|
 Welcome to the friendliest war simulator there ever was. For those of you not familiar with the Advanced Wars games before Days of Ruin let me sum up the story for you. You see, there's this world called Wars World where four nations, Orange Star, Blue Moon, Green Earth, and Yellow Comet, constantly duke it out over the region known as Macro Land. But it's okay, for war is taken about as serious as a volleyball game! But there's a new player in town, the mysterious invasion force of Black Hole which thinks war should be serious and about domination and does their best to rule the world. In the first game they tried to play the nations off on each other, then they invaded openly in the second game, but the nations realized they should put their distrust aside and defeated Black Hole using the powers of friendship each game. Now, for the third installment the four nations have banded together in a coalition known as the "Allied Nations" to specifically fight Black Hole. The Black Hole army has recovered surprisingly fast after being routed and has started an invasion of neighboring Omega Land. Upon hearing this, the Allied Nations springs into action and leads a hasty counter-offensive. Got all that? Good, now please remember to not use your brain when thinking about this game. Advanced Wars, pre Days of Ruin at least, is a happy-go-lucky war game and trying to apply logic to it is like trying to apply logic to an acid trip. Anyways, with that all over, I'll let my co-LPers introduce themselves: And I'm Artix, who you probably know better as that rear end in a top hat playing like 5 Fire Emblem games at once. Also, I've never played an Advance Wars game, so for once Alkydere can actually be the competent one.  Lastly, I'm ZeeToo, who you won't remember from anywhere, and I'll be tagging along as support and fact-checking. It's a pretty swell position: I get to critique all of Alkydere's tactical errors, and if I make any in turn, I get to claim that it's simply because it's been a while since I played... and I don't even have to prove I can do better! Since Artix has never played an Advanced Wars title before, he will most likely be our comic relief, watching and stammering in incredulity as he learns about the madness of Wars World. Meanwhile, after my last fiasco, I've learned not to count myself as knowledgeable about any game, so ZeeToo gets to tell me how and were I was wrong. As a request, I'd ask that people please don't spoil things in this thread. It's not that the plot's amazing, but that we really need Artix74 to see every wonderful moment of madness and stupidity first hand. Updates
Alkydere fucked around with this message at Mar 9, 2013 around 23:27 |
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 01:54 |
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2013 07:07 |
|
|
Some choice fanart from the thread: Tired of being a Reaper, Beat tries his hands at being a CO. WHY IS THIS NOT A REAL THING?! DO NOT INVOKE THE EPEE EM CLAUSE! OH GOD WHY DID YOU INVOKE THE EPEE EM CLAUSE!?   Jake the Saint, a cooperative effort from the thread.  MSPaint brigade to the rescue.  More Epee Em fanart, this one's a bit easier on the eyes.  I think Grimm's new shades have become A THING.  More Grimm/Kool-Aid man comparisons.  Grimm and Jess on the Mario Kart circuit in their custom ride. It's the final lap, they've got blue spark, and those cannons are probably loaded with Blue Shells.  EpeeEm takes a stab at making Telletubbie versions of the COs  Catsworth explaining the mystery of ships in ponds. Orange Fluffy Sheep's Adventures of Sweet Jake and Hella Rachel, which have apparently become "A THING" in this thread:             Paul.Power takes a stab at the MSPaint fun.                
Alkydere fucked around with this message at Feb 28, 2013 around 04:19 |
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 01:55 |
|
|
The beginning Hello everybody. Welcome to the new Alkyderp LP. You may remember me from the quasi-failed FFTA2 LP. I learned many things from that LP, including "Don't LP a game that boasts over 300 missions when about 250 of them are filler". So now I'm going to LP a game that has a finite ending: Advanced Wars: Dual Strike. So, let's begin. And I'm Artix, who you probably know better as that rear end in a top hat playing like 5 Fire Emblem games at once. Also, I've never played an Advance Wars game, so for once Alkydere can actually be the competent one. Lastly, I'm ZeeToo, who you won't remember from anywhere, and I'll be tagging along as support and fact-checking. It's a pretty swell position: I get to critique all of Alkydere's tactical errors, and if I make any in turn, I get to claim that it's simply because it's been a while since I played... and I don't even have to prove I can do better!  Pressing anything brings us to the main menu. There's several options here as AWDS came with a LOT of content. To start there's the campaign: one of the longer campaigns in the Advanced Wars/Super Famicon Wars series. Then there's the War Room where you can set up individual battles. Versus is multiplayer, designed so the game can be passed between multiple people for their turns. Survival is a series of battles where you see how many battles you can beat with a set amount of money, turns, or time. Finally we have Combat, which is a rather strange mode. You take control of a single unit and drive it around on a field, fighting other units. It's kind of interesting but rather gimmicky. Combat is actually really interesting as a change of pace. I'll have to see if we can't manage a video of that later on, because it's not a screenshot sort of game, but it is worth showing off.  Hitting left or right brings us to the second page of menus. Here we've got Battle Maps, where you can buy new maps to play on or COs to play with in the War Room. History shows your records, with your earning Medals for reaching certain milestones like X tanks built, Y tanks destroyed. No, I will NOT be getting all 300 medals. Wireless is again mutliplayer, but unlike Versus it's between different DS's, not people sharing the same one. The Sound Room and Gallery are both unlocked via Battle Maps, letting you listen to the music this game has or look at artwork. Finally we have the Design Room, which lets you make maps, set the main menu background and... So this game actually has a map creator? That seems like an odd choice. How in-depth is it? Completely there for normal terrain. I don't believe 'special' installations are there, but otherwise it's the same as any game map.  