory", the arc ends with "Battle Mystery", which is comparatively easy regardless of who you choose. Sami has to protect a single Infantry unit that already starts in range of Transport Copters, Andy just needs to find and destroy one Lander, while Max has a standard battle on a simple peninsula map.
  • Downwplayed with "A Mirror Darkly" in the second game. Sonja's debut mission in "Show Stopper" is That One Level where Adder starts out with a massive army and Sonja only has a tiny base, resulting in a massive slog to stop Adder's initial offensive with little means to utilize Sonja's Fog of War advantages. "A Mirror Darkly", on the other hand, has Sonja and Lash on a more even footing, with the goal of not letting any of Lash's units reach Sonja's HQ at the end of a mountain pass. With some careful positioning and clever use of Sonja's indirect units, none of Lash's units from her massive army should get anywhere near Sonja's HQ.
  • Both of Jess's levels tend to be these compared to to the rest of the Green Earth missions in the second game. The first one, Sinking Feeling. The strategy is more freeform than the rest, and while there's a time limit, it's manageable. Lash's abilities aren't too useful to her since she only has immediate access to an airport (which don't benefit from terrain effects), making her a much easier opponent than Hawke. The second one, Rain of Fire (which is NOT to be compared to That One Level Ring of Fire), has a rather annoying hazard in terms of a volcano, but the pattern is ALWAYS predetermined, and the lava can hit the enemy units as well, putting it to your advantage. Plus you and him are in a somewhat even playing field (with the exception of the Hard campaign).
  • "Navy vs. Air" is a more straightforward mission for Drake than the one that came before, "Drake's Dilemma". In the latter, there's fog of war, two black cannons that must be destroyed for mission victory that happen to cover a lot of the southern lake that Drake's navy is in, Hawke has a large army making a beeline towards Drake's and Kanbei's HQ, and few resources to spend on making a substantial army to hold the line. Meanwhile, the former is clear as day, and is shaped like a nigh-symmetrical War Room map. Careful positioning of Drake's cruisers can destroy initial and subsequent Hawke's helicopter squadrons with ease (he never has enough funds to invest in a deadlier Bomber) and a rush maneuver to the important factories in the center of the map can put Hawke's ground offensives to a standstill.
  • "Hot Pursuit" in the Normal Campaign of the second game, which comes right after That One Level "Great Sea Battle". Your forces are all joined together and your objective is to destroy three cannons. You might be facing Sturm, but a vast majority of his forces are locked in a pipe structure (in some cases, they won't even bother destroying the pipe seams) and your only immediate threat are some naval units which are a minor annoyance at worst. There's a ton of minicannons and laser cannons everywhere (which can chip away your health), but you can always use an expensive unit as bait. As long as you amass an army of Rockets (which Grit is a recommended CO due to this), this mission's a cakewalk.
  • "Sea for All" is a unique mission among a few others in the Orange Star chapter of the Advanced/Challenge campaign of the second game. Here, Andy must face Hawke in a map without the means of building ground units at all, limiting the battlefronts to the air and water. Without the means of capturing bases, the goal is limited to simply destroying the enemy's army. Creating units in response to what Hawke builds and letting his forces come to Andy is a way to end the mission in a few days (doing nothing on Andy's first turn forces Hawke to make the first move, allowing Andy to respond accordingly), compared to the lengthy battles of the other Hard difficulty missions of the Orange Star campaign or the many instances of That One Level that feature Hawke. With Hawke focusing most of his purchases on air units, with only the occasional Cruiser, it's possible to fight back using only Fighters and Bombers (so long as Andy lands the first strike). Even Hawke's Black Wave/Storm doesn't pose as much of a threat as they do in the Green Earth missions as Andy's CO powers counter their damaging effects directly. The Speed score standards actually lampshade this, with its perfect score also being incredibly short.
• Broken Base:
  • The first Advance Wars' advanced campaign has a very split reception. Some enjoy it more than all the other single-player offerings in the series, due to its uncompromising difficulty that far exceeds anything the other games have and for its maps being interesting puzzles to solve. Some others hate it though, as most maps require extensive Trial-and-Error Gameplay without following a guide, you have to rely heavily on exploiting Artificial Stupidity to stand a chance, and the ultimate strategy often comes down to suicide HQ rushes, as most maps are so ridiculously unbalanced against the player that winning through any usual conventional strategy is impossible or otherwise takes forever.
  • Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict, due to its radical changes, is naturally full of this:
    • Whether or not the tone shift in Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict was a good idea or not. Opponents say it turned its back on the entire series' lighthearted spirit in favor of a Darker and Edgier retool, while proponents say that the change in tone, namely the fact that death and the horrors of war get taken seriously now, means that the new characters are far more relatable and interesting than the shallow, vaguely creepy implied sociopaths of the original series, and the proponents who have the American Days of Ruin specifically will often argue that, despite the Darker and Edgier tone, it's often a lot funnier than the original games.
    • Over which of the American English Days of Ruin or British English Dark Conflict translation is better. Some people prefer the Woolseyism-filled script of Days of Ruin, while others prefer the more straight translation of Dark Conflict.
    • The soundtrack of Days of Ruin is also very polarizing. You have many who love it, while others consider it "generic Darker and Edgier heavy metal" and not as memorable as the CO themes from original games. There's a third camp that likes the tracks but feel they suffer heavily from the DS' compression.
    • The competitive gameplay. The removal of Super CO Powers, the toning down of CO Powers in general, the shift to the CO Unit and CO Zone system, and the CO meter only being charged from damage dealt. Proponents of DOR feel the less emphasis on CO Powers and abilities make matches depend more on actual strategic unit usage to win, like how only charging the CO meter through dealing damage discourages Infantry spam, and like the strategic applications of the CO Unit + CO Zone, but those who prefer the older style feel the downplayed CO abilities make the COs feel less characterized and involved, likened Infantry to Pawns in Chess and so didn't mind them largely outnumbering other units in usage, and rather the COs be able to effect all units in play instead of a handful in a small area around a designated CO unit.
• Catharsis Factor: Days of Ruin gets two:
  • Watching Caulder kill the Mayor. Not that anyone's rooting for Caulder at this point, and he only gets worse from here, but that mayor has taken every single opportunity take advantage of Brenner's Wolves' Hero Complex, and then turn his back on them to serve his own benefits, not pay his share of the work, or just to kick them in the nards because he's just a gigantic piece of shit. Then Caulder plays to his selfish greed to trick him into taking poison under the guise of it being an antidote, in an act that can charitably be described as "Caulder's only decent action".
  • The ending has Caulder's Villainous Breakdown. After watching him spend the entire game smugly preaching about the meaningless of human life, treating survivors as test subjects in his experiments, and enjoying every second of putting people into sadistic choices purely to see what they'd do when faced with death, watching him as he completely breaks down and begins screaming about how he's different and unique, and literally begging for someone, anyone, to save his life is utterly wonderful.
• Character Perception Evolution:
  • Olaf, Drake and Hawke were formerly considered Low-Tier Letdowns for having CO Powers that deal 2 HP of damage to all enemy units (that can't kill) instead of raising their own firepower. As the competitive metagame evolved in the years after the original games, expert players found global damage a Game-Breaker, viewing it as essentially wiping out 20% of the enemy army in one strike, often doing more monetary damage than firepower-boosting CO Powers do, and that's before the additional damage your subsequent push will do through the opponents' weakened forces. Olaf and Hawke are now considered high-tier characters, and Drake, despite his weak air units being a major drawback, is considered a solid mid-tier character even on maps with no naval combat focus.
  • Colin underwent a different evolution: he was always seen as a Game-Breaker, the difference was why. Early on, fans focused on his Power of Money Super Power and the hilarious firepower bonuses it could grant, as seen under Memetic Badass. As perceptions evolved, Power of Money was found to be Awesome, but Impractical, as if you had enough money and CO Power charge to make full use of it you've probably already won the game multiple times over. It was his normal power that was found to be broken. What does it do? It multiplies his current funds by 1.5. At only 2 stars, it's just as spammable as the CO who's whole gimmick is spamming his Normal Power (Adder), and the extra money allows Colin to pump out expensive units long before his opponents can, or just Zerg Rush the opponent.
