Well Zigfried's topic finally pushed me over the edge. Some of GUTS's reviews go too far for me. But this one has something special. It's a swipe at Masters, but then they became friends a month later, so that's okay.

Archive.org is a wonderful site.

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Unlike the other person that reviewed this title, I won't make you wade through 16 paragraphs of irrelevant ''wit'' just to read 3 sentences about the game. Want to know if it's good or not? Here's the lowdown.

GAMEPLAY
Lord of the Sword is a side-scrolling action adventure game, the closest comparison I can think of would be Shadow of the Beast 1 or 2. You fight your way through action stages, talk to a few people in town, find some new weapons, you know the routine. It's non-linear in that you can go many different directions at any given time, it's up to you to figure which way is the correct path. If you're the type of person who just likes stage after stage of intense action without any RPG elements, you'll definitely dislike it. But if you enjoy an action game with some exploration and puzzle solving, you'll most likely dig it like I did.

The story is pretty lame, but what 8bit game had a good story? Phantasy Star? Yeah that's about it. Anyway, the control is actually good, I don't know what the other guy's problem was. For weapons you get a sword (which you will upgrade later on by finding a couple better ones), and a bow. The bow is good for taking out annoying flying things from a distance. You'll use the sword the most, obviously. I personally really dug the crouching animation, you draw and strike like a samurai, it looks pretty kick ass. I'd always kill guys from a crouch just cause it looked so cool, hah. Pressing up makes you jump, which works fine, I never found myself jumping on accident like in some games with the same control scheme. Perhaps if my thumb was swollen from perusing a thesaurus all day it might present a problem.

I really liked how the game was layed out, you proceed from one area to the next through action stages, and sometimes there will be multiple paths where you can go up stairs or keep on straight ahead. There's a map if you press pause that will tell you where you are in the kingdom. The nice part about the game is that, yeah initially you'll have to backtrack a lot to figure out where you're supposed to go, but once you discover the order of things you can get through it pretty quick. This is why it reminds me so much of Shadow of the Beast, it's all about figuring out where you're supposed to go and when.

Interacting with people is pretty minimal, so most of the time you'll be hacking your way through an action stage, but talking to people is important to open up new pathways and to gain hints on where to go. Entering and leaving houses regains your health, so anytime you're in town, just enter and exit a bunch of times and you'll be healed. You only have one life with no continues to beat the game, so be careful. It's not that difficult to survive, hell I did it and I can't even beat Strider! But I can see where a baby would start crying about halfway through the game because he wasn't watching himself and got smoked, requiring him to start over. This game is NOT a fast paced action game, if you try to rush through you're going to die.

The one drawback to the game is that there isn't a save feature of any kind. Welcome to the 80s! But once you figure the first few objectives out, the rest of the game is a breeze. It'll take you maybe a couple hours tops to beat it, which is very reasonable for one sitting.

GRAPHICS
Pretty damn sweet for 8bit. All the sprites are big, and they're very colorful. I'd say this is one of the better looking Master System games, and definitely puts most stuff on the NES to shame. It's worth checking it out just for the cool animations of the main character, he's like a cross between a samurai and a medieval soldier.

OVERALL
I'd say this game is pretty decent, nothing great, but most definitely NOT bad. Plus it's cheap as hell, so why not pick it up? At the least you'll get a little entertainment out of it, at most you may really enjoy it and want to beat it like I did.

As you can tell this isn't my favorite game in the world, but I couldn't let the game get a bad rap just cause somebody wanted to show off their vocabulary. Here's a tip to all reviewers: TRY ACTUALLY BEATING THE GAME BEFORE YOU REVIEW IT! What a concept! Don't play half an hour, then rush to the computer with your thesaurus and start typing out a hybrid comedy routine/thesis on your childhood with maybe a paragraph of actual information about the game. No one cares about you, your life, or your vocabulary, and you're so definitely not funny. The end.

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Revisiting Bard's Tale Childhood dream: achieved! I'm on Itch.Io, yay. Is anyone else?

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	Masters - August 17, 2009 (06:28 AM) I remember this. Good times. ^_^
	aschultz - August 22, 2009 (06:45 PM) I didn't think I'd wind up missing him at all the first time I heard of him. I guess Holden Caulfield was right about how if you start thinking you start missing everyone.