Swords and Sandals Review

It's been a long while since I've played the Flash version of Swords and Sandals. Back in the day, when I was sitting around at work playing Flash games for hours on end, I would play some Swords and Sandals here and there. It was a brutally hard game that very few could get far in, but it was just so darn approachable.

The basic concept of Swords and Sandals is that you are a gladiator and must kill everyone in the arena. The fights are one v. one, and the combat is all turn based. As you progress through the game, you can level up a number of stats and buy new weapons/armor/magic/potions -really anything that a typical RPG would sell.

The problem with the original game was that no matter how strong your character seemed to get, he would get butchered in the arena. It may have taken a few rounds, but defeat seemed inevitable. I seem to remember, and I may be wrong on this, a trick to the game that would make you win just about every time though. If you just leveled up your charisma, you could start doing taunts that would actually do damage to the opponent.

With this in mind, I went ahead and started up a game. It turns out that my taunt trick still works pretty well, but I couldn't seem to move away from the enemy like I could on the Flash version. Once you get close to the enemy, you are just stuck there until he decides to move away. This wasn't the only technical issue I had, though.

The main issue with the game is that it is sllooooowww. I'm not talking a bit laggy, I'm saying that it's extremely laggy. Even after multiple restarts the fights are almost unbearable to sit through. There are also a few minor issues, like the inability to name your gladiator at the character creation screen, that irked me.

For those of you who slaved over the Flash version of Swords and Sandals, this one will definitely be a fun blast from the past. If it weren't for its technical flaws, I'd say that the game is a worthy purchase, but as is it's tough to recommend.