I’m an Advance Wars fan just as much as the next guy. But I was still on the fence about my decision on getting AW: Days of Ruin when it comes out. Why? Because I wanted it to have an online mode.

Today, Intelligent Systems gave us more info on the upcoming sequel to Advance Wars: Dual Strike. They’ve stripped the series of some of the “features” that distracted the last one from the heart of the franchise. For example, they’ve removed dual screen battles, toned down some CO powers, and removed a few of the “advanced units”. Watering down some of the CO powers was a good move in my opinion, since some of them were just too effective, and I guess they had to make the online mode more balanced.

Speaking of online, it was announced that the game would come equipped with online wifi, local wifi and hot seat play. It’ll also support voice chat (better dig out my DS headset from that pile of dust) and a Map Center. The map center is a place to download and rate maps.