  • Lash used to be viewed as one of the strongest COs in Black Hole Rising, as her day-to-day powers of getting a 10% boost to her offense for each terrain star her unit has, for no drawback, makes her look very powerful on paper. Her super CO power, Prime Tactics, also looks intimidating, as it doubles her terrain stars, and thus doubling both her attack and defense boosts. The devs apparently agreed with this view, with Lash being one of the few COs directly nerfed in Dual Strike (with her terrain bonuses being reduced to 5% per star). Later on it was found that, in practice, her D2D isn't that strong, as much of the time you're fighting on plains or terrain with no boosts, and saavy opponents can position their units in a way to deny her more potent terrain in meaningful engagements, while her air units are disadvantaged as they can never benefit from her powers. Additionally, Prime Tactics is rather weak for a Super CO Power, as her units need to be on properties or mountains to actually get a comparable power boost to other SCOPs, made worse by its cost of 7 stars making it one of the more expensive SCOPs (and then her normal CO power, Terrain Tactics, is nigh-worthless). This results in her now being considered a mediocre CO that heavily relies on maps full of strong terrain, being ranked tier 3 in all Advance Wars By Web formats, and even then she is barely used by competitive players in tier 3 matches.
  • Nell was historically held up as an Infinity +1 Sword just a step below Hachi, with her day-to-day skill giving her a random chance to deal up to +20% damage with every attack (as opposed to the usual +10%) with no downsides being seen as overpowered. Given time, players have generally recognised that she is kept in check by the limits of her abilities: They're dependent on luck, don't provide a huge boost over innate game mechanics until you reach her CO Powers, and terrain defensive bonuses do a lot to mitigate luck-based damage. She is now generally seen as an upper-mid tier character, and one who isn't representative of the extreme time and skill commitment required to unlock her in the original games.
  • Jake in Dual Strike was formerly loved, with his Totally Radical and Jive Turkey dialogue considered hilarious and a great example of a Woolseyism. With growing distaste towards the earlier games' War Has Never Been So Much Fun tone, Jake is now widely hated for the exact same reasons, and Von Bolt mocking him is considered a case of Villain Has a Point.
• Character Tiers: Has them, as you might expect. Unlike a lot of games, though, its tier list generally goes from "average" to "Game-Breaker."
• Common Knowledge: It's frequently assumed that Re-Boot Camp requires you to finish the Advance Wars campaign before you can begin Black Hole Rising. The campaign selection menu blanks out the latter's image with a "This story has yet to be revealed..." message which seems to indicate that's the case, but in actuality you can just select it and begin playing regardless; that message is just a spoiler warning.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: In Advance Wars 1, playing as Max is considered "Easy Mode" as his Direct-Combat Focus heavily rewards a simplified army composition and strategy that doesn't have Indirect Units. While this is great for Single-Player Campaign and War Room, it is frowned upon and even banned in competitive multiplayer due to being completely unbalanced.
• Complete Monster (Advance Wars series):
  • First game & Black Hole Rising: Sturm, first commander of Black Hole, engineers a massive war to weaken the nations of Wars World so he can sweep in and crush them without any resistance. Driven back at first, Sturm returns shortly thereafter with another massive war. Uncaring what he crushes in the process, Sturm decides to unleash an apocalypse upon the world with a doomsday weapon so he can recreate it in his image, before attempting to destroy his base to take everyone present with him in defeat.
  • Dual Strike: Von Bolt, inheritor of Black Hole, is a twisted old man whose fear of death is all to him. Taking command of the army and utilizing the Black Obelisks, Von Bolt begins to drain regions of energy, condemning them and all inside to death, to sustain himself. Betraying even his own to have them eliminated, Von Bolt plans to drain the whole world of energy and condemn it to death so that he might live even a little longer.
  • Days of Ruin:
    • Caulder, head of IDS, is the Mad Scientist responsible for almost all the misery in the game. Beginning his life as a clone who murdered his own creator and every other version of himself, Caulder has spent every waking moment of his life since the apocalypse making life even more wretched for the remaining survivors. Caulder endorses monsters like the Beast and Admiral Greyfield, and is responsible for the creation of a horrifying virus called the Creeper Derangea, which causes plant life to burst through the infected's skin. Unsatisfied with how the Creeper only effected the young, Caulder improved the virus to infect anyone and spread undetected, deeming the resulting mass panic and deaths as "fascinating". Caulder is also hideously abusive to his own cloned children: he attempted to bodyjack Cyrus in an attempt to gain immortality, then poisons Cyrus with something meant to kill him as slowly as possible once he betrays him; drove Penny insane with his experiments and tries to have her to die on the Great Owl; intends to dissect his "haywire" daughter, Isabella; and ultimately rules all of them "abject failures".
    • The Beast is the earliest introduction the 12th Battalion has to the depths of how far certain people have fallen After the End of the world. A former soldier who wholeheartedly embraced the conditions the apocalypse left the world in, the Beast rallies together a group of starving bandits and mercenaries to go on a crusade of Rape, Pillage, and Burn; by the time the 12th Battalion prevents him from raiding another village, he's slaughtered every other settlement in the region. The Beast continues to butt heads with the Battalion until, with Caulder's endorsement, he decides to slaughter every civilian the 12th Battalion has saved out of pure spite.
    • Admiral Greyfield of the New Rubinelle Army is a Social Darwinist whose threat comes half from idiocy and half from pure megalomania. Greyfield carries on a war against the Lazurian people that started long before the apocalypse with the intent to wipe them out, causing dozens of innocent casualties along the way, and remorselessly writes off or personally executes many of his own soldiers the whole way through. Greyfield has a Lazurian commander shot the moment he voluntarily surrenders, and even has an entire city nuked for the purpose of wiping out Captain Brenner.
• Contested Sequel: Days of Ruin certainly evokes this. Some fans appreciated the deeper plot and the reduced emphasis on CO Powers and abilities, allowing tactical decision-making to return to the forefront of gameplay (especially welcome after the broken mess of CO Power spam that was Dual Strike) while others derided the game for straying too far from the original series with its Darker and Edgier setting, making it feel more like a cheap knockoff than a true sequel. Many of the latter camp even declared that it would be garbage, despite not knowing anything else about it.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Oozium in Dual Strike. Sure, their movement range is a whopping one, but that's all they need considering that they instantly destroy anything in their path. Even worse, they have Nigh-Invulnerability against indirects, and considering that their defense against direct attacks is itself pretty strong, you pretty much have no choice but to sacrifice an expensive unit in order to take it down.
  • Anti-Tanks in Days of Ruin. For starters, they're the only indirect unit in the entire series that can counterattack, and they hit like a dump truck. It says a lot when a tank at full health can challenge one and come out on the losing end. In case all that wasn't enough, they can also hit copters for some idiotic reason^note The unit is based off of the 8.8 cm Flak gun, which was originally meant for shooting down aircraft, hence the ingame unit being able to hit helicopters, but turned out to also be an effective tank killer. , neutering what would otherwise be a very cost-effective way of dealing with them. The best answer to them is, counter-intuitively enough, infantry... but given how squishy foot soldiers are to begin with, the odds are good that they'll be severely crippled if not outright dead by the time they're within striking distance. Once an army's captured enough properties to be able to afford them regularly (keep in mind they're cheaper than Medium Tanks despite being roughly equal in terms of firepower), Anti-Tanks end up rendering Artillery (formerly the most cost-effective indirect in the game) completely obsolete. They do have some weaknesses (a low mobility of 4 and a relatively high cost that can render them a resource drain in a battle of attrition), but their primary predators are infantry, mechs, and recon units that're easy prey for many other units.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Lash is insanely popular among Advance Wars fans for her trademark Evil Laugh, Comedic Sociopathy and averting the series' Mildly Military nature by being openly and unapologetically evil. Her redesign in Re-Boot Camp attracted even more fans.
  • Hawke is this for his comparatively serious portrayal and demeanor, thus also avoiding Mildly Military like Lash. He's also perhaps the only villain with depth, showing Noble Demon traits in objecting to conflict with no clear gain, caring about his subordinates, and showing genuine respect for his foes. He also makes a great Foil to Lash in Dual Strike.
