Battalion Wars

Battalion Wars
Developer	Kuju Entertainment
Publisher	Nintendo
System	Gamecube
Release Date	US September 20, 2005 JP October 27, 2005 EU December 9, 2005
Gallery	GH Gallery
Rating	Teen

Battalion Wars is a spin-off game from the Famicom Wars series. Originally titled Advance Wars: Under Fire, it was renamed to Battalion Wars due to the sizable amount of differences from the Advance Wars games.

Story

For years the Western Frontier and Tundra Territories have been locked in a stalemate, with only a small Demilitarized Zone separating the two. However this shaky peace is disrupted when Tundra launches an attack that escalates into a world wide war.

Gameplay

The game mixes real time strategy with third person shooter action. The player can control any unit under their command by using the C stick to select the unit type and then the Z button. The C button can be used to select all units or unit types or even individual units. Once a unit is selected, the X and Y buttons can be used to issue commands. When simply fighting, the L button can be used to lock on targets.

Although the game is largely action oriented, using strategy is key to complete each mission. To that end, it becomes important in the game to assign units to individual tasks and to clear out potential risks to units. Like with the Advance Wars, certain units have advantages and disadvantages to other units.

The game contains twenty campaign missions where you play as the Western Frontier. By completing these missions with high enough scores, four additional bonus missions can be unlocked. In the bonus missions, you get to play as the four other factions, typically from an alternate perspective of a campaign mission. The game however lacks any other mode besides campaign mode.

Advance Wars Connection

Given the game's Famicom Wars origins, it shares many similarities to the Advance Wars series. Some of these include:

• The game has Commanding Officers (COs) like the Wars series. However these COs are only used to provide mission info and story-related segments. They do not provide any special powers to the units in their command.
• Although ground and air forces are available, navy units do not appear in the game.
• In some missions, units will have to capture flags. Unlike Wars, there is no option to capture cities, gather funds, or deploy additional units.
• Several nations appear in Battalion Wars. Although the colors differ, the nations could be compared as such: Western Frontier - Orange Star; Tundra Territories - Blue Moon; Xylvania - Black Hole; Sol Empire - 'Yellow Comet.

Sequels

In 2007, Battalion Wars II was released on the Wii. The game added multiplayer, naval units, and an all new nation known as the Anglo Isles.

See Also

• Units in Battalion Wars