Due to the nature of her mental strength, Lash can be seen as a dark reflection of Sonya. As brilliant as she is dismissive, Lash forms the research and development back-bone of Black Hole with the Neo Tank is of her design. Next on the list is the mad scientist Lash. His Powers expand these luck ranges to increasingly extreme degrees. Flak’s units have wildly expanded luck ranges, going both as low as Sonya and higher than Nell and causing his damage to be completely unreliable. Some timely typos in his dialogue are a running joke, and only fuel community perceptions of his stupidity considering he’s known in Japan as Kong. Brutish and dim, Flak holds a rather simplistic view of things and is something of a dark reflection of Max. Flak is primarily faced by Red/Orange Star over the course of the game. The first of the new villainous invaders is Flak. Her Powers provide extra movement and damage to land vehicles, as well as resupplying ammo and fuel for all units. The vehicles of Jess enjoy greater damage output, while anything that is not a land vehicle is less effective, including soldiers. Demonstrating being both assertive and resourceful, Jess is something of the personality middleground of the trio. Rounding out Green Earth’s theme of by air and by sea is the land vehicle specialist Jess. Yamamoto and causing the strength of his reputation to make sense. In the Japanese version, Sensei is known as Yamamoto, drawing parallels to Mr. His Powers allow him to spawn Infantry or Mech units on any empty cities that are under Sensei’s control. He follows a paratrooper theme, and his Helicopters and soldiers are highly effective. Sensei is composed and experienced, giving a strong impression that he’s managed to grow old as a commander because he’s good at it. Joining Yellow Comet is the veteran commander Sensei. Colin is conceptually a call-back to Billy Gates. Colin’s Powers give him more money, and raise the damage his units deal in correlation to the funds he currently has. Colin’s units are the opposite of Kanbei’s, they’re cheaper to deploy, but do less damage. Colin is generally insecure and questions his capabilities as a commander. Despite this however, nothing heavy is ever visually depicted. While still fairly light-hearted in tone, Advance Wars 2 pays the most attention to the consequences of war by having the COs bring up subjects such as the fatigue of their armies, or the harm to the civilian populaces. As a cute touch, general soldiers from each nation speak with the Cos, their appearance based upon their respective Infantry sprites. Even the villainous COs of Black Hole are provided sufficient characterization, though none are presented as being particularly deep. All nations have new COs introduced to them, and the player is afforded the opportunity to get to know them all a little better as they’re all able to converse among each other mid-mission. The order of which changes nothing of significance, if anything, however each map is specifically crafted to be tackled by a specified CO until it comes time to force Black Hole from the respective continents. The structure of the campaign is more open-ended, with the player being given their choice of battlefield to fight for the nation of their choosing. This somewhat compensates the variable efficacy of the powers themselves, and adds a further layer of strategy of just -when- is the best time to pop the power, and whether or not one wishes to save up for the Super Power. Some have short bars with two stars for the Power and three stars for the Super, while others must build their meters significantly longer with five of the former and four of the latter. This brings some much needed diversity to the COs, as the lengths of both the CO and Super bars vary from character to character. Filling the small stars provides the CO Power while the large stars constitute the Super CO Power. The meter denoting the accumulation thereof has been revised to be displayed as several stars: a series of small stars followed by large stars. The most readily apparent difference is the fact that all COs now have a Super CO Power, in addition to a CO Power. The game focuses on the localized conflicts before a unified effort to defeat the encroaching force is made. Rather than lurk in the shadows and instigate conflicts among peers, the spacey-looking invaders now take to the field and directly attack all four nations at the same time. After having masterminded a series of infighting conflicts in the first game, the conquering regime has returned with a new agenda. The plot centers around the return of the fifth army, Black Hole. While on the one hand, it is often regarded as the best of the main Advance Wars series, as a sequel it’s difficult to shake the notion of it being something other than an expansion pack. The first proper sequel in the main series of games is one of some mixed perspectives.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |