Published by: Atlus Developed by: Success Release Date: March 13, 2008 Genre: Strategy Review Written #1 Review Published #1 At first, I thought this was going to be a very lame game. Boy was I wrong. Drone Tactics adds new features that Advance Wars doesn't have. The gameplay is mostly the same, terrain bonuses, movement ranges, turn-based gameplay, except that you have cards, experience, and customization using the shop. The story itself is very lame and predictable, but everything else is amazing. You command robotic bugs (lame, eh?) but instead of controlling many bugs at once, you control a maximum of 9. Unlike Advance Wars where you control regular units, you have beefed up units similar to COs in Advance Wars. The idea is to be conservative and don't send out your units on a suicide run, since they don't come back and you only have 8 units on the offensive. Each bug unit is unique and has special attributes. Some units are great with Melee, Gun or Cannon, some are anti-air or anti-ground, and some have the beam effect added to their weapons. Beams remind me most of World of Warcraft when a mage uses frostbolt on a warrior. Units that have a lot of armor, but no beam defense will be obliterated by beams. Notice the crossed out A? That means his guns are Anti-air. Now the one concern I had when I first played was how am I supposed to take down 20-50 enemy units when I only have 4 or 5? The base unit, or the snail unit allows you to dock your other units into the hangar and after one turn, they are fully recovered. However, it takes a turn to dock, and a turn to deploy. Other recovery options are certain recovery tiles that replenish 40 or 80 HP per turn, or by using a card. the docking bay. you can hold a maximum of 8 units inside the hangar. One of the bad aspects of leveling up is well... leveling up. If you want to have the competitive edge in the story mode, you will have to spend a lot of time in the Badlands, which is like a challenge mode of preset maps...like Advance Wars. Badlands #20 is the best to level with because if you manage to take out the factories before they deploy, you get 13 kills. 13 kills x 2 bases = 604 T (T is the money) and a lot of experience, plus bonus experience that you can apply to any unit. You also get awarded some vital healing cards in the process. Using the Combine function, you can combine the lower tier healing cards and make the higher end ones. And since you get the lowest healing card, you can make ANY of the healing cards provided that you have enough. To make the best healing card, you need over 200 of the lowest card. Using a cannon-enhancing card, makes cannon fire more effective. The mini games that the cards have are extremely annoying. Practice makes perfect since every boss uses at least 12 of the same dumb card. If you and your opponent use a card at the same time, you go into a button mashing minigame. Always use a card when attacking a boss since even if you lose to the button mash game, you still hit him (for a lot of damage), even if he used an evasion card. The story is boring, lame and predictable. I noticed that I only had two empty spaces in the number of characters and whaddya know, in the story mode there are two "officers" left on the opposing side. Hmm. I wonder what happens... The AI is finally up to par on my standards. Almost to the point that they are annoying. However, on easy, the AI is territorial, so if you take some time and heal up your units before going to the next section of the map, you will have an easier time. Using cannon fire is great for aggroing (world of warcraft term, can't really explain it, it's just something you'll have to look up) units one by one. There's also multiplayer but try finding a friend that has the game besides you. The factories also work by aggro, so using the helicopter drone is best to take those out before they deploy their units. Two drones using melee attacks. You also get the option to Counter, but you have to use the same weapon type. If you don't have a gun equipped and they attack using a gun, you can't counter (except it doesn't tell you that you can't) Presentation - The game is well presented, the menus are nicely done, the explanations are very easy to understand and they provide a skip option for the boring parts. (8/10) Graphics - The graphics are regular Advance Wars type on the overlay, but when the units fight, the bugs are in full 3D and nicely done. (8/10) Sound - The sound coming from the NDS speakers sometimes sound like a blown speaker or the sound when too much bass is put out by a small speaker. (6.5/10) Gameplay - Gameplay is where it's at. Not only can you level, but you can customize as well. However, customization is limited by their effectiveness. (meaning don't put a melee weapon on a ranged fighter) The gameplay isn't original, however. (9.5/10) Lasting Appeal - Would you pick this up years from now and play it again? Probably not from scratch since grinding is a long tiresome and extremely boring process. (7/10) Final Score: 39/50 Note: I just gave away the entire storyline just by posting screenshots.
beware of grinding on the same level over and over again just so you can outlevel your opponents on the story mode. it's almost necessary to gain enough good cards to synthesize and exp for all of your drones.
