28th August 2006, 5:54 PM
DJ/ BW is a bit different. In most RTS games you typically survive missions and move on becoming more advanced (level, items, skill sets) as you progress. In BW the rifle grunts you see in the start of the game are the same rifle grunts you have at the end of the game; they dont advance.
In Advance Wars your CO moves up levels and acquires more abilities to make up a skill set. Each mission almost requires you to take advantage of the skills. In BW you dont get that luxury, you're presented with a gauntlet and mission objectives (very shooter oriented) and face enemies that each require their own strategy and specific unit type in order to be taken down effectively (think Pikmin). So the game presents each mission (after the training) for the player to consider and plot out, there's no time limit (two or three missions have time critical objectives though) so you can play as slow as you want, but your score will suffer.
Score is something that's pretty much been ignored in video games for decades now, but BW makes it a centerpiece in the game. If you just survive the missions and finish the game it can probably be beaten in a few days, but the whole point of BW is to take each mission seriously, know it like the back of your hand and get the S score.
With some missions I had to do them 3 or 4 times to find that S score, but with others it took me 20 tries in order to find the best strategy and get the S. This is what the game is actually about, it's not meant to be played like a shooter where all you worry about is the objectives and your health bar - you have to manage your battalion and make sure all your boys make it out alive while also killing every enemy and doing it in the required time while also securing the objectives. Instead of increasing your abilities or moving up levels, you actually gain real experience points and become better at playing the game as you experiment with the battalion management, individual and group orders, and using tried and true tactics to slice through the enemy battalions.
It's possible to get 300% on each mission (perfect) and it's possible to finish each mission with a 1% which is obviously the willy-nilly way of playing and will severely kill the game. So you basically end up playing each mission over and over shooting for that S rank, which means you know all the mission names by heart. It really is unlike any RTS on the market.
In Advance Wars your CO moves up levels and acquires more abilities to make up a skill set. Each mission almost requires you to take advantage of the skills. In BW you dont get that luxury, you're presented with a gauntlet and mission objectives (very shooter oriented) and face enemies that each require their own strategy and specific unit type in order to be taken down effectively (think Pikmin). So the game presents each mission (after the training) for the player to consider and plot out, there's no time limit (two or three missions have time critical objectives though) so you can play as slow as you want, but your score will suffer.
Score is something that's pretty much been ignored in video games for decades now, but BW makes it a centerpiece in the game. If you just survive the missions and finish the game it can probably be beaten in a few days, but the whole point of BW is to take each mission seriously, know it like the back of your hand and get the S score.
With some missions I had to do them 3 or 4 times to find that S score, but with others it took me 20 tries in order to find the best strategy and get the S. This is what the game is actually about, it's not meant to be played like a shooter where all you worry about is the objectives and your health bar - you have to manage your battalion and make sure all your boys make it out alive while also killing every enemy and doing it in the required time while also securing the objectives. Instead of increasing your abilities or moving up levels, you actually gain real experience points and become better at playing the game as you experiment with the battalion management, individual and group orders, and using tried and true tactics to slice through the enemy battalions.
It's possible to get 300% on each mission (perfect) and it's possible to finish each mission with a 1% which is obviously the willy-nilly way of playing and will severely kill the game. So you basically end up playing each mission over and over shooting for that S rank, which means you know all the mission names by heart. It really is unlike any RTS on the market.