Dress up your COs! Here we have Jake, he's the "main character" of the campaign. I'll go into why I both like him and want to break his nose later. First let's change his outfit because white-on-white, especially on a white boy like Jake, just doesn't work out. Especially if he's out in the field like he's supposed to be.  Ah, there we go, a nice Yellow Comet Yellow outfit. I'm chosing this for now not because I'm a huge fan of Yellow Star (though Sensei is awesome) but because it looks like a nice Khaki (and it's not white on white). Yes, the alternate color palletes do change his hair color. If you're interested, or if the thread wants to force me to play with some other, horrid color scheme, here are the other Jake colors:  Orange Star Orange.  Blue Moon Blue.  Green Earth Green.  Black Hole Black.  Uh...white on white, only with orange gloves, purple hair and darker skin.  Clone Jake. Looks like a keeper to me. Every CO has one of these. Unlocking them was my first priority. My game had a lot of really terrible hair dye/color coordination.  Anyways, now that I've showed off the menu and played a bit of dressup it's time to start the campaign and game proper.  Several months have passed since the war in Macro Land. Thanks to Andy, Nell, and the other COs, the Black Hole Army was defeated. The people can finally live in peace. I have no idea while Eagle is stuck using a motorcycle in that picture; you'd think if Andy, Sam and Max can fit on the Orange Star tank he'd be able to hitch a ride with Colin on the Blue Moon tank. Or hell, take a jet, he's Eagle.  But in the far-off continent of Omega Land, trouble was brewing. It is from here that Black Hole launched a massive invasion. The enemy army has replenished its might with remarkable speed under the command of a new leader. Though the games play fast and free with how rough and horrible war can be, the first three Advanced Wars game (Advanced Wars, Advanced Wars 2, Advanced Wars: DS) do have a continuity. Basically, there's the four nations of Wars World's Macro Land: Orange Star (America), Blue Moon (Russia), Green Earth (Europe) and Yellow Comet (Japan) along with a nemesis/alien invasion force faction called Black Hole. In the first game Black Hole successfuly played the nations against each other, in the second the nations had wisened up a bit but fought Black Hole off mostly individually. In this game they've allied together to form the Allied Nations, which really has no effect whatsoever on the gameplay and story as the four factions still have "friendly competitions" (politely bitch and wage "friendly" war) with each other. AW: Days of Ruin has a much better atmosphere about the horrors of war (and the apocalypse). "Friendly war?"  Wha...How...No. That's not how war works!Well, there is at least one notable casualty: in the first Advance Wars, 'you' get a special post as the Orange Star advisor, and people talk to you as a distinct character who gives tactical advice so the COs can just focus on building their powers. By the time AW2 rolls around? The advisor has vanished, and no one wants to talk about it.   The last great war left many questions unanswered, and so Orange Star, Blue Moon, Green Earth, and Yellow Comet have joined forces to create the Allied Nations. Determined to free their homeland, they launch an attack. The still squabble with each other. It's like the Allies in WWII but with America regularly sending "friendly invasions" to Britain just to test both sides' armies and to deliver fruit baskets to the King and Parliament.  Anyways, here's our first mission. It is, as to be expected, a tutorial mission. On the top screen we see the most common COs used during the campaign (Jake's probably going to be on the top in most runs), the name of the mission, and our opposion CO. On the bottom we have a very pretty, but mostly pontless, map. For some reason there are birds big enough to be seen from space flying across this map. Anyways, Press A, begin conversation.  Rachel, I want you to be careful. This looks like it could be a tough battle.This is Nell, she is the Commander-in-chief of both Orange Star and the Allied Nations. She's an unlockable CO who's power is "luck". Every attack can do from 0 to 15% bonus critical damage (most normal COs do from -5% to +5%), which isn't bad, it's just a 1 to 2 bonus to damage she does. The "critical bonus" is a percentage added (or subtracted from) onto the damage a unit does, it's not a multiplication or anything. Of course, if she uses her powers things get nasty. Her first power lets her do a bonus 60% damage, that means with how the game works Infantry can eat half of a Neotank's HP out of nowhere. Her super power lets her do up to 100% bonus damage. Yes, that means her ANYTHING has a chance to OHKO ANYTHING that it attacks. This is on a CO without any negatives to balance things out. Thank god she's a bonus CO and we won't be facing/using her during the campaign. Correction: the damage that normal COs do is actually +0% to +10% over the listed, though some of the other COs also change this factor; one has the -5% to +5% Alkydere mentions here. So her powers are "Kill things," "Kill things harder," and "Just outright kill things." Variety!  Don't you worry about me, Sis, You've got your hands full over in Macro Land. We may not have a big presence here in Omega Land, but we're not alone. With all four of the Allied Nations working together, Black Hole's no match for us!And this is Rachel, she's Nell's little sister, and gains some Nell's luck, as well as a few other fun things in her CO powers. Since we're facing her in this battle I'll go over her CO information in detail in just a bit. I'm glad to hear that. Still, I've sent a few of our COs over to give you a hand. Just hang in there until they can arrive, and don't do anything rash, OK? I've got it, Sis! My Omega Land COs can take anything Black Hole dishes out. Hah! I know, I know. And with you in the field, I got nothing to worry about. I don't think I'll be able to join you, though. That means you're in charge of field traning any new COs, all right?Good, stay over there. The normal campaign is easy enough as is. Let's all make mental note of this so we can laugh when Alkydere has trouble. Actually, it is a fairly easy campaign, with most of the difficulty coming from trying to achieve ranks, but I remember a couple of maps gave me pause. Got it! Good. That is all, soldier! And by the way, don't call me "Sis," not when the other COs might hear. Oh, yeah. That might get them wondering about your age!I was more thinking about them wondering about nepotism. Hey! That's not what I'm saying at all! I have my orders, Commander Nell! I'll take care of everything. Rachel, signing out! ...Click.Yes, I realize the click is supposed to be her turning the radio off, not part of her dialog, but it's presented that way. Or she's pretending to hang up so she can 'accidentally' stay on the line and do some sucking-up. Listen to how she talks about Nell in this next section.  ...So Commander Nell is your sister?And here's our "bad boy" Jake. Yep. We both enlisted about the same time, but my big s-- I mean, Commander Nell's smarter than me, so she rose through the ranks fast. Luck had something to do with it, too.Yes, the fact that her Infantry can somtimes one-shot full health Megatanks might have affected her promotion. What's a megatank?  That's later in this game. Even neotanks, the next rung down, weren't around until AW2, and Nell was already commanding back in AW1. Naw, you're razor sharp, Rachel. I guess I haven't been much of anywhere, but I haven't met anyone smarter. Ha! Take one step out of Omega Land, and you'll be tripping over COs with way more skill than me! But listen, Jake, Omega Land is in very real danger. And we can't count on getting backup from Macro Land anytime soon. We can't even be sure where all of our allied COs are now, either. You and me are the only ones left to stop the enemy, Jake.Well, this counter-invasion of Omega Land sure was planned out well. Hey, they're protagonists, they can handle a little thing like "Complete and total lack of planning and strategy." Sounds like our backs are up against the wall. All in all, you're taking this pretty well. You're not worried? Naw. Well...yeah. Maybe a little. But with you rollin' beside me, I know it's all good. Don't even think I'm doing all the work. You're going to have to pull your weight! It's time to start training. I'm warning you, though, I'm not going to go easy on you. What!? Oh, let me turn my music down. Yeah, cool... I'm listening. And with that, the mission begins. We have three units, a Tank, a Mech and an Infantry against Rachel's Tank and two Infantries. I'm going to skip Rachel's tutorial speech because unlike the game designers I don't have to assume this is your first rodeo. Orange units are ours, not-orange units are enemy units. We need to defeat the not-orange units to win (simplest victory condition). Terrain is mostly obvious, with rougher terrain providing better cover at the cost of reduced movement speed. The only tile that's a bit different is the city tile, as you can see up on the top screen. In addition to providing 3-star defenses for the same movement cost as roads, Cities can also repair, refuel and re-arm ground units and provide the player with 1000 Generic Monetary Units per turn. Cities are very important. Since everything costs in a multiple of 1000, I'll probably shorten 1000 to something like 1k from now on. Worth noting that there are a lot of things that affect your costs, though. Default costs scale by thousands, but all sorts of stuff can affect them. We'll cover these as they come up; most of them are COs or their powers that we won't see for a while.  Here we have the CO information screen. Up top we can see Jake's Rank (I'll get to that in a moment) and who he has a bonus Tag-teaming with (I'll explain that in a later mission). Below we see a short bio, which displays the main problem with Jake as a characer, and mentions his innate power. The problem? Jake is one of those "cool kids" that people who have no touch with younger people creates. So our main character is a wanna-be DJ. His innate power is that his units gain a +10% to attack on plains. This, and his powers, is why I describe him as the "Desert Fox". He hits hard on plains (which includes desert tiles), and with his powers he moves fast on the plains. What, you mean you can't relate to a (presumably) teenage war hero who can magically make his soldiers shoot things harder if they're on the plains simply because he likes "Clubbin'"?  Page 2 is the "existing skills" page. This page pretty much sums up why AW:DS is the easiest Advanced Wars game ever. You can earn up to 300 points a mission battle from earning an S-Rank, and you can earn more from destroying certain pieces of Black Hole equipment, or during non-campaign battles by going in with certain "handicaps" (i.e. without skills or a tag-team partner). Every 1k points you unlock a new tier of skills to chose from. The reason this stuff makes the game so easy? The AI NEVER has these. Even if you play a battle, they never use or equip these. Therefore this screen will always be empty when we see a new CO, either because they're an AI and it doesn't matter or we haven't leveled them up to earn skills. Therefore I will never show it again. No skills for the enemy?  But how could you possibly balance something like that without giving the enemies completely overwhelming numbers or positioning? (I'm assuming the answer here is "They didn't." Goddammit IntSys) Thid page is the Powers screen, showing a CO's normal and super powers. Every time you do damage to an enemy, or take damage, a CO's power meter charges. After a certain threshold you can use a normal CO power, or you can wait and fully charge the meter for a super CO power. Jake's powers make him into a mini-Grit, giving his artillery extra range, and power if they're on plains. The thing is the increased attack range is also applied to his ground units as well, the game magically giving them the movement points to cover +1 or +2 range as long as they can traverse the terrain. This is why I say he's the "Desert Fox" because he can move fast when he's got a power active. Have we mentioned he's a Desert Fox? He's a Desert Fox, if you hadn't caught that. These are pretty good overall powers, too; all of Jake's ground units get something. If you like tanks and artillery, like me, this is great. Those are good all-around units and get the largest boost from this. It's also worth noting that CO power charging is the game's attempt at self-balancing; damage taken increases your meter by more than damage done, so just trying to steamroll the enemy can let them push back harder than you were expecting.  Finally we have the unit screen, showing us the relative attack powers of various units. Jake has no unit-specific advantages or disadvantages so everything is at 100%.  Next we have Rachel. She's Jake's direct superior and, after this mission, we'll be able to chose her as our CO. Her perk is that cities and bases heal 3 HP instead of 2 like everyone else. You still have to pay for it though, so you're not getting a discount, but 50% faster healing is nothing to sneeze at. Like Jake, she has no unit specific ups or downs.  