Sword of Aragon

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
They made this with Microsoft Quickbasic? (see screenshots). Pure genius. Where to start...

Sword of Aragon is a turned based strategy with a lot of elements that made it an excellent strategy game with is quite amazing considering the technology they used to make this. I'll explore these elements in detail.

The plot is you are the successor to the former Duke of Allada, your father - who was brutally murdered by wandering orcs who had a little too much to drink at the local pub...just kidding. Anyway, the locals question your capabilities but it seems you have a chance to prove yourself as the same army of orcs are attacking again soon...spesifically when you press next turn. :p

The main interface is a huge map...huge by those standards...where you can barely only see the surroundings of your city and other neighbours. The rest is covered with a red fog of war which can be opened when your units move near it. There are only 2 aspects of the game really: The first being City (and unit) development. The second being combat.

When the game starts you have to start making some troops to prepare for the defence of Allada, as well as hire some heroes to aid your cause...for a price. The next turn you enter combat mode. You place your troops in the city and entrench them (fortify) and wait for the drunken hordes to knock on your gate and get slaughtered (them not you). Thankfully this game is easy enough to comprehend so everything should be understood quickly enough.

O.k. the detailed elements: City and Troop development. When enter the city screen (each city has one) you have the option to develop that city. Developing consists of economic and non-economic development. Economic development consists of developing Farming, Logging, Mining, Manufacturing and Commerce. Non-economic development consists of developing Structure (to store food I think...not quite sure) and Fortifications to strengthen walls, does wonders when under siege.

Developing means using some gold in order to increase development. The level of development is indicated by numbers...the higher the better. Sometimes you can only reach a certain number...further investment would prove futile.

In the city screen you can also recruit heroes. There are 5 character units to choose from...which is what you do the first time around is choose a class for yourself: A Warrior, A Knight, A Ranger, A Priest and A Mage.

Troops and heroes can be equipped with all sorts of different weapons and armor, but its a obvious linear choice. Higher level units may use better weapons. The types of units available are Infantry, Bowmen, Mounted Infantry, Cavalry and Mounted Bowmen.

The funny thing about this game is that is has a scoring system similiar to adventure games of its time. This may be the first strategy game to use this approach, anyway if you've done a good thing, you get points. The maximum amount of points to be obtained is 500 points although I don't recall ever reaching that number.

Overall it's a very addictive game the first time around. You'd probably have to replay it several times just to get the feel and findout more about the hidden quests.

The Bad
It would be blasphemy to gamers to bad talk this game...hahaha

Sword of Aragon has a lot of minor irritations I could live without. The economy has a limit it seems (and those elves don't help either), can't get past certain levels, which does get kinda irritating in the long run. It's very irritating that those levels can even decrease and they don't say anything about it. Today it's it 10 tommorow it's 8...an indication of a minus or plus each turn would be nice...

I hate to admit but there is a "timing" limit in playing Sword of Aragon. But this timing only relates to quests but can hamper you game play somewhat. If you don't invade or explore a certain area in a certain amount of time (like soon), you may lose a shot on some plot events.

The Bottom Line
First love? A lotta good memories this one...an A+++ strategy game all the way.

*Second Update - More detailed, last one was crappy (not that this one isn't either) Last update: December 30, 2003.