Advance Wars: Dual Strike is the kind of game that makes you forget you’re holding a tiny DS screen—until your hands cramp up hours later. You’re thrown right into commanding little pixel armies, moving tanks and infantry across grid maps that start simple but quickly turn into brain-melting puzzles. The twist? The DS’s dual screens let you fight on two fronts at once, which sounds cool until you realize you just screwed up both battles at the same time.

At first, I stuck to brute-forcing my way through with heavy units, but the AI punishes that fast. Turns out, scouting with recons and timing your CO powers (those flashy super moves) matters way more than spamming megatanks. The new CO tag-team mechanic adds this weird rhythm where you’re juggling two commanders’ abilities—some combos feel downright unfair (in a good way).

It’s got that classic Advance Wars charm—bright colors, goofy dialogue between battles—but don’t let that fool you. The campaign gets vicious, and the War Room challenges will have you resetting over a single misclick. If you’re into strategy games that reward patience (and occasionally ruin friendships in versus mode), this one’s a no-brainer.