Her powers are "Become Nell for one turn" (gaining that 0-15% luck spread) and "Become Nell for one turn and throw three missiles at the enemy". Of course, since this is a power and not the player actually capturing a missile silo, you don't actually get to chose WHERE the missiles will hit. Still, the AI is actually pretty good about finding good spots to drop said missiles, or at least the first two out of the three. Watching the third missile hit a group of 1-health enemies and do nothing is sadly a common sight. Missiles can't kill units? I don't even know what to say to something like that. The missiles target (in order) most soldiers, most expensive, most unit count. They're a tolerable bonus, but hard to apply precisely. Her lack of focus on anything except luck means that I'd take Jake over her in most land engagements. Jake gets no bonuses at sea or in the air, though, so Rachel is this game's most generic main CO, able to face anything equally well. Too bad this is a game for specialist COs. Now that that's out of the way, lets look at our units. I'm sorry for the lots and lots of talking, but this mission is trivially short and easy so I might as well stretch things out a bit and cover everything I can.  First up, we have our Infantry, our common foot soldier. They're dirt cheap at 1K per unit, can only move up to 3 spaces, weak to the point that anything that attacks them will wreck them, even other infantry, and vitally important. Infantry and Mech are the only units that can capture bases and cities, adding their funds and functionality to your army while denying them from the enemy. The can attack choppers and any ground units with their machine guns, but unless there's some special bullshit in effect they're not going to do more than nick the enemy. Usually they're just mobile walls that technically fire back, in most fights. Don't discount them entirely because of that, though; 'special bullshit' is this game's stock in trade, and they're the best option for capturing buildings.  Next we have our Mechs. Mechs are Infantry that, at the cost of 1 movement speed and 2K money, can actually gently caress armor up. Their Bazookas only have three ammo but they hit tanks hard provided the Mechs are on the attack. If the Mech's on defense the beating it takes from a tank will pretty much nullify their effectiveness. Mechs hit really hard for their price. Keep them from getting attacked before they attack, and they're well worth the money (and movement range frustration).  Finally, we have the Tank. Tanks are, well, they're not "tanks" in the general video game sense of something that can take a beating. Oh they'll do more than fine against infantry, other tanks and light vehicles, but as soon as you start adding artillery, air, or heavier tanks into the equation they soon turn into "chaff". Costing only 7K and having a high fuel cost and movement range Tanks are your fast tier-one armor. Your ground forces will often consist of mostly tanks and you'll rarely care if you lose one or two. There's properly one more vehicle that fits into the game's combat between the footmen and the tank, but we'll see it in a later mission.  Okay, with that out of the way, we can play. First turn we move the Mech to the woods to attack the enemy Tank, than finish it off with our Tank before bringing up our lone infantry, which probably won't be doing much. I let the Mech take the brunt of the counter attack because a) they're cheaper and less valuable than our armor and b) the damage it did to the Tank and the defenses of the forest blunt the Tank's attack. My Fire Emblem instincts should be terrified that you just essentially threw a myrmidon against a knight, but I suppose when you've got an Armorslayer, you might as well put it to use.  Here's what combat looks like. The attackers (our Orange Mechs) walk onto the field and fire.  And the surviving defenders return fire. We traded 3 HP from our Mechs for 5 HP on these Tanks. A good trade and leaving the enemy Tank damaged enough that our Tank will finish it off without any threat of counter attack. Make no mistake, a Mech's purpose in life is to capture buildings and be slapped around by enemy tanks. Tanks can eventually take out a Mech on a city/base or mountain tile, but can get very messy dependong on how the COs match up. Since defenders take damage before counter-attacking, and a unit's attack scales with its HP, getting the first strike with your mechs is very important--it's always important, but especially so with mechs. If the tank had attacked first, even with the terrain favoring the mech like it does here, things would not be looking so sanguine with our mech.  And here's what the field looks like at the end of battle. Fun fact: notice something missing? Yes, that's right, I have no cursor! For some reason the emulator doesn't work right for me and I have no marker showing where my cursor is, making me VERY thankful for touch-screen controls that let me click on my units in the emulator.  The AI sets out with it's infantry to do what it can, despite being hopelessly outclassed without a tank. The AI has a very high priority on capturing cities, even on maps like this where they don't matter. All city/base tiles have 20 HP before being captured, and every turn an infantry unit is told to capture it reduces it's current HP from the base's remaining total (and plays an animation of the unit flattening the building by jumping on it). This means a full health, 10 HP infantry can capture a base in two turns. Capturing is necessary to get cities to be anything but terrain. The refueling, repairing, and income that Alkydere mentioned only happens in cities that you own. Even without capturing, though, they're good places to be because they have easy movement ratings and high defense--actually moreso than the forests. I'm kind of curious to see how much AI is shared between AW and FE, because going straight for villages/cities is a thing FE does as well. It obviously doesn't matter quite as much given that you can buy new units, but are they as murder-happy as FE's AI? The AI captures for the same bonuses as the player, and you can capture enemy cities as well as unaligned, so not quite comparable. But, yes, the AI is really focused on it.  Yea, the rest of this mission isn't even worth showing. With the AI's tank out of comission it's basically clean up duty. You beat me! Hmmm... Not bad! You may be young, but you've definitely got what it takes to be a great CO. You were born for the battlefield. Yeah, you think so? Sweet---that means something coming from you, Rachel. You've got good instincts, and I'm going to personally make you one of the best. There are going to be some tough times ahead, so just stick with me. You know I will! Here's the score screen you get at the end of every battle. The score has two purposes: currency for buying maps and COs in the battle room, and experience for the COs in the battle. 