  • Sensei is one of the more popular allied COs introduced in the second game, for being a Cool Old Guy with a hilarious "old-timey" theme who is also far and away one of the most broken characters next to Sturm, a reputation he gets to show off in the story. Once again, on the subject of averting Mildly Military, fans also appreciate that his status as a war veteran is treated with a surprising amount of respect for such a cartoonish setting.
  • The IDS agent from Days of Ruin, who manages to make a very memorable appearance in her only scene where she acts as the Only Sane Man and is, understandably, freaking out about the situation.
  • After the release of ReBoot Camp, Clone Andy exploded in popularity after fans saw his redesign, new theme and highly expressive animations. It's also telling how many people wish he was better in gameplay so they could use him more.
• Epileptic Trees: Fans sometimes try to fit the Super Famicom Wars COs into the timeline of the later games, the most common theories having Caroline as Nell and Rachel's mother (something Re-Boot Camp alludes to) and Mr Yamamoto being a younger Sensei. Other theories include Billy Gates being Colin and Sasha's father, and Von Russo having some relation to Eagle.
• Evil Is Cool: Sturm, who embodies a very particular brand of coolness unique to video games with his Purposely Overpowered CO Power and various other game-breaking stats. If you play Advance Wars you can't but feel both awe and fear when you're going up against him.
• Fandom Rivalry: A particularly nasty one-sided one seems to have developed with Fire Emblem during the 2010's. Both are turn-based strategy games developed by Intelligent Systems, but after the release of Awakening, the Fire Emblem franchise exploded in popularity, getting a new (set of) game(s), a remake, two crossover spin-offs, and a mobile game. And during all of this, nothing new at all has developed for the Wars series, making fans feel left out in the cold while Nintendo focuses on milking its FE Cash-Cow Franchise. Not helped by statements that Wars has been halted because the developers are unable to implement Fire Emblem's relationship mechanics into a new entry, and the introduction of squads of unnamed soldiers in Three Houses has angered Wars fans even further. This is somewhat one-sided, mind, as Fire Emblem fans tended to be Friendly Fandoms before the explosion in question, and those aware of the franchise's sorry state tend to be more apologetic than annoyed. Thankfully, it seems to have died out with the announcement of Re-Boot Camp, with many Fire Emblem fans welcoming the announcement in addition to the Wars fans.
• Fanwork-Only Fans: The PVP for the Advance Wars games, especially competitive PVP, happens primarily on Advance Wars By Web, rather than actually playing the games through their built-in multiplayer. Before Re-Boot camp, this was primarily driven by the lack of official online multiplayer for the Advance Wars games before Days Of Ruin (which is also no longer playable online since 2014 after Nintendo shutdown the DS online servers), and even after Re-Boot Camp this still persists due to the remake's lackluster online features (such as only being able to play people by being friends on the Switch, being restricted from playing maps more than 300 tiles large, and only being able to play 1v1 matches). Many people additionally prefer playing AWBW since it integrates the new content from Dual Strike (namely the new COs, units, and Com Towers) into Advance Wars 2, and for it inherently featuring a competitive ladder system.
• Fountain of Memes: "Kanbei's Error?", a midgame level from the first game's campaign, is the source of many enduring memes in the Wars fandom, from Andy not knowing what an airport is, to Kanbei's vow to "deploy a mountain of troops", to it being bizarrely difficult in the Advance Campaign despite its Normal Mode version being a Joke Level.
• Game-Breaker: The series has its own page.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The Advance Wars games are much more popular in America than their native Japan. This may be justified as Japan was still getting Game Boy Wars games from Hudson Soft at the time, delaying a potential release, and once AW finally came out in 2004, the Nintendo DS was already in the process of phasing out the GBA, so AW never had the chance to properly establish itself.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The 'Mech Rush' tactic from Advance Wars is based on this trope. In particular, Sensei's CO Powers — spawning Infantry or Mechs on every city he owns — can quickly drive opponents insane.
  • Colin, with his power to increase his funds by half every couple of turns on top of normal income and having cheaper units, can out Mech-Swamp even Sensei, and when partnered with Hachi or Sensei in Dual Strike, this is made even worse.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • Drake in the first game, which is even remarked on by the Orange Star COs in-story. His day-to-day bonus is boosted defense on his naval units, forcing you to dedicate more units to sinking them, especially with Sami's firepower penalty on Subs. His Power deals 1 HP of damage to all your units, which is simple but very disruptive, and despite its fairly high cost of 40000 you'll be seeing it a lot due how often you'll be destroying his expensive naval units. Nearly all his maps feature Fog of War, and several also feature random weather to show off his rain gimmick, which can bog things down if it decides on snow. But exasperating all this is that if you want to unlock Rivals in Re-Boot Camp, you'll end up fighting Drake nine times, a distinction only shared by Olaf. And as seen under Unintentionally Unsympathetic, Drake has the fewest reasons for fighting Orange Star, so his battles aren't very compelling story-wise either.
  • Adder doesn't have any firepower bonuses, but his powers give a Boring, but Practical boost to movement and thanks to their cheap cost and the campaign often giving him expensive units, you'll be seeing them a lot. Get used to your formerly safe units suddenly being in danger because you looked at one of his Medium Tanks funny.
• Good Bad Bug: Advance Wars has an enemy control glitch where, once the player has edit mode unlocked and goes on to lose training battle 11, they can now control the enemy in the story mode and end every battle on turn one by selecting the "Surrender" option (which, thanks to said glitch, counts as instant victory in the player's favor).
• Growing the Beard: Famicom Wars, as well as the first few Game Boy Wars, were dreadfully slow affairs, with maps that were either horrifically imbalanced or quickly devolved into long, drawn-out stalemates. It wouldn't be until Advance Wars, released 13 years after the original, where both issues would be rectified and the series finally found its footing.^note Super Famicom Wars fixed the speed issues, but the map imbalances and perpetual stalemates still remained.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The first Advance Wars game shipped on September 10, 2001, and went on sale in most stores that Tuesday, which was, well, you know. On the unfortunate side, Japan was supposed to release the game later on October 12, 2001 as Game Boy Wars Advance. However, the unfortunate events caused it to be released much later on November 25th, 2004. What makes this even harsher is that the first mission is a force invading Orange Star, where Orange Star's headquarters is based off of the Empire State Building (U.S.A). For those wondering why the Wars series is more popular outside of Japan than its own country, this is the key reason.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Andy's voiced in Re-Boot Camp by Veronica Taylor, the iconic original English voice of Ash Ketchum, and her performance as Andy, fittingly, is near-identical to her Ash voice. Due to the delay, the game ended up releasing a few months after Ash's official retirement from the anime, making this (likely intentional) case of franchise cross-casting even more fitting and giving Nintendo fans a Spiritual Successor to the character after his farewell.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • One CO in Advance Wars: Dual Strike, released in 2005, is first seen trying (and failing, because of the approaching battle) to catch up on her reading. Her name? Kindle.
  • In the Re-Boot Camp, there exists a bug that sometimes allows direct units to attack enemies without actually moving to a tile next to them. In other words, Flak's Inderect Bombers have become real.
• Inferred Holocaust: Many a joke have been made about the playable CO's seemingly casual disregard for human lives. A single battle can end up with dozens or even hundreds killed, several vehicles/weapons destroyed and whole cities captured, all while the COs partake in idle chat with each other. Some may even praise the guy/girl who just commanded the destruction of their units after losing.
• It's the Same, So It Sucks: A few points of criticism towards Re-Boot Camp:
  • That the game mostly left the notorious balance problems of the original games untouched, or at least didn't give the option to play with rebalanced COs. This is most noticeable with Advance Wars 1 Max not being Nerfed; while it's understandable so as not to throw off the balance of the single-player campaign (many of his missions are arguably designed with his firepower in mind), it's a big problem in PVP, as unlike with AW2, there isn't a host of other broken COs and Max stands far above the rest of the much weaker CO roster in AW1, so if people want to play Max in a fairish fight, everyone would have to use Max or the map would have to be modified in a way to deliberately handicap the Max player.
  • The Challenge version of "Orange Dawn" not being altered. Many are surprised that WayForward toned-down some of the more infamous Hard Mode maps in the first game (such as "Kanbei's Error") but left this one untouched, as they feel placing such a tedious map this early turns people away from the "Black Hole Rising" Hard Campaign. (With a perfect Speed limit of 35 turns, higher than the final mission, Orange Dawn is very much the exception and not the rule)
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: The bird-named COs:
  • Eagle is consistently shipped with Sami, Andy, Drake, Jess and Hawke.
