Reign of Swords: A Poor Man's Fire Emblem
Written: Oct 02 '09
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: good strategy elements, tons of units, somewhat deep gameplay, cheap price
Cons: 1990's graphics, light story, simulated multiplayer, unresponsive controls
The Bottom Line: Hey, you can't beat the 99 cent price.
|
|
|
| kjell1979's Full Review: Reign of Swords for iPhone |
If you're a tightwad cheapskate like me, you're always looking for good deals. So it's no wonder that I jumped quickly when I saw the price of Reign of Swords drop to 99 cents. This is a game that sold for upwards of $10 less than a year ago. Still like many iPhone games, the older they get the more dated they look and Reign of Swords is no different. Still, while I couldn't imagine paying $10 for this game, there is certainly quite a bit of value in this download.
Story
The story is pretty forgettable. I had a hard time following it and often found myself spacing out or skipping through the exposition to each battle because I simply wanted to play the game. It seems as if you're part of the army charged with saving the kingdom of Carrone. As I mentioned it's pretty forgettable and you really shouldn't pick this game up if you're expecting the storytelling of a bigger budget game.
Gameplay
Reign of Swords is a turn based strategy game set in the middle ages. You control footmen, knights, pikemen, axemen, and a whole host of different units. The units have a fair amount of diversity to them. The catapults and trebuchets serve as seige units whereas the knights are more of a cavalry unit that sweeps up through their superior movement.
Each unit has a given cost, but each one has a specific value on the battlefield given a specific scenario. Reign of Swords has a deployment phase where you can choose which units you wish to bring into battle on a given budget. The key here is to figure out whether you want more powerful units or overwhelm your opponent with less powerful units in greater numbers. It's a neat way to play the game and offers a lot of ways to play through a given scenario. Some scenarios have pre-deployed units such as early on there's a siege mission where you can choose to play as either the attacker or defender with pre-deployed units.
On the field of battle the different units shine. Magical units can cast offensive or defensive spells over a certain range. There are hero units that can be lead through the battle field. When attacking you attack with either the first or second strike. Meaning the defender can occasionally get in the first strike on a weaker opponent. The healthier your unit, the more damage they can do.
Each scenario earns you loot which can help strengthen your army. Gaining this loot is accomplished by how well you do in battle. Each battle scenario or mission has a set objective and your goal is to fulfill that objective. By strengthening your army, you can build up a more powerful army to use in future battles and against opponents and friends online.
Playing online is not quite the hands on experience which other games have. Basically, you select the units and formation you wish to setup initially and you opponent does the same. You then send that information out and the game servers simulate the battle and send you and your opponent the results. The experience is very hands-off in the sense that you do not get to show off your battlefield tactics other than your ability to setup a superior army.
Overall the game is very solid and rewards you for solid tactical gameplay. The wide variety of units really makes this game worthwhile on its own. The multiplayer aspect is a nice addition, but didn't keep me as occupied or entertained as much as the single player missions.
Controls
On the surface, the controls take advantage of what the iPhone gives you. Everything is touch-based and moving units is as simple as highlighting and dragging them to their intended positions. The interface is very clever and really serves the platform well. My biggest complaint with the interface itself is that after highlighting a unit, it's not easy to scroll to other parts of the map. Instead I opt to position the map where I need it before I highlight the unit. It takes some getting used to and often doesn't serve the game too well.
I had some problems with the control responsiveness. Every so often I got into a situation where I couldn't highlight or perform an action on a unit. This was frustrating because I had to do many different things such that it would recognize that I wanted to move or attack with a given unit. These problems are infrequent, but when they do occur, they can be really frustrating.
Graphics
The graphics are one of the weaker points of Reign of Swords. The game is sprite based and takes place on a square grid. There's limited animation and even then it's rather choppy. Cutscenes are really just character cutaways with speeches typed out in boxes adjacent to the action. The whole graphical presentation seemed like it's right out of a 1990's era freeware game. And that's fine by me since those are the games which really paved the way for the passion for video games I have today. It's just a little disheartening given the graphical efforts in other turn based strategy games that are currently on the market.
Sound
The music is quite good. The game offers a strong theme song as well as some great battle music. It does have the propensity to get on your nerves after a particularly long battle. The sound effects are ambient though also a little on the generic side. This is clearly not a big budget audio project, but at least the audio is only mildly annoying at worst. Besides, you're playing this on an iPhone or iPod touch, surely there's an app that allows for you to play music over the game's audio right?
Replay Value
There are quite a few missions to play in Reign of Swords and if you have a lot of friends who play, the multiplayer can be rather addicting. The gameplay is solid and while there isn't that final level of polish there is quite a bit of value packed into this game.
Reign of Swords isn't going to give Advance Wars, Fire Emblem, or Final Fantasy Tactics a run for its money. However, at 99 cents the price is more than right. This is a very decent game with a good amount of depth. If you're looking for a poor man's Fire Emblem, this is your game. It doesn't offer quite the engaging story and the depth isn't that of a first class DS title, but Punch Entertainment does a great job in trying to recreate that strategy element even if it falls short in many departments. If you're looking for more of a top notch experience, or if you simply require more depth and polish to your turn based strategy games, then you might not enjoy this. But why not give it a try anyway? You can't beat that price!
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
kjell1979
|
 in Games |
 - Top 500 |
|
Location: Oxford, Mass
Reviews written: 281
Trusted by: 348 members
About Me:
Smack! Smack! Sugar Smacks! Give me a smack and I'll smack ya back!
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.