Sword of Aragon

The Good
Others have reviewed this game with admirable detail so I will not wax lyrical about a game that still has not lost its playability of 15 years. Needless to say this is the first review I have been moved to make so my reader may be assured that I still enjoy playing it to this very day.

Basically what I'd like to do here is to suggest an alternative approach to the game that although may not be in the 'spirit of the game' certainly does not involve recoding.

OK let’s start with the army:

Choose a Warrior - he comes in a 6th level basic don't bother to change his equipment because he gets the sword, but saying that I don't really know if it really affects his combat stats if you re-equip him with anything else.

Next hire as many 3rd level Warrior hero’s as your level allows* and re-equip them with Mail, Large shield, Sword, Spear, Medium horse & Chain barding and later to Mail, Two handed Sword, Xbow, Medium horse & Chain barding.

*You can 'cycle' through the hiring process until you get 3rd level hero’s.

Then you make 2 units of Mtd infantry, 30 men a unit equipped with Leather, Large Shield, Sword Spear, Light Horse & Leather barding.

Why? I hear you ask. It’s to maximise your yearly movement. The more moves you make the more chance of an encounter the more chance of earning victory points and the whole point of the pre Pitlag part of the game is to get your warrior up as many levels as possible.

Why? Because you are aiming to get to 14th level as soon as possible as this is the time you sack half your warriors and buy your real army, the army that will destroy Xafanta in 2 turns without you moving one space. An army that can do 4500 hits in a single attack in Medeval from one unit (I can prove it).

An army that can go up 14 experience levels - yes 14 levels in one combat.

An army that when properly positioned can recapture Char Gernok Xafanta and Dersh all in one turn and thus providing you with a steady income.

What is this army? I'll tell you in a minute.

OK so we have our army and we still through the first battle. I just stick all my hero’s in the tower and fill out the other 2 spaces with the Mtd Inf.

The systems AI tends to assault the hex with the most units in which is fine; watch the Orcs charge in and then take second thoughts or get destroyed. This amuses me.

Well we have no cash now to buy in the logging so its off to the Minotaur in the northwest woods (force march north 1 turn a wait for him to fall on your spears) and down to the Cyclops (force march west, take the hit then jump him).

Now you have enough cash to buy your Allada defence unit - 100 infantry Mail, Large, Sword & Spear. This you leave in Allada and train up to 4th level So you can equip them with the statutory Plate, Sword and Pike.

Still feeling a little strapped for cash? Time to visit the Orcs and the Wizards Southeast of Allada. Charge in and bingo you are 15K richer and you have increased your 2 Mounted Infantry units to 40 men with Mail, Large shield, Sword, Spear, Medium horse & Chain barding and perhaps adding another 2 identical units.

Now you march up and down the roads gaining experience*, you may decide to leave your Mtd Inf behind as they will hamper your experience gain on your hero’s, but its worth getting them up a few levels for the Pitlag fight.

*do not march around if there is any attrition value and save your game after each turn.

Don't forget to buy logging and agriculture (one or two points spent in fortification and structure keeps your people happy).

Next the Duke dies and a quick chat to Malacon followed by the charging in approach and you have your first vassal.

Then you wait for Pitlag to invade Brocada and then charge in to help Petrov and there is vassal number 2.

Next is the big one to do is Paritan do this one when the old man gives you the nod, Pitlag has 2 incarnations this is because no matter how hard you squish him in the battle he always manages to escape to the south east. Don't forget to buy you 100 infantry for Paritan. Take your Mtd Inf to seige Nuralia (check the time of year for attrition purposes). Take your hero’s down to beat up Pitlag.

When Nuralia falls make it vassal number 3 and regroup back in Allada.

Now we so south, go and see the monks and pay them. Travel east up the road and kill the dragon. The combat will go - You stack up your heroes. The dragon lands on them. It dies. You get 72K, nice.

Don't attack Gernock yet. Head back to SurNova, beat up some giants en route and buy your 100 infantry to defend SurNova - don't forget to train them up.

Now its time for the secret weapon.

Yes you guessed it - Mages.

By as many Mages as you can ensure they are the maximum level you can buy. Ensure they all have horses.

Mages are pants until they get to 12th level all they can really offer is their missile attack. Leave your army in SurNova and go and beat up the Priests & Demons with your heroes Northeast of SurNova. Now drag your heroes up and down the road south of Surnova to get encounters. Remember NEVER stack your Mages so they become more of a target that your Warriors especially if there are Giants or Titans. I tend to stack 3 Mages to a hex and 4 Warriors to a hex in order to draw the fire. If you end up too close to you targets, teleport away a distance.

Now quite simply the rest of the game is building up your Mages and using this tactic - Pyro.

Pyro is a wonderful spell, as you progress in level the area of effect gets bigger and the damage per unit gets bigger.

3 20th level mages can take Gernok on their own - try it and watch them get 3-7 levels each for the fight! Note that I suggest for the first fight you take all your heroes as I don't know if your main character has to be there to collect to points.

As you take out subsequent cities your Mages will go up levels quicker if you leave a couple of them next to the city hex to re-conquer it during the next turn - again watch for attrition. The only cities I tend to use in this manner are Gernok Char and Dersh.

I have built up a mage to 100th level and his pyros were doing 50 hits a unit on every enemy unit on the entire map - this was after I accidentally dropped the pyro at his feet!

I won't detail the rest of the game now but this will give you the idea.

Enjoy!

Matt

The Bad
The graphics but what do you expect from a 15 year old game. If half the games out now had half the playability of this gem I'd be a happy man.

