Sword of Sodan
System: Genesis
Release Date: February 1991
Developer: Innerprise Software
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Genre: Action
Put an end to an evil wizard’s plans for dominating the northern lands in Sword of Sodan! Sodan sought out Brespar to join he and his children on a journey to a magical forge to craft the strongest weapon of all time. Along the way, the children were left with a nice peasant couple to keep them from the death and destruction that followed. Sodan traveled the land, vanquishing evil wherever he went, but old age finally caught up to him and as he lay down to die, his children reappeared to take his place. Together Shardan and Brodan will wield the Sword of Sodan and defeat the evil wizard Zoras who seeks to take over the land.
This game is incredibly poor. The manual tries to talk up the lead designer like he’s some kind of genius, but if this is the genius standard, I’ll take a dumb person designing my games any day. You begin by choosing your difficulty from “Nope, not happening” and “Cakewalk”. You can also set your number of lives. Your last choice is to be Shardan or Brodan. They play exactly the same. Your character moves like molasses to the right as enemies come on screen. You can attack with four different sword strikes and will have to choose the right strike depending on the enemy. Hit detection is atrocious and clear hits against enemies will be ignored, while they hit the air next to you and kill you.
The novel gameplay mechanic is the existence of potions. There are red, orange, blue, and clear potions. Pausing the game will allow you to choose a combination of them to consume. Then pressing the A Button has you drink them. Red increases your attacking power. Orange zaps the nearest enemy on screen. Blue replenishes a small amount of health. Combining a color with clear will also give an effect. Red and clear adds a life. Orange and clear gives your sword a fire effect. Blue and clear gives you a temporary shield. Combining colors either gives no effect or takes some life through poison. Four clear potions are a level skip and may be something that brings you happiness as you skip through some of the crap. You can only carry four potions at a time and when your inventory is full, more won’t spawn, so it’s best to build up your strength after maxing your lives at 9.
Most levels have some kind of gimmick to them. The second level has a series of floor spikes that you have to avoid while also trying to avoid your enemies. The pikemen you encounter enjoy a greater range than your slash or thrust, so I resorted to poking them in the crotch with my sword, as that was the only advantage I could find. Level 4 puts you in a graveyard with an unending supply of zombies. As you kill them, they release damaging flame bursts that must be jumped over. You have to find your way through them without taking too much damage. The next level is ultra BS, with hidden pits that automatically kill you, as well as giants that can be difficult to kill. There are no indications of where these pits are, which is just awful gameplay design.
Then there’s a lava level with a constant supply of fireballs shooting across the ground. If you thought platform jumping would be a good addition, here you get your wish. If you can make it to the end, you finally get to battle monster form Zoras. He spawns little flying monsters, but they are nice because they drop potions. It’s relatively easy to not die against this guy, but it’s going to take a long time to whittle his life away, like ten minutes or more. Defeating the monster reveals the human form and this guy is a murder machine. You don’t get new potions and you will die, so hopefully you have enough lives stocked away, but killing him wins you the game.
Graphics: 1.0
The character models are neat, but the animations are terrible.
Sound: 0.5
There’s no music and the repetitive grunt sound when hitting enemies grates quickly.
Gameplay: 1.0
There’s no way to defend against attacks. If the enemy gets too close, you’re going to take all the damage.
Difficulty: 1.0
Normal mode is frustratingly hard, but Easy mode is far too easy. You can try to stock up on extra lives, but for only so long…
Fun Factor: 0.0
This game is positively not fun.
Overall Rating: 0.7
Sword of Sodan earns a D-. This game is junk. I can’t recommend staying away from this one enough.