  • Hawke is often paired up with Lash, Andy, Eagle, Jake, Adder and even Sturm.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Sonja in the first Advance Wars is easily the worst CO in the series when playing without Fog Of War. Her D2D ability is only increasing her vision range by 1 and hiding her units' HP (which is more just an annoyance for the opponent), while her CO Power, Enhanced Vision, does nothing without FoW other than give her the +10% offense and defense boost that every CO Power gives at default. Most crippling is her massive bad luck penalty, where her units' attacks randomly do up to 19% less damage. So without FoW, she is essentially a vanilla CO whose units will deal 1-2 less HP worth of damage on average, you would be better off playing with no CO at all than playing Sonja. Even with FoW on, she still isn't any good with how much weaker her units are compared to every other CO's. This is likely why the story was made to have her not playable during the final mission of the campaign, as being stuck using her would have been a major handicap. The sequels would give Sonja fog-independent abilities and significantly reduce her bad luck penalty, making her usable without FoW and legitimately competent in FoW battles.
  • Olaf's snow-centric advantages in the first Advance Wars also leave much to be desired. Olaf's troop movements are immune to the effects of snow and his CO Power summons a Blizzard that covers the map in the stuff. However, randomized weather effects are an extreme rarity in the campaign and war room maps (while also rarely being enabled in competitive play), and rain effects slow Olaf's troops as much as snow does to other COs (so random weather is hardly a net benefit for him). Overall, Olaf's talents lack the firepower boosts or utility that other COs provide, not to mention that Blizzard also slows down allies, making his CO Power more of a burden than an asset in team battles (particularly relevant for the final map of the campaign). Subsequent games would significantly improve him, with the sequel giving him a very powerful Super CO Power in Winter Fury, which alongside summoning snow for a turn to slow down the opponent, also deals a global 2 HP damage to every enemy unit. This alone was enough to make him one of the better COs, but Dual Strike would push it farther by giving him a 20% firepower bonus in snow alongside making both his CO Powers summon snow for two turns, and remove his weakness in the rain entirely.
  • In Advance Wars 2, Flak's gimmick is that he has a better good luck bonus than other COs, allowing his units to sometimes do slightly extra damage, but he also has a bad luck penalty that will sometimes make his units do less damage. However, his good luck bonus is only 5% higher than other COs (up to 14%), while his bad luck penalty goes up to 9%, which alongside how the game calculates luck damage (it rolls for good luck and bad luck separately, than add the results together), results his units rarely dealing any extra damage at all. Then his CO Power and Super CO Power only amplify both his good luck and bad luck modifiers, which alongside the unrealiability that's very bad in a strategy game, also results in him usually dishing out a lot less damage than other COs do during their powers (Brute Force on average only his increases his units' damage output by 10%, and Barbaric Blow by 20%). Then for the final nail, Nell entirely outclassses him, as she has a higher good luck bonus (up to 19%) with no bad luck penality, and both her CO Powers boosts her good luck bonus higher than Flak's boosts his.
  • In Dual Strike, Flak is still this, as well as his Moveset Clone Jugger, for the same reasons mentioned above, though they are slightly better as their good luck bonus is higher, but not enough to meaningfully offset their bad luck penalty.
  • In Days Of Ruin, Greyfield is widely agreed to be the worst CO. His CO Zone only boosts Battle Copters, Seaplanes, and naval units, the latter two of which are firmly Awesome, but Impractical without playing with a huge economy available (while often not even being available as many maps lack seaports), and while Battle Copters are staple units, they alone can't win when they're hard countered by Anti-Airs and Dusters. Then his CO Power just resupplies his units' fuel, ammo, and materials, which, even by DOR standards, is an incredibly underwhelming power. While this is the only way to restore the materials of Rigs and Carriers, there isn't much need to deploy that many Temporary Airports & Ports, and the usual monetary investment in Seaplanes renders the idea of mass-producing them to require more materials from a single Carrier unlikely (without the use of custom rule modifiers).
  • In Re-Boot Camp, Clone Andy is made into an unlockable character after beating him in "Andy Times Two". He behaves exactly like his original counterpart (except with a power up bonus with his CO power) ...but only in terms of the first Advance Wars. Turn on the Advance Wars 2 mode, and he doesn't even have Andy's "Hyper Upgrade" Super CO power, making him inferior not only to Andy but to everyone else as well (with the possible exception of Flak).
• Love to Hate: Most of the villainous COs get this treatment, but Sturm and Lash stand out. Sturm for being genuinely intimidating in an otherwise silly setting and having the gameplay prowess to back it up, Lash for being completely unapologetically evil in a way that's both hilarious and genuinely terrifying at times (see "POW Rescue" and "Toy Box"), along with a fun gameplay gimmick.
• Memetic Badass: Colin has earned this reputation due to his status as one of the series' most infamously busted COs. Three words are all you need: POWER OF MONEY!
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Andy doesn't know what an airport is.^Explanation In the Advance Wars 1 mission "Kanbei's Error?", Sami points out that Orange Star has an airport under its control. Likely as a way of reminding the player what airports can do, Andy asks, "What's an airport, again?". However, the way the line is delivered makes it sound more like Andy's just an idiot. This has more or less become an Ascended Meme, what with the line featuring prominently in Re-Boot Camp's second trailer, and having a voice line.
  • "I shall deploy a mountain of troops!"^Explanation From the same mission as the above meme, Kanbei utters this classic line out of joy that he controls a base. The kicker being that, being on its own island with no way of transporting the troops it creates, said base is utterly useless.
  • Indirect Bombers^Explanation Early on in Advance Wars 2, Flak utters the line "These bombers... They're indirect-combat units." Anyone even remotely familiar with the series knows this is patently incorrect. However, the sheer absurdity of a bomber of all things being an indirect unit has led to it becoming a meme for suggesting ridiculous, overpowered units in general.
  • Battleship in a lake^Explanation Another gem courtesy of Flak, this one comes in the Hard Campaign version of "Test of Time", in which Flak has somehow, beyond all reason, managed to cram a battleship into a tiny lake. The sheer absurdity of the whole situation has led the fanbase to wonder whether or not Flak can outright defy the laws of causality and logic through sheer, overwhelming stupidity.
  • "You winnin' out here, son?" ^Explanation This is what Grit tells Colin at the end of Two-Week Test in Re-Boot Camp. No one was expecting a Shout-Out to the "Are ya winning, son?" meme.
  • "Nell, what's a strategy again?" ^Explanation Re-Boot Camp doubles down on the airport meme from the original game and has Andy say this in Mission 1 of the AW1 campaign... which makes Andy seem even dumber now.
  • "Green Earth sends its regards!" ^Explanation Eagle is voiced by SungWon Cho in Re-Boot Camp, leading to crossovers with his "King Dragon" universe's Fountain of Memes
  • "Meteor Crash" ^Explanation  In the Re-boot Camp there is a glitch that may cause the game to crash during a CO power activation. A lot of people find this happening to them during the final mission of Advance Wars 2: Final Front, just when Sturm activates his Meteor Strike (and usually when he says "Face your demise!"), jokes about Sturm's Super Power being so strong he crashed the game have spawned.
• Moral Event Horizon: They probably crossed it a long time beforehand, but in-story, Waylon (on Greyfield's orders) crosses it by murdering Forsythe execution-style, in front of just about everybody, and keeps his smug-ass attitude rolling the whole time. Greyfield and Caulder followed by using an implied nuke to kill Brenner, not giving a damn about it killing their own men in the area.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Sensei's power callouts in Re-Boot Camp sounding like they're coming out of an old 2-way radio has gained a lot of praise from fans.
• Narm: Sturm was the one thing meant to be taken seriously in the first Advance Wars's campaign. This was... somewhat ruined in the original game by him sporting a ridiculous Snifit-like design, gleefully snorting smoke when his units do well and sadly drooping his nose when he suffered losses. Re-Boot Camp thankfully gave Sturm his more intimidating Black Hole Rising design across both games.
