You can get it at GameQuestDirect.com for two bucks less than Amazon Marketplace.
Advance Wars is king on the DS, but I think I enjoyed AOK more than most (though I echo the complaints about the isometric view and the muddy units making navigation unnecessarily difficult). Disciples II should be a good time, but the previews I’ve read make it sound like a straight port of the original.
And since we broke your DS-only rule with Yggdra Union, I’ll plug the two Super Robot Taisen games for GBA.
Fire Emblem is king, in my opinion, now that GBA games have entered the conversation.
Just wondering, but does anyone know where I can find the first fire emblem for hopefully around $20?
For Game Boy Advance? Try your local EB/Gamestop in the used section. You’re not likely to find any new ones around anymore.
Fire Emblem is selling for ~$20 (incl shipping) on eBay these days …
Well, EB / GS has moved their date to May 22nd on this now …
You might also give the Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation games on GBA a try. I actually like their combat mechanics more than Fire Emblem. I also enjoy their stories which are a giant melange of Macross, Gundam, Appleseed, Shogun Warriors, Starblazers, and just about any other giant robot/spaceship anime you can think of. One warning about said story though, it is really convoluted and talky so your mileage may vary.
I’ve recently moved back to playing Super Robot Taisen, after watching the ongoing anime (available at your favourite fansub; it’s not released in America yet). The show follows Ryusei’s path fairly closely, and it’s helping me visualize all the freaking people & organizations mentioned in the game so far.
There is also a Zone of Enders game for the GBA that is also a derivative of SRT. Same turn based mechanics, same tiny squares for map grids. I don’t know how it plays, though.
I dunno, I thought all the needless changes between the in-game story and the anime adaptation made Divine Wars eminently missable. It ultimately seems to leave you with a much poorer and more poorly characterized version of a storyline that was intentionally generic and derivative to begin with. (It also underscores why OG’s version of Ryusei is quite possibly the least fun iteration of the character.)
This OT kvetching aside, yes, the Super Robot Taisen games are quite fun; the second one is better than the first, but they’re more enjoyable if you play them in order. Despite being an Atlus game, it’s still pretty easy to find them both where I live, which is the ass-end of nowhere. So folks in bigger cities should have no trouble tracking them down.
Trivia: I might have bought the very last SRT:OG2 in Ottawa today. I have been able to find OG1 in many places, however.
Continued OT: I suspect the show is boring/disjointed/bad for those who didn’t play the game. But the thing that keeps coming to my mind while watching was “hey, I was THERE! I had to clean out all those stupid walking/flying turrets from the base!”
Dangit. I finally broke down and got a DS (figured my wife would dig Brain Age 2; she does), and I can’t find Advance Wars DS anywhere besides eBay.
Picked up Age of Empires to hold me off till I locate one…
I’m looking forward to Panzer Tactics (something of a mesh of advance wars with an “old school” hex-based wargame) on DS. I think I’ll probably go with the PSP version of the upcoming Warhammer: Squad Commander (as the trailer suggests a lot of destructible environments more likely to shine on PSP), but, it is coming out on DS as well. Both are turn-based strategy, fwiw.
THQ’s site for the DS version of the Warhammer game gives a glimpse of how the DS version will differ (the second screen will give you a pretty good size map view at all times):
http://www.thq-games.com/uk/game/show/2292
I like Age of Empires DS so much better than the RTS original on PC. It makes me wish they’d do up Age of Mythology in similar fashion.
I really liked it too but the way everything got so crowded, graphically eventually made me stop playing.
OOh, that would be quite slick. Damn you for putting that in my head.
I rather liked AoE DS, and completely beat the campaign. If anything, my biggest complaint would be that non-campaign skirmishes didn’t hold my attention at all, unlike the PC RTS versions, where skirmishes are where I spend all my time.
Pocket Gamer (UK) has a little item on the next Advance Wars game for DS. They are switching to a new “cel shaded” look for the combat sequences in this (it reminds me a bit of the shooter XIII from few years back), and it’s scheduled for a Jan. 31, 2008 U.S. release. A little Googling shows it’s been mentioned all over the place news site wise (Pocket Gamer was just first place I saw it).
Advance Wars: Days of Ruin
And the storyline the game follows sounds equally serious, with translations of some of the Japanese text in the screenshots released indicating it takes place in a world ravaged by natural disasters. Heat, earthquakes and meteor strikes have wiped out 90 per cent of the earth’s population.
Early speculation points at the game using new COs, and several of the units have been seen in a video, including a new motorbike unit and Defender Cannon.
DS Fanboy has a larger gallery of pics from both the English language and Japanese versions:
DS Fanboy
DS Fanboy also has 3 [scroll down their page to see the other 2] blurry, sideways [to fit both DS screens in their video camera’s view] videos of it in action at the Paris Micromania Game Show a week or so ago (can anyone translate French? They’re probably not saying anything great, just curious :D):
http://www.dsfanboy.com/2007/10/06/advance-wars-ds-2-videos-turn-the-series-on-its-side/
A wee little peek:
Something to keep an eye on if you’re starved for strategy on DS.
All they say is that there are new units (the guy mentions motorcycles), the interface’s changed, and that the game is more mature and serious than the previous ones – I suppose they mean the storyline and the characters.
The black outlines are awfully thick, so much that it looks a bit off. The new Fire Emblem DS is going with a similar look and it seems a small step backwards compared to the previous clean sprites and portraits.
From what I’ve read the Fire Emblem DS game is a revision of the original NES title. I think they’re trying to reproduce that art style for some reason. I love the 2D FE sprites for the GBA games and agree that character art of the new game is not impressive. Hopefully it will animate well.
Isn’t there a Wii version of Advance Wars coming out in the meantime? Perhaps one that doesn’t suck, unlike the Gamecube version?