I'm surprised not "many" people know of the game. I was wishing for a remake or to play these again only to be blown away the next day of the remakes. I have skepticism however, since the 1st game hasn't aged well despite starting it all and the 2nd being a lot of people's favorites. (also introduces the most broken OC, Colin)

I knew about it some years ago but wasnt really interested till recently youtube had recommended of video ranking all COs from all games that caught my interest till i decided to give it a try after i found files for emulator. Was fun tho i dont have interest doing it again on Hard Difficulty, and playing Versus or War Room dosent earn points to unlock more stuff from Battle Maps and dont really have anyone else to play with. I know there exists the Advanced Wars by Web which is made for Multiplayer, but not really fan of PvP only setting they have. But yeh the games could use some balancing, my boi Flak could use some buffs since i have soft spot for underdogs or underrated character and i wanted to see if i can make him work after he was being rated as worst CO.

It sounds like you might have found the same videos/guy as I did on YouTube, who I've been watching for a while now since seeing the reboot announcement.


I think Flak (and his "better" clone, Jugger) is just bad for the sake of being bad, an intro-bad guy or as a challenge CO with his bad luck mechanic which can actually turn him into a scary CO, but still can be bad at it. He technically can be "good" but randomly.

What I am skeptical or hopeful is for balancing on AW 1, because the OG game has not aged well and that YouTuber I hinted it showed me just how bad. Plus just having a CO power and no Super CO power and barely any info on what they do is just plain lazy and bad. I'm also really hoping they don't mess with Lash, Jess or Colin... Either visually or with how they played back then.

Yes i believe we're both talking about Mangs.

As for Flak i dont think he needs to be bad on purpose, guess if you compare Advance War to similiar Stragedy games where all Factions are basicly same but have buffs based on your choice like AoE2 or Northgard. I'd say he should be the simple minded Brute Force character with no special gimmicks other than he hits hard and still be decent, thats basicly what Grimm is in Dual Strike. and Yes Grimm is also rated as not very good but i feel like his higher attack at less defence is more interesting than relying on RNG.

As for CO in AW1 i feel like Andy or Olaf could use buffs because personally i dont didnt find Hyper Repair or Blizzard that useful most of time, not much else to say about that.

For me, these types of games will always have lackluster characters, maybe because there's too many to balance things out. Flak is seen as bad because people don't like to rely on RNG, or rather, the bad portion of it, because people like Nell for that aspect. (obviously)

As for making Flak suck less, the only thing I can think of (and I had this idea just this moment) is maybe he can have slightly better luck against air units? I am stemming this from his name, and slightly from a AW2 mod that Mangs played that gave Flak 20% damage to his Anti-air, again or presumably, because of his name.

Andy and Olaf are "bad" in AW1 because its where they first started out, but in AW2 and further I think they are fine. Hyper repair is good for COs that have global-damaging powers, like Hawke actually, who can do at max 2 damage. But to each his own.

I still feel like it can be balanced, sure not every character can be A tier but should be enough that everyone is ok against eachother than just having few characters that always struggle vs everyone else.

I suppose giving character named after Anti-air gun a bonus vs Air units makes sense. Maybe brute like Flak just dosent like fast moving aircraft. And maybe its just me but when i did play Andy or Olaf in AW1 and 2 their powers seemed to take quite a while to charge up, like maybe i was just a noob but took me around 8 days to Charge up Andy's repair power, felt the same for Olaf's blizzard when i played him in AW2. Also since you mentioned Colin id say yeh he might be too good since i beat final mission by spamming Bombers, think i had like 8 of them and bunch of other aircraft when i finished the mission since i went for air superioty with Eagle and Sensei as allied COs lol.

Mangs has videos explaining CO power build up rates and whatnot. While I never fully understand it I always knew that killing expensive units usually meant big CO power gains.

Colin and Hachi will always be OP because building units for any reduced price means you can out-build your opposition. The -10% power reduction for Colin is barely a big deal. Hachi is slightly/more broken because he has 0 weaknesses (unless you count his units being 10% cheap, opposed to Colin's 20% cost) and deploying units at HALF price and from ANY CITY with his super CO power means you can swarm with big units. Hachi is downright broken/god-like in Dual-strike due to many reasons I wont list, cuz they are many.

Well to give Credit Hachi is special CO that you can only unlock if you S rank the campaing, so playing as him is reward for going through such challenge, like unlocking cheat codes for beating hard game challenges so i kinda get why he is so OP along with Sturm, perhaps it would make more sense if there was option to nerf their powers when playing VS other player so they're not instant win unless playing against another Hachi or Sturm.

To me problem with Colin is how cheap his Gold Rush power is, as Mangs said using power gives 10% dmg boost so it undoes Colin's damage reduction and lets him make even more cheap units so raising it's cost would be one way to nerf him atleast.

Id also wish for some Balancing with ships, i do enjoy Naval warfare hence why Drake is also one of my Favs, but trouble with ships is their high cost. I mean Bomber costs like 22000 credits and Battleship costs 28000, while Battleship has range advantage it cant move and shoot and dosent move that fast anyway, while Bomber can fly far and attack in single turn while also being strong enough to one shot most ground units, so Navy units need some balancing to be more useful, maybe give Drake discounts for ships aswell.

A ton of people always complain about naval units and their price, and I agree too. I do my darnest to keep them safe. Although Hachi and Colin can play at it better. If you played AW: Days of Ruin, you might have a "field day". Battleships can MOVE and SHOOT at the same time. Also Anti-tanks.

For Colin's CO Power, I think it would be a good thing to just make him gain less funds with each spammed CO power, or just increase the CO power cost of it with each use. But it's hard to say for me. All in all, it would be really interesting to see how they balance EVERYTHING in the remakes for online matches.

I did not play Dual Strike or Days of Ruin since i do not have files for emulator to play them, maybe i would if i knew where to find such.
But yes increasing the cost of Colin's Gold Rush should definetly help to lessen the constant spamming and undoing the damage penalty he has.