• Narm Charm:
  • Courtesy of Veronica Taylor, Andy in Re-Boot Camp sounds exactly like Ash from Pokémon: The Series. This fits his character better than it has any right to, and she gives such a genuine performance that many find him far more likable than he was originally, as he now comes across as lovably dumb rather than just plain stupid.
  • The mission Toy Box has one of the most hilariously designed maps, as it looks like a missmatch created by a randomizer, and Lash's antics can be really hilarious. But none of that distract us for how utterly heartbroken Olaf feels at watching his hometown destroyed and his family and friends probably killed or displaced from the wrecked town and even Lash's careless attitude can just hammer how horribly twisted the Black Hole army really is. Even Grit at the end of the mission avoids making any snarky comment about it like he usually does, cementing it as one of the most dramatic moments of the entire game.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Creeper in Days of Ruin. Lin, being how she is, makes it worse by theorizing whether the infected feel the roots moving just beneath their skin. Knowing the guy who created it, the answer is most likely yes.
  • How about the extreme close up of Caulder that shows up midway through the final mission, with him sporting an incredibly disturbing Slasher Smile? Worse, the Sound Room randomly cycles through the game's CG artwork, meaning it could show up again there when you least expect it! It's practically a Screamer.
  • Lose Chapter 19 in Days of Ruin. Gage tells everyone to escape without him as he is set upon by the crazed cultists. You don't see what happens, but you can sure imagine it.
  • A rare moment from one of the Lighter and Softer games, "Into the Woods" in Dual Strike. It's a Fog of War mission with none of the enemies visible from the start (and they won't be for several turns), leaving you to advance blindly through the woods as the enemy commander says it's time to use "that". As you get to the first clump of woods, you find out the hard way exactly what "that" is, in your first encounter with the Oozium. Anything they move over instantly dies and they take a ton of damage to kill. Oh, and the mission is set up so that your Megatank is extremely likely to be the first victim if you're going in blind. What's worse is that attacking Oozium charges the enemy Power meters rapidly, so you're likely to eat a Dual Strike soon after this. The whole mission feels like something out of a horror movie.
  • Oozium in general can be horrifying. As mentioned, they instantly kill any unit they touch, and given their high resistance to indirects, the player has to fight them up close, putting on a lot of pressure to kill them quickly. It's even scarier if they eat an infantry unit, since it basically means that the soldiers are getting eaten alive.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Imagine a ground-based indirect unit with immense range and power, but hampered by the fact that it can only travel along a specific terrain type. Most people will immediately think of the Piperunner from Dual Strike, but this concept was actually done much earlier with the Train, waaay back in Super Famicom Wars.
  • The leveling up system for units in Days of Ruin actually began in Super Famicom Wars.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Clone Andy is only fought in one mission of the first game and is never seen again afterward, but the remake giving him Divergent Character Evolution made him one of the most popular characters in the series.
  • That poor IDS agent in Chapter 24, who is the only person to be aware that she's being commanded by a homicidal girl with a teddy bear or how doomed everyone is when an entire invasion force lands on a plane wing.
  "Sweet corn casserole! They have freakin' ROCKETS!"
• Paranoia Fuel: Comes with the territory on Fog of War maps due to not being able to see where (or even what) the enemy army is, but it becomes doubly so if Sonja's your opponent. First, she hides her units' HP from the enemy - so, for instance, you can manage to whittle down one of her Md Tanks to 1 HP, and she'll pull it back out of sight on her turn. Next turn, your Recon moves up and spots a Md Tank resting on one of her cities. Is it the same Md Tank as before, attempting to heal up and ripe to be picked off with a cheap shot from a weaker unit... or is it a full-health one ready to rip anything attempting a cheap shot at it to shreds? Second, her CO powers allow her to see into hiding places from a distance, which means you'll always be walking on eggshells knowing that, at any time, Sonja can expose your army and leave them with nowhere to hide. Made even worse in Dual Strike, when her powers also remove the defensive bonuses said hiding places provide. Now not only are your units exposed, they're also in for a world of hurt.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: As a series that started as a simple war game with no story at all, this is a given. The games from Advance on have attempted story campaigns, with varying degrees of success.
  • Advance Wars 1 has a campaign with a lot of fun Puzzle-like pre-deploy maps, and its Advanced difficulty is by far the biggest challenge in the series. The maps are strung together by an Excuse Plot that mostly exists to give all the heroic commanders a reason to fight eachother, and it has tons of Inferred Holocaust and Fridge Horror implications if you think about it too hard, making all the COs look like sociopaths. It's telling that the second game dialed back the characterizations.
  • Advance Wars 2 is the only game that's well-regarded for both its story and gameplay, and even then its story is very simple. But at least having the Allied COs fighting enemies who are blatantly and unapologetically evil for the entirety of the campaign avoided the questionable morality of the first game.
  • Dual Strike introduced new units, and its gameplay is still highly-regarded despite introducing several broken mechanics. The story, however, is seen as an inferior re-hash of 2, with less memorable villains, and an annoying Jive Turkey protagonist.
  • Days of Ruin will fall under this trope or Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game, depending on if you like the Darker and Edgier Tone Shift or not.
  • In the spinoff Battalion Wars, instead of trying to make the conflict darker and more serious, it took the Fanon interpretation of the AW1 commanders as war-hungry sociopaths and ran with it, turning the game into a Black Comedy war satire with deliberate Designated Hero Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonists. Fans tend to enjoy these games' stories as well as their gameplay, though for very different reasons to 2 and Days of Ruin.
• Remade and Improved: Advance Wars 1 + 2: Re-Boot Camp, aside from having excellent 3D graphics and higher quality sound and music, and the inclusion of voice acting, is made even better with the removal of a good number of Scrappy Mechanics that plagued the originals and the inclusion of some quality-of-life changes and, best of all, adding in online and offline multiplayer modes for up to 4 players to enjoy and even a user-friendly Level Editor mode where players can create their own custom maps and share them with other players. Aside from a few nitpicks that weren't present in the original versions of Advance Wars 1 or 2, Wayforward Technologies deserves to be commended for their efforts in making two excellent remakes that are faithful to the spirits of the originals.
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • Von Bolt, who replaced Sturm. While Sturm was Purposely Overpowered and killed off in the previous game, Von Bolt is facing off against a new crew of broken COs and the maps where he's fought in the campaign often give him a disadvantage instead of you.
  • Jake replacing Andy as the main character. While Andy wasn't exactly the most interesting character in the world, a lot of people would prefer him over Jake's Jive Turkey routine any day.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Andy's voice acting by Veronica Taylor makes him a lot more endearing, which has won over some fans who hated his extreme stupidity in the original game. To some, being voiced by the same actor who voiced Ash Ketchum made his ditzy antics sound much funnier and more believable.
  • The Andy Clone in the original Advance Wars 1 was considered a very silly plot point even by the game's standards, and simply being a copy-paste of the real Andy, cheerful Power portrait and all didn't do him any favors. Re-Boot Camp gave him a unique design and his own themes, added a Call-Forward to Dual Strike in his troops' designs, and made him playable in other modes, and many fans now find him genuinely cool and intimidating. It's telling that their only complaint now is WayForward didn't do enough with him: he's still only fought in one mission and doesn't have a Super CO Power.
• Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic: One of the most noteworthy changes to the mechanics of Re-Boot Camp is that the enemy AI no longer cheats in Fog of War (though there's no speech bubble notification that their units get halted when they collide with an enemy in hiding, there's an audible one, and they suffer the same consequences as a player would). This alone makes the first game's Challenge Campaign significantly more tolerable, as many of the more notorious missions in the original Advance Campaign had a large part of their difficulty derived from the AI being able to see and attack your units at all times unless they were in cover; now, not only do they have to follow the same rules of engagement as you, but they can even get ambushed by your own troops, something that took the original series until Days of Ruin to implement. This allows the player to engage in tactical plays on these maps, such as destroying enemy Recons to cut off their vision, or positioning units just out of sight.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Super Famicom Wars implements some mechanics in a way that are more annoying than their later appearances:
    • No first-strike advantage. In this game both combatants attack simultaneously, so you can't avoid taking damage by initiating the battle. Additionally, anti-airs cannot attack bombers without crippling themselves in the process, and same thing for bombers attacking anti-airs and mechs shooting tanks.
    • Can't deploy new units in the frontlines. Captured airports and harbors are only useful for restocking and repairing. This usually means new units are late to the contested areas.
