AWDS is an overall solid strategy game, and is an easy recommendation for fans of the genre.
Like its predecessors, AWDS has you in charge of an army to defend you territory from the invading black army. Basically you are defending the area of Omega Land, real original. :roll: The main campaign is broke into about 28 different missions. Most of the mission you must either: destroy all opposing forces, or capture their HQ to win. Some missions have different things to do, and you can unlock some optional missions if you want. Each mission is different then the last, some are on land, in the air, on the sea, and sometimes you have two fronts to worry about. It all adds up to a single player experience that has a lot of twists and never seems to get old.
At the beginning of each mission you must choose you COs. Each army can have two COs, but sometimes you will be commanding multiple armies and will have three or four cos. Each CO has their own unique abilities that will help you battle. Choosing the right CO for the situation is a matter of win or lost. And as you progress through the game your COs will gain levels and you can upgrade their abilities. Knowing the abilities of all the COs and evaluating the terrain to find the right CO is very important. But this by no means is a bad thing, this adds a huge layer of strategy to the game; and will engross you into the game to find the perfect CO for the mission.
Once you choose your COs you can start to battle. AWDS uses a turn based battling system. AWDS doesn’t reinvent strategy games; it has the usual move your people, attack, buy new units, etc. But the game doesn’t need to reinvent strategy games; the game already plays great and why fix something that isn’t broken? AWDS has a ton of things going on at once, to be effective in battle you must know each unit inside and out. You must know each units movement, attack power, fuel consumption, vision, etc. Half the fun of the game is getting to learn each unit’s strengths and weaknesses. Because of this the game has a fairly big learning curve, but the game eases you into the main campaign so you never feel at a lost. The main fun of the game is when your plan works out. Beating that Megatank feels awesome, or capturing the HQ while you blockade the opposing forces so you can get it; it’s just a really satisfying game, especially on some of the harder missions. Trust me some levels will take you multiple tries to beat, and that’s in normal mode. After you beat the campaign you can play a hard mode! :o The gameplay might not sound all that thrilling on paper, but in-game it is very addicting.
Now that you’ve beat the main campaign you’d think you played most of the game right? Wrong! :P The main campaign isn’t even half of the game. Besides the main campaign you have the war room, which has literally hundreds of new maps you can play. And you can also do the survival campaigns, and the combat mode. And for those who must collect everything in the game, good luck! There are 300 medals you can earn in the game. And for even more value they added in a map editor so you can make your own maps. AWDS just has tremendous replay value, it never gets old.
The graphics in AWDS are a little on the weak side. There’s nothing particularly bad about them, but not really anything great about them. They are okay to look at, but they could have been so much better. There are also animations when units attack, which frankly gets old after a while. So luckily you can turn off the animations, which is what I choose to do. So basically the graphics are okay, they’re not going to break the game for you.
Surprisingly, I liked the music and sound affects in AWDS. The sound affects don’t really go for a realistic feel to them. But they get the job done while keeping up with the upbeat, colorful game. And the music in the game is pretty good. Each CO has their own theme, each grapping the character of the CO. Each song has an upbeat style to it that goes great with the colorful terrain.
Overall AWDS is a great and long strategy game for the DS. There is just so much to do and learn in the game you could easily surpass 100 hours of play, something few handled games can say. If you like strategy games or just want a long, challenging game on the DS, AWDS is perfect for you. And look out for AWDS 2 coming out later this year. ;)