Lord of the Sword
System: SMS
Release Date: April 1989
Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Action Adventure
Lord of the Sword is advertised as an Adventure RPG, but I’m going to refuse that classification and say it is solidly and action adventure game. Such distinction may not matter to some, but it does to me. You are Landau and it’s up to you to put an end to the evil Demon Lord Ra Goan whose followers have recently killed the king of Baljinya. To do so, three quests must be completed to gain the crown and lead the nation to defeat the demon army.
You must first find the Tree of Marill. Then you must defeat the Goblin of Balala Valley. Finally, you must destroy the Statue of Evil. In order to do this, you will travel across the countryside and through towns. Towns have an open house that you enter to talk to a townsperson. They will say something to you and heal a bit of your health. You have to go in several times to both fully heal and make sure you see everything the person says. In order to not get lost, it’s best to have the instruction manual, which gives a map of the kingdom. You can also press pause in a town to see a less detailed map.
Most of the game is trekking from one place to the next. Between each town are two wilderness screens, which are populated with enemies. Most of them can be knocked out with a swing of the sword by pressing Button 2. Others are easier to kill from a distance with a shot from the bow and arrow with Button 1. Killing enemies does nothing for you other than increasing your score. You can get just as far by avoiding enemies that won’t get in your way. There are crawling enemies, like snakes, that you can’t hit with your bow and they wait until you get close to attack, but not close enough to hit them with a crouching attack.
Scattered through the country are boss battles that must be won. At first, I spent a lot of time trying to avoid their attacks, but learned a trick through practice. If you hold forward while tapping the sword button, or crouch and press forward, you can make a rapid attack. This makes light work of most enemies and is helpful in avoiding getting hit by scorpions. There are other tactics that are useful for killing enemies, mainly revolving around the bow and arrow, which should be your main means of attack. There are two upgrades for both the bow and sword, but don’t pick up the sword upgrade from killing the goblin, it’s much weaker.
Until you become proficient in the wilderness, you will take damage and it’s likely you’ll die. You only have seven continues before you have to start all over again. My first attempt taught me where to go and what to do. I thought it would make the second attempt quick, but all the trekking around the map takes forever. I got to the third task, but I couldn’t get the Medusa statue to do anything. Instead of walking to all the towns again to see if there was another line of dialogue I needed to activate, I decided to stop. I spent too much time on this one already.
Graphics: 3.0
I think the graphics are done pretty well, the sprite work is nice. The animation is pretty decent looking, too. There are plenty of colors. The downside in my view were the backgrounds.
Sound: 1.5
Music and sound effects are nothing special. I didn’t enjoy them very much, at all.
Gameplay: 1.5
It’s nice that you’re given a short range and long range attack, but movement is too stiff, enemies don’t move into attack range until they get a near guaranteed hit. The slowness of movement and backtracking are crappy, too.
Difficulty: 1.5
The enemies are cheap. Not difficult, because they can be cut down immediately, but require perfect timing, which is a pain, because Landau controls like molasses.
Fun Factor: 1.0
This isn’t a particularly fun game. I wanted to beat it, but when it looked like I had to traverse the entire map again, I decided to bail. That should tell you all you need to know.
Overall Grade: 1.7
Lord of the Sword earns a C-. I did not really enjoy this game and it skews a higher grade because of impressive graphics. Don’t seek this one out.