300+ points (yes, you can earn over 300 points in some campaign battles) is an S-Rank. I doubt I'll be able to S-Rank EVERY battle, simply because I'm just not that good, but I'll do my best to at least get an A-Rank. I'm guessing Speed is how fast you finished, Power is how much damage you did, and Technique is how well you did it (ie minimal/no losses)? This is correct, with an additional few tricks that help keep your Technique high. I'll point them out once the game gets there.  And this...this is why I really can't stand Jake as a character. When you win your Co likes to drop a victory line. Most are generic/cliche enough that you don't notice. Then...then you get the genius lines from Jake, or Javier, or the "new and improved" Grit. Then again, at least Javier's lines are funny...ALL of Jake's lines are painful like this.  Wow, that was painful. Do we have to use him for most of the campaign? And at the end of the battle, you also get information describing units built/lost and bases captured andother details like that for each faction. I'll probably be skipping these most of the time as the information can be rather dry.   Some fireworks shoot up, we get a prompt to save and the next mission opens up. Next time: we get to meet the new Black Hole. ...Same as the old one. Alkydere fucked around with this message at Jan 9, 2012 around 19:12 |
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 01:58 |
|
|
Ah yes, Dual Strike. When the series skill-equipped its way into a corner, with plenty of help from the "plot.". Not my favorite Advance Wars game.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 02:22 |
|
|
Lies and slander, Jake is awesome. It's not like anybody else is LESS cheesy.  All the B-Boy stuff was added for the English version: he was PAINFULLY boring in the original Japanese. Me, I always liked him in Green Earth colors, because he Tags so well with Jess.Anyhoo, yeah. Following the hell outta this thread, I spent an unbelievable amount of time playing this game. It's still one of the best reasons to own a DS in my book.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 02:22 |
|
|
Well, this should be fun! If I didn't enjoy Artix's commentary on just about anything, I'd be a bit tired of him by now, what with all the FE.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 02:29 |
|
|
I can only begin to comprehend what sort of a magical journey this is going to be. All I can say is that I'm pretty sure I'm going to hate everyone who wrote for this game by the time we're done. 
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 02:29 |
|
|
Artix74 posted:I can only begin to comprehend what sort of a magical journey this is going to be. All I can say is that I'm pretty sure I'm going to hate everyone who wrote for this game by the time we're done. By the Gods, does it get worse. So... so much worse. The dialogue in this game is dreadful. Have fun! (also, I miss the old Black Hole crew already)
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 02:41 |
|
|
Ahh, AWDS. The most skippable Advance Wars game if you ask me, but still a lot of fun if you don't mind getting hurt a bit along the way. Should be a fun ride.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 02:46 |
|
|
Oh god. Jake. Jake's dialogue only gets worse. But at least this game brings us two other amazing characters whose names both start with J.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 03:16 |
|
|
Alkydere posted:
I love this image. It looks like the CO's actually get poo poo done themselves instead of sending out cannon fodder to do it..
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 03:20 |
|
|
Agent Interrobang posted:Lies and slander, Jake is awesome. It's not like anybody else is LESS cheesy. I was going to comment on this before you beat me to it. Basically, if I understand correctly, Jake was actually some sort of radio operator, which explains the headphones. But then some translator/localiser saw the phones and thought it meant/should indicate music obsessed rear end, and so we've got Jake as we see him. Dunno how accurate that is, but its pretty much all I've heard about the game. Following this, by the by.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 03:26 |
|
|
I love Advance Wars, so I'm looking forwards to reading this LP. Also, I made something:  Edited to remove the anchor - I thought it was just a silly hat! Decoy Badger fucked around with this message at Jan 7, 2012 around 05:11 |
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 03:27 |
|
|
Exciting! I bought the game used and the previous owner sunk quite a bit of time into Jake, but nobody else. They also hadn't beaten the campaign yet though, so I dunno. I really like some of the CO's and their powers you encounter in AWDS, but some of the dialogue is, as mentioned, crap.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 03:27 |
|
|
Decoy Badger posted:I love Advance Wars, so I'm looking forwards to reading this LP. aaaaaAAAAAAAAAA Thank christ I've already taken my anti-seizure meds My eyes are gonna sting for days, though. Looking forward to this LP, my experience with the Advance Wars games is limited to loving about with the first one for a while before getting bored.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 04:01 |
|
hatchets hatchets hatchets hatchets hatchets hatchets hatchets hatchets hatchets hatchets hatchets hatchets hatchets hatchets hatchets hatchets hatchets hatchets hatchets hatchets hatchets 
|
I hope the ending of this game has Jake dying while returning to his home planet, because he seems a lot like Poochy in every other way.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 04:43 |
|
|
Decoy Badger posted:I love Advance Wars, so I'm looking forwards to reading this LP. :pcjaking:
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 04:44 |
|
|
The GIG posted:I love this image. It looks like the CO's actually get poo poo done themselves instead of sending out cannon fodder to do it.. It also makes it look like either the tanks are more like giant go-karts, or that the COs are HUGE.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 04:55 |
|
|
Looking forward to this mess of a plot. I mean, seriously. It's war with crumpets and tea out on the porch. What's not to like? 