The Bottom Line
Sword of Aragon is the Classic fantasy strategy game. A must for those how enjoy a little nostalgia and want to find out where all the other subsquent fantasy strategy games stole thier ideas from.

The Good
As the heir to the late Duke of Aladda who died defending his city against rampaging Orcs, you are now in charge. Your ultimate aim is to unite Aragon by conquest and alliances. But right now the Orcs have returned and your immediate task is to withstand their onslaught.

shrug the same old, tired story, and made in 1989? yuck! shrug

So be it if you please. But then you will have missed out on a brilliant game in all imaginable respects. Interface, combat, and realism. Yes, realism in spite of Aragon being a medieval fantasy world with Orcs, Trolls, Elves and, of course, Magic.

The interface. It won't take you long. Not only it won't take you long, but once you have mastered it you won't forget it. I was two, three years without playing Sword of Aragon. When I played it again the other day it all came back to me without any effort trying to remember.

Combat. Combat takes place in areas large and varied enough so that you can take advantage of the terrain. It is turn-based, which ensures that you can plan your moves, as opposed to the much touted real-time combat which all too often degenerates into mindless brawls and frantic mouse-clicking. The map has all the attributes of an old-time realistic war game. Each hex has a height, a cost for entering and leaving, and a defense bonus. When having, say, your archers attack an enemy unit, you know how many hexes away that unit is so that, with some experience, you can evaluate how much damage you are likely to do. There is a "fog of war". And waging war costs good money too. Half way through a battle you might be asked to replenish your archers' quivers at a cost. Beware: spell-casting also costs money. So don't go into battle with empty coffers. In other words, combat is on par with the most serious war games of the days when Sword of Aragon came out.

City Management. Each city which you will eventually conquer is different. Aladda thrives mostly on agricultural produce. Agriculture, commerce, manufacturing, mining, lumber are the five resources which will provide you with tax money. Some cities are not worth holding: they get attacked by monsters so often that keeping a strong enough garrison becomes too much of a drain on your finances. You set the tax rate as you please in each city. Too low and you will not be able to develop it and maintain your armies. Too high and its inhabitants will leave. You can bleed dry a newly conquered city, press its people into your army, and leave it. It will soon revolt and you can go back in and conquer it again (spoiler: try that on Paritan and you'll never have to worry much about your finances).

The Cycles of Seasons, Movement, and Attrition. Each city-management turn lasts one month. There is not much you can do in winter, when roads are likely to be under deep snow. Venturing out into the countryside is madness then. Movement is much slower, and there is attrition: with each move a percentage of your army risks death--with bad luck, you might even be the one who dies, and that is the end of the game. Beware: summers can be unbearably hot some years too, and attrition then can rise to 4%. Do not venture outside, but spend your time (and money) training your troops and developing your cities. Just like in a real world.

Magic and Heroes. Heroes are special characters who will join you especially after you have just won a battle with flying colours. They come in five flavours: Warrior, Knight, Priest, Ranger, Mage. You yourself are a hero and you get to choose your... er... flavour at the beginning of the game. Each type has special abilities. The presence of a hero among an army corps raises its morale. Priests, Rangers and Mages become proficient in magic as they rise in levels. The spells they can cast are unlike what you may have encountered, although Priests, as you might have guessed, are mostly into healing and blessing, Rangers into terraforming, and Mages into really powerful stuff. Yet magic is not all powerful. Just allow a party of your most powerful mages to be ambushed by Titans and see. Before they can start waving their wands and casting their spells they will be crushed under boulders. What you need when ambushed by Titans is knights in heavy armour. But from a distance mages with teleport spells will work wonders.

So, despite this being a fantasy game, it is a realistic simulation of war and economic management, far, far more realistic than, say, Sid Meier's "Civilization". And it is not linear at all. Nothing prevents you from going about exploring the whole continent of Aragon, except that you will likely end up battered into a mush by wandering Cyclops.

The Bad
Let us not be distracted here by "glitter over substance". Of course the graphics are abysmal compared to today's games. Of course the sound effects are inexistent. That game came out in 1989, what do you expect?

There is a bug, rather, an annoying oversight, right at the beginning. A wealthy merchant's son gets kidnapped by Goblins. The distraught father offers higher and higher rewards for the return of his child. Early in the game you could make do with those 5000 gold pieces, growing to 6000, growing to... don't bother. No-one has ever found the Goblins and the child.

Next is enemy AI. There you are, with your archers raining arrows and your mages hurling spells at Pitlag's cavalry 10 hexes away. And they just stand there, copping it. You'd expect them to charge and make mince meat of you. They don't.

Finally, there is an upper limit to the number of military units and heroes you can have.

And that about rounds it up for "The Bad".

The Bottom Line
You know enough by now to reach your own conclusion. The hardest part might be finding a copy of Sword of Aragon. Try abandonware sites.

The Good
The colorful graphics, the lovely map, army designs, combat interface.. basically EVERYTHING!

The Bad
It should of course have been bigger, perhaps a larger map :) The option to somehow make it a 2-player game would have been great as well.

The Bottom Line
This game was the sole reason why I bought my Amiga 500 and jumped ship from the C-64. I loved it back then, I loved it 5 years ago and I love it oh so much still. One of my most played games, and along with War of the Lance and Storm Across Europe, it is one of the first games I install on a new computer. I play it from start to finish in about once every 2 months. I do recommend the amiga version of it, alot better graphics.. and even a little sound here and there :)