    • Transport units can't be loaded and moved on the same turn. This means infantry can't move 10 tiles in a turn like in Advance Wars, and in general transportation is slowed down. APCs can attack, but it's usually not worth the trade, as their role is support rather than combat.
    • Transported units lose as much health as their vehicle does. Aside from the obvious firepower loss, it hampers infantry's capturing ability and prevents the tactical use of transports as shelters.
  • In the final mission of the first Advance Wars, "The Final Battle", you control three COs, one of which is Andy, while other two are determined by fulfilling certain criteria in the campaign. ^note On the left side, you get Grit if you chose Max for the mission "Max Strikes!", get Olaf if you chose Andy for that mission and then later beat "Olaf's Navy" by rout, or you get Max if you do neither of those things. On the right side, you get Drake if you play all four of the Green Earth missions with Andy, you get Eagle if you play the Green Earth missions with Sami only instead, you get Kanbei if you beat all three of the missions against him fast enough to unlock the Sonja missions (while Kanbei overrides Drake if you fulfill both their criteria, and is overridden by Eagle if you fulfill his), and you get Sami if you do none of those things. Besides being a massive Guide Dang It!, it was particularly harsh to new players or those who didn't know the criteria, as the majority of players will end up with Grit and Sami for the final battle; players are likely to use Max in "Max's Strikes!" for being the first mission he is available or simply because they know he is a Game-Breaker, unknowingly locking themselves into Grit for "The Final Battle", while new/inexperienced players will be unlikely to fulfill the criteria for Kanbei and will either switch up their CO choices for the Green Earth missions or just use Max to smash through them, unknowingly locking them into Sami for "The Final Battle". This leaves players stuck with very unsuited COs for the mission, making it much more difficult, exacerbated when the players likely to end up in this predicament are the ones who most need the power of Max and Kanbei or Eagle. Even those who know detest this mechanic, as it forces them to not use Max in his first mission, and forces them to fulfill the difficult requirements for Kanbei or not use Max in any of the Green Earth missions (while having to play "Rivals!" afterward too if they want Eagle). Re-Boot Camp simply letting you choose any of the COs regardless of what you do in the campaign was a much well-received change.
  • Dual-Front battles in Dual Strike. Most of these maps feature a main front and a second, smaller map with either a required objective or one that makes the main front significantly easier if achieved. The problem is the second front is usually controlled by the AI, and your only input is giving them vague tactics like "Assault" or "Defend" and, as mentioned, they have a specific objective to achieve that would benefit from direct player control. Most frustratingly, you have the option to switch the second front to manual control in only some campaign missions, and the final mission is not one of these. There are also a few dual-front War Room maps, and you can't choose manual control there, so good luck S-Ranking them.
  • Days of Ruin changed the scoring system to missions significantly. While it does allow for more flexibility by increasing the value of a perfect score (150 in each category as opposed to 100 while keeping an "S" rank at 300 total), the Technique score is changed by comparing how many units were used by the player versus the opponent. Not lost, used. While this is supposed to stop players from spamming units to inflate the Technique score, it has the side effect of rewarding the player for letting the enemy build more units. Similarly counter-intuitive is Power, which now averages the total damage percentages across all attacks the player made, meaning to get a good score you have to waste full-health Bomber and War Tank attacks on enemies with 1 HP left, which doesn't encourage practical and efficient use of units. On top of all this, the maximum score in each category is only theoretically 150. Due to the way Power and Technique work, many Campaign maps don't have enough units on both sides to max either score, making a perfect 450 outright impossible. This makes comparing high scores online rather convoluted.
  • Re-Boot Camp, while adding many an Anti-Frustration Feature and removing many of the examples present in the original games, has a few new ones (which are fortunately mostly minor nitpicks aside from one):
    • While it's possible to replay individual missions after completing them and even select missions from exclusive branching paths in the first campaign after completing the campaign, the dialogue scenes that play on the map don't play, rendering them Permanently Missable Content. On a related note, the dialogue that plays in between completing the factory missions in the second campaign and those referring to finding secret lab maps are also only played once. Replaying the relevant missions won't have them play again when said cities are captured.
    • Mission ranking is based on the army whose turn took place last. In many of the factory missions in AW2 it's usually a supporting army who does this by destroying the pipe. This has the severe consequence of low power scores because it's usually up to the primary army to smash up units. This is at its worst for Green Earth's factory mission as it's up to Yellow Comet to sneak past Hawke's forces to destroy the pipe, but they don't engage much of his army at all.
    • With the tutorial missions being condensed and many of its lessons being transferred to the campaign missions proper, it's a common sight in the first game's campaign for Nell to ask the player if they want a lecture on various units (such as naval units). This prompt will appear at the start of those missions every time, even when restarting the missions via forfeit.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • Missiles in Advance Wars are powerful Anti-Air units, but the high mobility of air units, being indirects (and thus easily maneuvered around), their terrible movement making it a pain to move them around, and their limited range means one is better served building Fighters (excellent range and can chase down other air units) and/or Anti-Air Tanks (cheaper, nearly as powerful, not limited to fighting aircraft). Days of Ruin gave them increased range, but that mainly just turned them from "usually impractical" to "very niche".
  • Naval units in all the Advance Wars games, due to being so expensive for what they do (with all combat naval units costing more than a Medium Tank), having limited ability to interact with land units (only Battleships can attack them, and being restricted to sea terrain, they can't get involved in the nitty gritty of land fronts), and being easily countered by air units (Cruisers and Carriers can deal a lot of damage to them, but air units easily outmaneuver them), and the resident Naval unit specialist, Drake, not boosting their attack stats until Dual Strike. Days Of Ruin tried improving them by introducing Gunboats as a cheap Naval option, giving Battleships the ability of being the only indirect that can fire after moving in the same turn, and allowing Carriers to serve as mobile airports that can deploy the new Seaplane unit, alongside a general slight price reduction, but even with these buffs naval combat still went mostly ignored in PVP play.
  • Indirect units as a whole become this in Dual Strike. Due to CO Powers charging so much faster, increasing the pace of the game dramatically, luring the enemy into firing range is no longer as effective as it used to be (it's much more effective to rush in and lay down the hurt with direct attackers, and use your enemy's attacks to feed your power meters so that you can use your CO Powers and lay down even more hurt). This makes indirect specialists like Grit all but useless, especially on maps with Airports as Black Bombs will ruin their day.
  • Fighters became this in Days Of Ruin with the introduction of the Duster; while they were fairly niche before for being a very expensive unit that can only attack other air units, they were the Anti-Air unit, that would destroy copters and Bombers without retaliation, while outmaneuvering every other unit in the game, with a good Fighter potentially allowing you to control the air. With the Duster's introduction though they lost their niche, as while Dusters do their job less effectively, they cost a lot less (13K vs. 20K) and will still cripple copters and deal significant damage to Bombers while outmanuevering them, and unlike Fighters can attack land units, which even with their attack being weak against land units, allows them to still contribute once they do their job of taking out threatening air units, instead of just being a useless flying 20K hunk of metal like Fighters often end up. Dusters can even deal significant damage to Fighters if they get the first strike, so even as an answer to opposing Dusters it's more cost effective to just deploy the even cheaper Anti-Airs or your own Duster.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Getting an E-Rank or even a D-Rank is a lot harder than it sounds, since playing badly enough to attain either means you'll pretty much always be one wrong move away from getting defeated outright. What's worse, getting those ranks became an Achievement Mockery in Dual Strike, leading to some of the most arduous grinds for completionists looking to complete their medal collection.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: The games in the main Advance Wars trilogy have gotten progressively easier with each installment, and nowhere is this more evident than in each game’s hard mode. The first game’s Advanced Campaign is typically seen as ludicrously difficult, often swerving into flat-out unfair due largely to the added difficulty primarily being derived from giving the enemy a ridiculously lopsided advantage. Black Hole Rising's Hard Campaign, while still quite difficult, is much more fair and balanced in its challenge than the previous installment’s exercise in frustration. Then in Dual Strike, the Hard Campaign is often easier than the normal campaign due to having access to every single CO and Ability you’ve unlocked throughout the course of the game.