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 06:14 |
|
|
I will likely cringe if you don't get 300-pt S-ranks on every mission.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 06:16 |
|
|
Are you planning on posting the character music? I thought most of their themes fit the characters pretty well. And Grimm's is hilarious.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 06:27 |
|
|
Marathoned the Advance Wars in the archive a bit back, and while I don't like tactical rpgs that much, I loved reading it. Hope this is good.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 06:37 |
|
|
Main Rachel as soon as you can, and drop Jake. Actually, the first half is the only half of that one I care about.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 06:52 |
|
|
I genuinely enjoyed Jake's character, entirely because of his differences with his Japanese version. ANYTHING is better then that.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 07:35 |
|
|
New is not always better Welcome back goons and goon-ettes. It's time for our second adventure in Wars world! Our second mission is called "The New Black" and, well, I gotta tell you that in this case New is very much not better. Anyways, now that we've done a mission, we can see that Jake has first place in the "used most times" counter as he's been used a grand total of 1 times.  Commander Rachel! We've encountered advance enemy forces! Understood. We'll head to the battlefield right away. Have we taken casualties? Our infantry has taken sporadic fire, but the enemy force is fairly small. I see. Well, we've got to get in there and rescue those grunts.After all, it would be bad for morale if we let it show how disposable Infantry and Mechs are. The units we can buy with a single turn's worth of funds? Those guys? Something tells me they know exactly how disposable they are. And it's 'grunt' in this case, as the unit has only 1 HP. And I don't think Private Lucky likes being called a grunt. So, I heard some Black Hole forces wanna rumble? Yes, they've progressed much farther and faster than I'd anticipated. I'd hoped to get some more training in, but you have to play what you're dealt. Yeah, but there aren't that many enemy units. Just kick back and give me some tips while I mop these guys up. That's the spirit, Jake! Sounds like we've got ourselves a plan. OK, move out! Allied forces falling back?Ladies and gentlemen, meet Jugger, the first member of Black Hole's Bolt Guard, and the one I'll probably rant about the most as you'll see in a moment.  Yes, sir! If we capture that nearby HO, our conquest of Omega Land will be complete. The enemy resistance has been pathetic, hasn't it, Commander Jugger?And here's the Black Hole soldier portrait for you. Every faction has it's own design theme, and the Black Hole design is pretty much "faceless robot armored divisions and alien/clone soldiers". He's also talking about one of the two ways to win a map: capturing an enemy HQ. Every side in a battle (not counting special campaign missions, often with special objectives) has an HQ building. They're basically Cities but even tougher, what with a whopping 5-star defensive bonus. If a player lets an enemy infantry capture his HQ building they lose. This is opposed to the alternate victory of routing all enemy forces. Since the maps often have factories nearby the enemy HQs it's often far easier to just crush all forces. Query: Are we inside Orange Star territory?Oh, you thought Jake would be the only one with painful dialog? Jugger here thinks he's a computer. Looks like it, sir. Purge enemy from memory. Understood!...Great. Our first antagonists are an eyeball that thinks it's a computer and a pod person. This is a sign of things to come, isn't it?   Anyways the game finally starts and we...damnit Rachel, get out of the way! As you can see we're still deep in tutorial country and this is our introduction to ranged units, APCs, healing and HQs. Anyways, we're supposed to "rescue those grunts" by taking the 1HP infantry back to our HQ with the APC, according to Rachel we'll lose if we let that infantry die. APCs are some of the most wondeful and important units in the game and I'll explain why in just a moment.  Anyways, like we said the first move is to load the infantry up in the APC and start running him back to the safe territory of our HQ. Loading's simple, just move an infantry onto a transport and select load". Once that's done we can start zipping our APC home.  Ah, the harmless, fragile, defenseless APC. Perhaps the most important unit in your army. Why? Because it fulfills several functions. In addition to carrying your infantry, safely and rapdily getting those foot soldiers to the front lines where they can capture enemy property faster, they resupply any adjacent units. Every unit has only so much fuel, and nearly every unit with a weapon has limited ammo. The exceptions are the machine guns that Infantry, Mechs, all tanks, and B-choppers carry as their backup weapon which can shoot forever If a unit runs out of ammo, they either are forced to rely on backup machine guns or are completely defenseless. What happens if they run out of fuel is a bit more complex. A ground unit will just be rooted to the spot, not having any fuel to move. However it's much worse for air or flying units, as they will instantly crash or sink the moment they run out of gas. That is why APCs are important as at the beginning of your turn they will resupply EVERY unit adjacent to them, including air and sea units. Yes, the lowly little APC can resupply a jet mid-flight. Care to enlighten me as to how a bunch of guys running around with machine guns on foot can run out of fuel? Because I'm really not seeing that one. Also, I'm assuming that "crash" for aerial units means "instantly dies," which would be the first remotely realistic thing I've seen here. You were the one who said they knew how disposable they are. Add in no snacks and of course the footsoldiers refuse to keep hiking. An army travels on its stomach, after all. But, yeah, planes crash when they're out of fuel. Ships sink, too, which Alkydere tried to say and ended up with 'air or flying' instead. Those two are synonymous in this game.  Anyways, now that is done, we can start fighting back. We've got our first ranged units, Artillery. We're playing on a scale large enough that tanks are effectively considered melee units. Anyways, ranged units have a few nuances. First of all, they can't counter-attack (not counting the Anti-Tank unit in Days of Ruin, but that's an entirely different game). Second of all, they can only move, OR they can fire, not both. This means positioning is important. Finally, THEY HURT! It is laughably easy to buff Artillery, and especially Rockets, to the point they'll one-shot a tank or anything weaker. Normally those tanks would just dash past the incoming fire, but the wooded terrain slows them down which hurts them far worse than the 2-star defensive bonus helps. For those who might not know the series' terminology, it calls ranged attacks 'indirect fire', with the normal adjacent attacking being 'direct fire'.  