Nintendo Wars/YMMV

Anticlimax Boss (Borderline -- whereas his predecessor Sturm was horribly overpowered, Von Bolt from Advance Wars: Dual Strike is barely above average at best and up against a roster full of new overpowered COs. Not to mention that the maps you battle him on are rather... pathetic, to the point where the last mission should have been called Mean To The End instead. Intelligent Systems learned from this and made doubly sure Caulder/Stolos from Days of Ruin didn't fall into the same pit trap.)
- When compared to the first Advance Wars game's "final boss" fight against Sturm, Advance Wars 2's "final boss" fight against him is also rather pathetic; exploiting the AI pattern of his Black Cannons (always attacking high-HP fighter units and the like rather than attacking Grit's extremely overpowered rocket units and the like) makes him completely helpless in the Normal Campaign version of Hot Pursuit (Part 1 of AW2's Sturm battle), while his Deathray (that the destruction of results in an instant win for the player) can easily be destroyed in one hit by bomber units in both versions of Final Front (Part 2 of AW2's Sturm battle).
  - Not to mention the fact that Sturm himself also gets killed in one hit by Hawke in Final Front's post-victory cutscene...
Anvilicious: The Advance Wars series' message about the (moral) difference between good COs and bad ones. Note how nearly all of the "bad" COs in the series are incredibly stereotypical G.I. Joe villains (such as Flak, Lash, Adder, Caulder, the Beast and the Bolt Guard) and/or dictators (such as Sturm, Admiral Greyfield, Von Bolt, the AW2 version of Hawke, and the AW1 versions of Olaf and Kanbei).
Artistic License: Biology: Viruses cannot make plants grow under people's skin.
- Not viruses, but the Creeper seems to be heavily based on the real world Cordyceps fungus, which, at least in the ant version of the fungus, causes the ants to go insane and then die, the fruiting body bursting out of their corpses.
Awesome Music: Has its own page here.
Complete Monster Caulder/Stolos. He engineers a virus to wipe out the remaining survivors of the meteor shower, raises his cloned children as test subjects, and gleefully indulges in the suffering and bloodshed of others under the pretense of scientific research.
- And Greyfield. Especially when he executes an opposing general, who surrenders to spare his troops' lives, in cold blood and orders his troops to continue the attack! And when Brenner releases said captured troops (which are all marked for execution), Greyfield sics his men on him, then drops a superweapon provided by the aforementioned Caulder on him, despite knowing full well that his own men would be caught in the blast! You will jump for joy when Lin nonchalantly Just Shoots Him after your final go-around with the deranged maniac.
Contested Sequel: Dual Strike completely changed the setting and tone of the previous games, as well as how the CO powers work, causing quite a division. Many people declared that it would be garbage, despite not knowing anything else about it.
Demonic Spiders (Anti-Tanks in Days of Ruin, Pillboxes in the first Battalion Wars, Fighters and Strato Destroyers in the Battalion Wars 2).
Evil Is Cool: Sturm is an absolutely definitive example of this.
- You thought Eagle was badass? Get a load of Hawke.
Game Breaker: Infantry spam is central to high level play on some level. If a player isn't passing over high price units to be able to build at least an infantry at every base every turn, they aren't winning.
- Purposefully Overpowered: The two boss COs Sturm and Caluder (Von Bolt tries to be this, but isn't quite strong enough). Nell and Hachi probably count, too.
- Kanbei and Grit are often cited as being game breakers from their AW2 incarnations onwards. Although, Grit has been considered lower after DS games.
- Colin also, although he doesn't fare too well against COs that get defensive boosts.
- Sensei is called broken old man, for a good reason.
- And if we were to toss the various Force Rank upgrades and potential tag team combinations from AWDS, we'd probably double the size of this page.
  - The series now has its own page. Go nuts.
Gannon Banned: Here's a tip for being taken seriously in the Advance Wars communities: never, ever suggest a sniper unit. Something about such a thing being impossible to balance right or something.
Goddamned Bats (The 'Mech Rush' tactic from Advance Wars is based on this trope. In particular, Sensei's CO Powers - spawning Infantry or Mechs on every city he owns - can quickly drive opponents insane.)
- Colin, with his power to increase his funds by half every couple of turns on top of normal income and having cheaper units, can out spam even Sensei, and when partnered with Hachi or Sensei in Dual Strike, this is made even worse.
High Octane Nightmare Fuel The Creeper in Days of Ruin. Lin, being how she is, makes it worse by theorizing whether the infected feel the roots moving just beneath their skin.
- Knowing the guy who created it, the answer is most likely yes.
Large Ham:

Javier: "Charge into the toothy maw. For now it is time for a glorious hindspanking!".

Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Eagle and Hawke.
Replacement Scrappy (Von Bolt, who replaced Sturm.)
- Jake replacing Andy as the main character. While Andy wasn't exactly the most interesting character in the world, a lot of people would prefer him over Jake's Jive Turkey routine any day.
That One Level (Crystal Calamity in Dual Strike, Their Finest Hour in Battalion Wars 2, and Sunrise from Days of Ruin.)
- Sea Fortress and Sinking Feeling from Black Hole Rising. Given Sea Fortress is a highly tactical mission with limited resources and an emphasis on unit placement and management, while Sinking Feeling is a highly strategic mission with a time limit and a very freeform (thus hard to Walkthrough) general strategy, it's easy to see where this comes from.
- Sunrise was the last mission in Days of Ruin, where you finally face Caulder. It's supposed to be frustrating and difficult... and the fact that Caulder is arguably more broken than Sturm makes it even more fun.
  - Greyfield Strikes from "Days of Ruin" can be very frustrating, depending on which units get sabotaged. Having landers and gunboats unusable in the first few turns will make the mission much harder and longer than it actually is.
  - Waylon Flies Again from "Days of Ruin" has caused some players to give up the game entirely.
Scrappy Mechanic: "Auto CO" in Dual Strike.
Smug Snake (Adder in Black Hole Rising, Greyfield/Sigismundo and Waylon/Finn in Days of Ruin. These are just guys you love to hate.)
Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The original Advance Wars is outright primitive in comparison to the sequel. The campaign in particular is considered very, very poor.
Spoony Bard: Dual Strike in particular has a lot of new units with gimmicks but the only one to see much play is the Black Boat, which gets used because of its secondary ability to transport infantry across water rather than its gimmick. Game Boy Wars 3 also has this, but has a higher variety of units and only 2 or 3 of them are plagued by this trope.
"Stop Having Fun!" Guys (Increasingly prevalent with the rise of unofficial online clones and WFC in Days Of Ruin, allowing people around the world to play each other and establish game breaking strategies)
- Fog and navy are thrown out of the metagame. Guess what's wrong with that?
Tastes Like Diabetes: Isabella's theme in Days of Ruin, despite the Darker and Edgier setting. That doesn't mean the song isn't good. As it's a song from Advance Wars, it pretty much has to be really good. I'll stop there.
Unfortunate Implications - In the Japanese versions, the heroic Orange Star army was originally called the "Red Star" army. You can see why they changed it for the international versions.
Woolseyism (Most of the CO names in the English localizations.)
- Particularly Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict: Nearly every name (and themes), many missions, several units (sometimes contradicting the same unit name in earlier games) and the entirety of the script differ due to an independent European localization. The European version is closer to the original Japanese, for the better or worse.

---