• Sequel Displacement: The pre-Advance Wars games are obscure and little-played, even by fans of the series, due to not being released outside Japan and lacking any kind of story. Also, the original Advance Wars isn't spoken of nearly as often as Black Hole Rising — the latter's more interesting mechanics, better story, larger cast, and less unfortunate release date will do that.
• Sequelitis: The tactical streamlining of Advance Wars is both a positive that allowed many players to easily pick up and play through the game and a negative that affected its long-term replayability. Although the two sequels to Advance Wars, Advance Wars 2 and Dual Strike, had sold reasonably well, the prevailing complaint among players was that it felt like they were playing the same game despite some innovations being made to keep things fresh. Days of Ruin was an attempt to start over with a new slate which was welcomed and criticized for being too drastic. The lack of popularity in Japan and Nintendo focusing their attention on Fire Emblem also contributed to the series being put on a 13-year hiatus.
• Signature Scene:
  • For the first game, it's "Kanbei's Error?", the reasons detailed under Fountain of Memes and Memetic Mutation above.
  • For the Black Hole Rising, it's the Unexpectedly Dark Episode that is "Toy Box"; which has Olaf's home town destroyed by Lash and is played completely seriously.
  • Days of Ruin has Brenner's Heroic Sacrifice and Will's subsequent You Are in Command Now moment.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Super Famicom Wars has four ending songs which are all remixes of The Thunderer by John Philip Sousa.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Though Von Bolt's considered a Replacement Scrappy for Sturm, those who hate Jake will probably love him for this remark to Jake in the final battle:
  Jake: Dude. You couldn't be more of a loser! You only care about yourself! You're not thinking about the land or anyone else. That kind of thing will only lead to your own destruction!
  Von Bolt: Whaaa haa haa haaa! Shut it, boy! Your inane hipster slang is an affront to my ears and a waste of my time. Slink home while you can still walk!
• Stress-Relieving Gameplay: Any particularly good turn where you pop your Super CO power, can now one-shot a variety of units that you'd normally do around 75-95% damage to, and you get to just run around for that entire turn eating half of your opponent's army. Mmmm... delicious. Eagle and Sami's Tag Power in Dual Strike is especially well-known for this, as using it with Eagle in the lead essentially gives you three turns in a row (with the third letting your foot soldiers capture instantly).
• That One Attack: Several examples.
  • Sturm's Meteor Strike lands a large meteor that deals 8 HP damage to any unit it hits.
  • Rachel's Lucky Lass isn't much of a threat. Her Covering Fire, however, launches three missiles which each deal 3 HP damage. It's even worse if you're playing on a map which renders it harder to spread out your units, where it effectively becomes a cheaper and stronger version of the aforementioned Meteor Strike.
  • Eagle's Lightning Strike in the first game puts all other CO powers to shame, with the possible exception of Sturm. It essentially grants him another turn with all of his non-infantry units. When Super CO powers were introduced in the sequel, Lightning Strike was rightfully relegated to being a Super CO power instead of a regular one like everybody else. Also, it was given a visibly large charge requirement.
  • Grit's Snipe Attack in the first game may be the only one that comes close to Lightning Strike. AW1 Grit is deceptively weak day-to-day, with only +1 range on his indirects and no firepower bonus, combined with weak direct combat units including infantry. But once he uses this power, his indirects suddenly have +2 range and +65% firepower, turning all his Rockets into an 8-tile "Instant Death" Radius. And unlike Lightning Strike, it doesn't charge slowly. Re-Boot Camp seems to Lampshade this by having Grit's theme go from laid-back guitar to The Power of Rock when he uses it.
  • Kindle's CO power, Urban Blight, can qualify. Especially if you have too many units on properties (which the attack targets). Also, if she uses it when you're trying to capture at least one property, it will slow down the process; a unit begins capturing slower the lower their health gets. Oddly, her Super CO power, High Society, isn't nearly as devastating since it only boosts her firepower based off of how many properties she owns. It's a theory that these two powers have been erroneously switched around during development.
  • While not as dangerous as Firestorm or Meteor Strike, Von Bolt's only power Ex Machina: deals 3 HP damage, targets your most pricey units, and renders them unable to move or attack for a turn^note although they can at least counterattack.
  • Any CO power that deals global damage can be a pain. The most notable examples are Drake's Tsunami/Squall/Typhoon and Hawke's Black Wave/Storm.
  • Tabitha's Firestorm works exactly like Meteor Strike, minus the visuals. What makes this more devastating is that every unit in her arsenal becomes 160/160 stats minimum for that turn.
• That One Boss:
  • If Eagle is the opposing CO in the first game, you know you're in for a bad time. Not only is his power That One Attack as mentioned above, but none of his maps give him any navel units, essentially putting you against someone with all strengths and no weaknesses. He's also always given multiple Fighters and Bombers to start with, and these units are not only strong (his Bombers oneshot Anti-Air on anything below a forest if they strike first, which is very likely), but also charge his power fast when they're destroyed. It's telling that most of his battles feature in the That One Level section, and that he's the face of the Brutal Bonus Level.
  • Hawke in the second game, for reasons similar to Eagle: he's normally let down by an expensive CO Power, but the campaign tends to give him large pre-deployed armies of expensive units like Bombers and Neotanks, letting him hit you with Black Wave and Black Storm much more frequently, and earlier, than he would in a regular game (either by hitting your units or more likely, you hitting his units). Combined with his usual benefits of units with generally better stats and Black Hole's plethora of long-range cannons, and he's always guaranteed to bring out the pain. He's never encountered until the final leg of the campaign for a reason (except on Hard Mode, where he's fought once in Orange Star just to hammer in the difficulty).
  • Sturm is essentially Hawke who flat-out ignores traditional game balance in favor of making him as much of a fearsome enemy to fight. Day-to-day, his units stats are boosted even higher than Hawke's (in the first game, his troops are Glass Cannons who can wreak havoc if left unchecked, in the second game, they're just better in both offense and defense), his troops are unaffected by terrain movement penalties, and his Meteor Strike is listed in That One Attack for good reason. As his forces are typically facing off against three other armies, this makes his otherwise lengthy CO power far more frequent, resulting in clusters of troops being rendered all but dead.
• That One Disadvantage:
  • Having a firepower penalty on Infantry is typically considered a death sentence for a CO's viability, since Infantry are needed to capture properties and build your economy and having a bad capture game will quickly spiral into a losing battle. It's notable that Grit in AW1 and Jess in AW2 each lost their Infantry weakness in the subsequent game and instantly turned from mediocre to Game-Breaker. Colin is the only one who can get away with it by virtue of being able to Zerg Rush the map with cheaper and more cost-effective units.
  • A CO having less defense on anything is freely giving the opposition a massive attack increase by default, made even worse if Comm Towers are present. Grimm is considered low tier in multiplayer purely because all of his units have a defense penalty, which makes him have less staying power than all other CO's.
• That One Level: There's so many that the turn-based games have their own page.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Unlocking some of the COs in the first Advance Wars was quite difficult or annoying, with most players having to play through the campaign several times or look up a guide to unlock everyone, if they did so at all:
    • To unlock Drake, you have to use Andy in all four of the Green Earth missions. This isn't difficult once you know, but an average player isn't likely to figure this out on their own unless they really like Andy and only play him, as nothing ingame hints that you'll get anything special for specifically playing Andy in these missions.
    • To unlock Eagle, you must play all the aforementioned Green Earth missions with Sami instead, while Sami additionally has harder missions in these maps. Then achieving this condition unlocks a bonus mission at the end called Rivals that you must beat, where you go one-on-one against Eagle with Andy in a map that is horribly lopsided against you and more difficult than any other mission in the game. Plus because unlocking Drake and Eagle require playing different characters on the same missions, they become Mutually Exclusive Party Members that requires you to play through the campaign at least twice to unlock everyone.
    • To unlock Sonja, the player has to beat Kanbei in the three Yellow Comet missions under a hidden and rather strict turn limit, where they then unlock three bonus missions fighting against Sonja that they must clear. Nothing ingame hints about anything special happening by beating Kanbei especially fast, other than different post-battle dialogue for clearing the turn limit that a first-time player wouldn't notice anyway, and with the strictness of the turn limits, most players won't achieve it on their own without prior knowledge unless they replay the campaign explicitly aiming for a high rank on every mission. Then the Sonja missions themselves are quite difficult Fog Of War missions which require the player to use each of the three Orange Star COs for one, so they can't just bumrush through them all with Max.