Ah the artillery, the cheapest, weakest of the ranged units. That doesn't meant they're worthless, far from it. Anyways, ranged units work a bit differently than our tanks, which is good. Otherwise we'd end up with slow meat-grinders at choke points. To understand how they work, you need to look at the weapon information. Artillery only have one weapon, a honking huge howitzer, or "cannon" if you want to go by the boring name. Said cannon can hit anything on the ground and water provided it's in range, hence why all ground armor categories (Infantry, Vehicle, Ship, Submarine, not counting submerged subs of course) are listed. The circles on Infantry and Vehicles means your Artillery will flatten anything on land, while the triangles on Ship and Sub means that they're not nearly as effective against stuff in the water, partly because ships tend to be built on a larger scale and with more armor. Above the Ship tile, you'll see "9/9", that's the ammo counter. Remember how I was talking about the APCs resupplying ammo? Ranged units often work best with an APC resupplying them, though Artillery can go on their own for a good while, it's the Rockets you need to worry about. Over the Sub card you'll see "2~3" with an arrow above that. The arrow designates the unit as a ranged one and the "2~3" is the range. Artillery can hit targets 2 or 3 tiles away. For you FE fans out there, think of it as "Longbow range". I am confused, what's with all these things making sense? A mortar not being as effective when it doesn't have anything to really explode on? This isn't the Advance Wars I was promised. Artillery also is really nifty for being a tracked vehicle (the symbol behind the move tells us what its move type is). We haven't seen the 'normal' wheeled vehicles yet, but the big difference is basically that stuff with wheels goes nowhere fast when it's off roads. The rocket unit Alkydere mentioned is one of them, which means that despite the artillery's lower actual range, the artillery very often is much more practical to actually get to the front. Artillery is very good stuff throughout the entire game; it might actually be my overall preference for the indirect fire units.  Boom!  Anyways, now that we've done what we can, and moved up our tank, it's time to take a look at our opponent.  So am I allowed to revise my statement about hating all the writers? Because I'm pretty sure I want to include the character designers now, too. *Sigh* Jugger, Jugger, Jugger. You horrible Flak-clone. You're supposed to be super smart, but your gimmick is the same as Flak from the last two games: Flailing and striking wildly. This means his critical success damage cap is higher, but he's also got a chance to get a massive negative penalty. Basically Jugger is Flak 0.9, only more arrogant, not as funny, in fact not funny or entertaining at all, and Flak was just a balanced version of Nell who could flub attacks. Let's look at the numbers I'm getting from my mysterious internet sources. Jugger can get up to 25% damage (that's 25% of the enemy health removed, not a 125% damage mutliplyer) per hit, meaning he can hit HARD, but that comes at the cost that his critical bonus can roll as low as -15%, so he can whiff pretty hard. Flak from the last two games has a damage spread of +20% to -10%. Yes, that's a 10% less damage spread, that means Black Hole's pet retarded gorilla could hit more consistently than a computer.  Disclaimer: as seen here, Flak is not literally a pet retarded gorilla. Just clearing that up because compared to some of the stuff the game pulls that would be believable and I don't want people who haven't played the Advanced Wars games being confused. Correction again: Flak actually was first introduced in AW2, so he was only in the last one game. The changes to the damage here are the dispersion of damage I touched on in the first update; AW2 and DS both introduced as a first real antagonist a guy who took "more random" as his gimmick, and Jugger kicks is up a notch beyond what Flak did.  Now let's look at his powers. His powers are: Increase critical spread, and Increase Critical Spread Further. The increased spread has a damned good chance of nullifying the +5% and +10% attack and defense multiplyers (yes, these are multiplyers, not bonus damage like crit) from using a CO or SCO power. Using his CO power, he can do from +50% to -25%, and with his Super CO power he can get +90% to -40%. In comparison, Flak's CO and SCO powers raise the spread to 45% to -20% and +90 to -30%. Yes, that's the same ceiling as Jugger, but with a lower failure rate. Flak is a more consistent and, with his SCO, straight up statistically superior CO than this headless golem. Why am I ranting about this when Flak was obviously replaced, like how the new leader of Black Hole is an old man with Sturms exact same powers? Well, he wasn't! He, and Adder, are still in the game as bonus COs. It wouldn't be so bad if the entire Black Hole command staff had been replaced with the Bolt Guard, but Black Hole still has both Hawke and Lash on payroll. Meaning that the game designers created carbon-copies of the two bumbling enemy COs, meaking we get bumbling enemies with even LESS personality than Flak and Adder. Jugger is a retarded Flak with 10% more spread on his critical, Koal is an annoying Adder with 1 more star to fill for his normal CO power and a 10% bonus to attack on roads. Woo. Here's actually something I'm not sure on: the super power max damage modifier. If it really maxes out at +90%, Jugger is strictly worse than Flak, because his super power takes longer to charge (Alkydere hasn't mentioned this yet, but different powers do charge at different rates based on how powerful they are), and it has a larger change of being worse than normal but no chance of ever hitting harder than Flak's. However, some sources I googled up say that Jugger's SCO max is +95%, which at least means that it's possible to hit harder with Jugger. Not worth the larger penalty spread and another star, even if true. Basically he's a garbage enemy to help train players.  Anyways, Jugger takes his turn and is still bogged down in the woods. One thing about Jugger I do like is his music. Every CO in the game has his or her (or its?) own track. It's a nice touch. Commander Jugger! Enemy units spotted! Identify enemy commander. He's, uhhh...a young guy. Profile matched: Andy of Orange Star?Ha! No, then we'd be playing with a likeable charcter! People like Andy? Weird. No, sir. It doesn't seem to be him. Hey, Black Hole chumps! You think you're all bad, stealing people's stuff? File not found... You are...an Orange Star CO? You know it! Now answer me! Reply irrelevant. Reserving energy for current task: splitting you like an atom. You're in Orange Star's house now, and you're going down!The only reason I don't facepalm, groan or even sigh every time Jake opens his mouth is because I have played this game and know exactly what to expect. Attack. Attack. Attack. Yea...good luck in doing that "split you like an atom" thing Jugger.  