Solid gameplay but new units and CO powers make it impossible to make a good assault and new close up mode is useless
The new CO powers are virtually useless. The CO zone on units ranges from 1-3 and gives a power boost to units within the range. However, the range of 2 on most CO's is just big enough to put your CO unit in danger and get it destroyed before you manage to rack up the number of attacks necessary. You also don't get more of a CO charge when you get attacked, only when attacking. Even if you do manage to get your power charged up, most CO powers are ineffective and really don't change the tide of a battle. Many offer movement boosts or a vision range increase. The few good ones like +3 to all units don't come with attack boosts and still don't help with that final push.
A major reason why the mechanics are so screwed up on this Advance Wars, is how defensively the land units are based. With the addition of anti-tank units that can use indirect or direct fire can cripple even the best forces. Tanks do little damage to these units and take huge damage which is only natural from an anti-tank unit. However, with the removal of any super strong and expensive tanks like the Neotank, the strongest forces can have trouble breaking through a choke hold defense. A few rockets and several anti-tanks can stop any force that doesn't have large naval or air forces to back it up.
As far as naval and air units go they are much more balanced. Though the new duster unit does huge damage to basic aircraft and reasonable damage to weaker land units while not taking damage from tanks and infantry. On the naval side a new anti-ship unit can break through a defense quickly but costs a bit much for its low defense and one-shot capabilities.
The poor game play mechanics on this game make it impossible to crush a well defended player and there is never an element of fear. I like the feeling of "OMG a Neotank is coming!!!" and scrambling to build up some meager defenses at the last minute. The new multiplayer mode also is a nice addition, but seems underdeveloped. The same goes with the close up mode. You get a different look at each unit, but lose the big picture view. This would be beneficial if units were hard to distinguish in the zoomed out mode, but units look obviously different in both modes. Both new modes seem like an afterthought. All in all it is still the same old Advance Wars but the exciting elements seem to have been toned down way too much.