    • To unlock Sturm, the player must unlock all the other COs but Nell, which requires doing all the above. Then Sturm himself costs a hefty amount of coins to buy at 100, which might require the player to do some additional grinding to afford.
    • Then finally to unlock Nell, the player must clear the Advanced Campaign, which has been noted elsewhere on this page for how much more difficult it is than anything else in the Advance Wars series, being beyond the capabilities of the typical player without looking up step-by-step guides. Nell's unlock condition alone meant most players back in the day did not have files with the complete roster unlocked. It also doesn't help that if someone did try looking up how to unlock Nell, several places erroneously stated that you had to clear all the War Room maps to unlock her, leading to some players fruitlessly beating all the War Room maps only to find that she still wasn't available to buy. Subsequent games made it much easier to unlock Nell, with the prerequisite being merely to complete the campaign on normal difficulty, or in the case of Re-Boot Camp, completing all missions in the first campaign on casual/classic difficulty.
  • While all the Lab maps in Advance Wars 2's campaign are a Guide Dang It!, the Green Earth one is particularly annoying, as its city is located in "That Sinking Feeling" on an out-of-the-way island you'd have no reason to visit otherwise. In order to get this one, you have to waste a lot of funds on a Lander and divert one of your Infantry to it, during a Timed Mission. You are also subject to the AI deciding to send his own infantry and flying units there, turning the whole ordeal into a Luck-Based Mission, as you do not have the time to send more troops there if the initial attempt fails. To add insult to injury, you also have to beat the Lab mission this unlocks to unlock Neotanks for Green Earth (and since Jess is a vehicle specialist and Eagle can make them move twice, you want to), and the Green Earth Lab mission happens to be That One Level.
  • Obtaining the various Black Hole prototype units in the campaign of Dual Strike follows the same vein as getting the plans for the Neotanks in Black Hole Rising. While acquiring the Black Boat and Black Bomb isn't too difficult in either the regular or hard campaigns, the Piperunner takes the cake in being so insufferable to obtain that some players don't bother getting them at all for such a niche unit. The optional mission is unlocked during "Snow Hunters", a map in which the Allied Nations face off against Hawke, his one and only appearance in the campaign as an opponent, who still remains as threatening as he was in Black Hole Rising. The city in which the lab location is stored in is located in an isolated island to the southeast, requiring a considerable bit of effort to get to. Completing "Snow Hunters" is a slog in the normal campaign and a much larger one in the hard campaign. The mission in which the Piperunners are unlocked, "Spiral Garden", is itself an insufferable mission, with the map's layout slowing any meaningful progress against Kindle (who will make liberal use of her "Urban Blight" CO Power, damaging any units located on city/base spots), and few seams to breach in the labyrinth of pipes.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Darker and Edgier shift aside, there were more than a few people displeased that Days of Ruin trimmed the single-player modes down to Campaign and Versus after Dual Strike had a variety of gameplay modes. In particular, the removal of the War Room upset fans since it had been around since the original Advance Wars.
  • While there are people who enjoy the remixed CO themes as the powerup themes for Reboot Camp, there's a camp of people who feel they should have at least turned on an option to have the standard power/super power theme play instead - which strangely enough, play during the Factory missions (both Allied Nations and Black Hole).
  • The Re-Boot Camp version of Hawke's theme is by far the most controversial in the entire game due to it removing the sinister industrial sound effects (including the signature alarm sound) and adding more electrical guitars. While the result isn't bad, a lot of people feel it's not as menacing as the original.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • In Days Of Ruin, people lament that The Beast wasn't a proper playable CO with his own abilities, feeling him being wasted as just an unplayable Starter Villain for the tutorial arc of the campaign that has no in-game abilities at all. Davis and Cyrus also get this reaction for not being playable COs, with the former being a fairly prominent side character for much of the game that even shows up in one battle (albeit with no abilities at all like The Beast), and the latter being the Token Good Teammate of IDS and the only one of Caulder's family who isn't a CO. These characters feel especially wasted with DOR having a much smaller CO roster than the previous two games.
  • Also in Days Of Ruin, there's Isabella in regards to the campaign; unlike the aformentioned three characters, she is a full-fledged playable CO (and a very powerful one at that), yet doesn't appear in a single campaign battle in any capacity. It's not like she was meant to be a bonus Purposely Overpowered CO either in the vein of Nell and Hachi from the previous games, when she is one of the four default COs available for vs. mode right from the start, and was involved in the thick of the campaign's story for the entirety of it.
  • From ReBoot Camp, many consider Clone Andy to be this in a gameplay sense, due to being the only character in the game to lack a Super CO Power.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Black Hole Rising ends with Hawke usurping Sturm as commander-in-chief of Black Hole. A lot of fans consider it a wasted opportunity that Dual Strike begins with Von Bolt suddenly in control of Black Hole, and Hawke no longer the commander-in-chief, and thus we don't get to see what a Black Hole under Hawke would look like.
• Too Cool to Live: Captain Brenner in Days of Ruin. The Big Good of the game and a paragon of virtue in an apocalyptic setting, he naturally dies midway through the game to give Will a character arc of trying to live up to his example.
• Unexpected Character: Few people expected the Andy clone in the first game to get a unique makeover in Re-Boot Camp. Fewer still expected him to be unlockable and playable via Hachi's store.
• Vindicated by History:
  • Dual Strike was initially decried as a broken mess, but as the years went on fans went back to it and found it a surprisingly enjoyable multiplayer experience when playing without Tag Powers. Its new COs, units, and the Comm Tower mechanic were included in Advance Wars By Web, which is otherwise based on Black Hole Rising, and Black Boats prove popular in the metagame there.
  • Days of Ruin had some fans decrying it when it first came out for its post-apocalyptic setting and Darker and Edgier tone than previous games. In the years since however, it's picked up its own fanbase for its likable cast of characters, interesting new game mechanics and the fact that, while having a more serious setting, it isn't too serious and still has plenty of gags and funny dialogue.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • Cruisers are able to carry and transport up to two Copter units, and they resupply their fuel and ammo when they do. Since Cruisers are already a highly expensive and situational unit, this mechanic very rarely sees use outside of its dedicated tutorial, to the point where many players forget it exists. Sami's version of "Battle Mystery" in the first game's campaign is one of the few time it might be a relevant tactic.
  • CO units, zones, and powers are introduced late in the campaign of Days of Ruin, written with Gameplay and Story Integration in mind where Will breaks out of his Heroic BSoD after Brenner's sacrifice. As a result, during the rest of the campaign, only Will's CO powers are used at great frequency since Brenner is dead and the other playable COs are only playable once, and/or their missions have their units pre-deployed with no means of producing more (and thus lack the resources to deploy a CO unit). Lin has two missions where she can deploy as a CO with only one of them having Fog of War, rendering her CO power useless in the other.
  • All but one of the campaign missions in Days of Ruin take place in either the wasteland or grass terrain type, with the sole exception being "Icy Retreat", which takes place in the snow terrain type. None of its missions take place in the desert, despite being used for some of the War Room and Versus maps.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Drake in the first game's campaign. He's one of the three Hero Antagonist COs alongside Grit and Sonja who turn out to be working against Sturm all along. However, while Grit was a genuine Punch-Clock Villain and Sonja was an Unscrupulous Heroine who's called out on her methods, Drake realizes Orange Star probably wasn't behind the conflict. Nevertheless, despite that being as early as his first battle, he continues fighting their troops for 3 more missions just to "test his theory". He tries justifying it after "Battle Mystery" as drawing Sturm's attention while Grit and Sonja find his base. However, that implies he's willing to let many Orange Star and Green Earth troops die for this "distraction", and he still acts antagonistic during his missions. (The Sami version of "Battle Mystery" in particular has him hunting down a lone Infantry unit trapped behind his lines.)
  • Generally speaking, a lot of characters had this issue in the first game due to a combination of their eagerness to throw troops at their opponents for fun (which is especially evident in Rivals, a "friendly spar" between Andy and Eagle), without any indication that they’re not using live ammo. Later games tone this down with Black Hole being more relevant in maps, though there’s still shades of it there.

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