Third turn starts. My infantry finally reaches my HQ to heal and I sent my APC up so it can start supplying the Artillery with ammo (not that I'll need that much, it's mostly habit). Anyways, Jugger's merged his two half-dead tanks into one full health tank. You can merge damaged units of the same type to get one healed unit by moving them onto the same space, with the damage unit's HP adding up to the new unit's HP. If the new HP is over 10 the excess HP is converted back into cash. That's not going to help Jugger though, he left one of his tanks in range of both of my Artillery. Batallion sizes are very strictly enforced in the Orange Star military. They aren't above literally dismantling a tank on the spot because that would have given the troop 11 tanks instead of 10. This is actually an exploitable bit of the AI, though; the game decided to consolidate its tanks, which meant that one of them didn't move its full reach so the other could catch up, and now Alkydere has two targets and two guns, instead of three and two and them moving forward a little more. Little preferences like this become important as the game goes on.  Turn/Day 4 and it's all over. The Black Hole tank runs up to our fully healed tank next turn but is smart enough to not suicide on it. Not that there's much of a difference in end results. AI showing restraint? That's not the IntSys AI I know and WOOOHOOO! Er, um... I mean, very well done. That was excellent work, Jake! Rock on! I won! I knew you'd deliver. You're going to be a great CO, Jake. ... So you're Black Hole goons, huh? Don't you guys ever give up? And how did you recover so quickly? Last I checked, your armies were trashed after your last failed invasion. Reply irrelevant. Initiating Jugger retreat protocol. Next time, Jugger breaks you.Standard ineffectual villain retort. Then again, he really had no chance BUT to be ineffective, this was a tutorial level. What are they after? Who knows...But they're out in force and bent on destruction, that's for sure. Let's leave the intelligence gathering to the pros and focus on fighting. Yeah. We've gotta drop these fools. That's right. Let's take it to 'em! Rawk! S-Rank! Because it's damned hard to gently caress up on a tutorial level.  Not even going to give us a new one to groan over? Anyways, next time, we get a new/old Orange Star Co to play with, and the coolest Black Hole CO returns! And hopefully enough content for a longer update... Alkydere fucked around with this message at Jan 9, 2012 around 19:17 |
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 07:45 |
|
|
I hate to hijack the commentary of the thread, but I wanted to point out a few things.ZeeToo posted:Here's actually something I'm not sure on: the super power max damage modifier. If it really maxes out at +90%, Jugger is strictly worse than Flak, because his super power takes longer to charge (Alkydere hasn't mentioned this yet, but different powers do charge at different rates based on how powerful they are), and it has a larger change of being worse than normal but no chance of ever hitting harder than Flak's. Actually, Jugger's CO bar serves an interesting purpose. It allows him to use two COPs in a row instead of a SCOP if Jugger deals some additional damage during the turn after his COP. This actually serves a purpose since Jugger's COP is better than Flak's, while Flak's SCOP is better than Jugger's. After a couple of uses, it is possible to use Jugger's COP back-to-back, which obviously Flak cannot do. The same goes for Adder/Koal. Adder's xxXXX bar allows him to use two COP in a row after some damage and back-to-back after a couple of uses. Koal cannot, so he relies more on his SCOP (and road bonus). In this case, Adder should use his COP more often while Koal should just wait for the SCOP unless the situation demands otherwise. Also, while we're on the topic on luck, we found something entirely weird with the pseudo-RNG in the game. It's a discussion for another time. Finally, HQs give 4-star defenses, not 5. The 5th star was only used in one game in one specific instance and it's not this one.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 08:09 |
|
|
Huh, now that IS an interesting way to use Jugger. After a while one starts to forget all about normal COPs what with the dual-striking and all. And it wouldn't be an Alkyderp LP without me regularly getting something wrong. Either way, HQ + Lash + COP/SCOP = endless frustration.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 08:16 |
|
|
DTaeKim posted:I hate to hijack the commentary of the thread, but I wanted to point out a few things. If we didn't believe in quantity over quality... But, in all seriousness, that's a pretty clever point that I hadn't seen before. Thanks for bringing it up.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 08:19 |
|
|
If we get to vote on commander palettes, I think Jake needs his last one. He prefers to go by his rave handle, DJ Jakenstein.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 08:52 |
|
|
What does dropping a phat beat entail and how it is even remotely relevant to war?
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 08:53 |
|
|
Yeah, my vote is Everyone should be a clone. Also you should've had Jake wear the Andy outfit for mission 2.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 08:56 |
|
|
AW:DS holds a special place in my heart for being pure apeshit crazy and reveling in its own insanity. Also this.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 09:26 |
|
|
Oh god, I know it's only my second LP, but I'm never gonna have a thread without at least one Blingee, am I? Also, love the disco ball.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 09:37 |
|
|
 Anyway, yeah, if at all possible I'd like Jake to be a zombie. A zombie that eats disco balls instead of brains, apparently,
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 09:42 |
|
|
Epee Em posted:AW:DS holds a special place in my heart for being pure apeshit crazy and reveling in its own insanity. That is the best thing. Also, I like Jugger, if only for how stupid he (it?) is. And for one of his victory quotes. ("Downloading party hat.")
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 11:15 |
|
|
While I may not particularly care for Jugger's character design, I do like his personality. He's like a fat, slightly retarded HK-47.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 12:59 |
|
|
Jugger has one redeeming factor. (Warning: URL is kinda spoilers. Not really, but I don't know if Alkydere wants this revealed. I will edit it out if he so asks)
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 14:16 |
|
|
There is only one CO who matters, and that is the kid with the money. You cannot lose with the power of  behind you.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 14:47 |
|
|
Senerio posted:Jugger has one redeeming factor. Eh, don't worry about it. I don't think the fact that there are alternate costumes one can unlock is a huge spoiler.
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 14:59 |
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2013 07:07 |
|
|
Say what you will about the plot (yes, it really is insane), this game has some  music. Here are the themes for the COs we've run into so far:Jake's theme  Rachel's Theme  Jugger's Theme 
|
| # ? Jan 7, 2012 15:11 |
|
