Famicom Wars (NES, 1988)
Graphics-7 Sound-7.5 Control-7 Challenge-6.5 Story-4
Level Design-7 Frustration-7.5 Fun-7 Originality-6
Overall Score-7
+
Innovative mechanics (unit healing (use supply when a unit is on one of your building tiles), "home" button mapped to select, merge damaged squads of the same type (up to 10 HP/units), unit transporting, building capture for more income per turn and larger armies, terrain effects (mountain, forest, city, plain & beach, road & ocean)
Can cancel unit orders
Difficulty options (just normal/iq 100 and hard/iq 200)
Cute animations for each action
Good art direction
Nice intro cutscene
Air and sea units
Your units can move through each other's positions
Save feature (need to reset the game (holding down the reset button) every time you save though, only one slot)
2-player vs.
Unit tables (showing stats and whether you've moved a unit or not - also lets you move directly to that unit)
+/-
No story and little characterization
No campaign or unit continuity
No exp system
Supply mechanic (units have limited fuel and ammo - kind of tedious)
Enemy/blue theme sounds similar to a Herzog Zwei theme (possibly inspired by the first Herzog?)
Dropping or loading transports costs an entire turn for both units
Artillery can't move and shoot in the same turn
Mech/rocket soldiers are slower at capturing buildings than regular infantry
Terrain effects are the same in terms of defence bonus regardless of the unit type?
Can't cancel a move command after you've picked "wait here"
Transports can't unload while in a forest?
-
Slow CPU ("thinks" regularly for several seconds and you can't skip any part of its turn)
Trial & error (terrain effects, various mechanics (flying units crash when they run out of fuel and can't land to save on it, building capture, can't drop a unit onto mountain or forest tiles, which buildings you can build units in), unit attributes)
Some interface/control issues (turning off animations means you can't properly see how close your units are to capturing a building, can't move a transport into a tile occupied by infantry to make it load them (needs to be done the opposite way)
The game doesn't show selected units' movement range so you have to use the pointer to check each time
Hard to see which exact units are affected when using the global supply command (shown very quickly)
When checking a particular unit's stats you don't see the max value for each stat along with the current value
Can't cycle through units (could've used the start button since there's no pausing)
Only two factions and they are identical beyond minor differences in looks
Battle animations can't be turned off or manually skipped (other animations can be turned off but not skipped manually)
Choppy and somewhat slow scrolling
Background tiles change when units stand on them making it look like they're on a plain/grass tile (need to hover the cursor over these units to see the terrain type)
CPU player never surrenders
Moving a full unit into a damaged transport unit makes you lose units equal to the difference in numbers
Can't cancel moving a unit into a transport
Level Design-7 Frustration-7.5 Fun-7 Originality-6
Overall Score-7
+
Innovative mechanics (unit healing (use supply when a unit is on one of your building tiles), "home" button mapped to select, merge damaged squads of the same type (up to 10 HP/units), unit transporting, building capture for more income per turn and larger armies, terrain effects (mountain, forest, city, plain & beach, road & ocean)
Can cancel unit orders
Difficulty options (just normal/iq 100 and hard/iq 200)
Cute animations for each action
Good art direction
Nice intro cutscene
Air and sea units
Your units can move through each other's positions
Save feature (need to reset the game (holding down the reset button) every time you save though, only one slot)
2-player vs.
Unit tables (showing stats and whether you've moved a unit or not - also lets you move directly to that unit)
+/-
No story and little characterization
No campaign or unit continuity
No exp system
Supply mechanic (units have limited fuel and ammo - kind of tedious)
Enemy/blue theme sounds similar to a Herzog Zwei theme (possibly inspired by the first Herzog?)
Dropping or loading transports costs an entire turn for both units
Artillery can't move and shoot in the same turn
Mech/rocket soldiers are slower at capturing buildings than regular infantry
Terrain effects are the same in terms of defence bonus regardless of the unit type?
Can't cancel a move command after you've picked "wait here"
Transports can't unload while in a forest?
-
Slow CPU ("thinks" regularly for several seconds and you can't skip any part of its turn)
Trial & error (terrain effects, various mechanics (flying units crash when they run out of fuel and can't land to save on it, building capture, can't drop a unit onto mountain or forest tiles, which buildings you can build units in), unit attributes)
Some interface/control issues (turning off animations means you can't properly see how close your units are to capturing a building, can't move a transport into a tile occupied by infantry to make it load them (needs to be done the opposite way)
The game doesn't show selected units' movement range so you have to use the pointer to check each time
Hard to see which exact units are affected when using the global supply command (shown very quickly)
When checking a particular unit's stats you don't see the max value for each stat along with the current value
Can't cycle through units (could've used the start button since there's no pausing)
Only two factions and they are identical beyond minor differences in looks
Battle animations can't be turned off or manually skipped (other animations can be turned off but not skipped manually)
Choppy and somewhat slow scrolling
Background tiles change when units stand on them making it look like they're on a plain/grass tile (need to hover the cursor over these units to see the terrain type)
CPU player never surrenders
Moving a full unit into a damaged transport unit makes you lose units equal to the difference in numbers
Can't cancel moving a unit into a transport