At LAST! This is the final game from Starpath, Sword of Saros. I’m gonna try to keep this review a bit shorter since they seem to be getting longer and longer these days. From what I have gathered from talking to several folks at my local game store and reading some reviews, this is one of the least liked Supercharger games ever made, now that’s quite an accomplishment. Unfortunately I somewhat agree with much of the criticism leveled at Sword of Saros, it is DEEPLY flawed, and unfortunately the flaws overshadow anything positive that I can dredge out of this game. But first how about a bit of basic info about the game… You are trapped in the evil wizard’s dungeon, and must use cunning and items you collect on the way to evade him and locate the pieces of the Sword of Saros, though that’s unlikely since most people never get past the first maze.

This game looks very, very basic; just imagine the map from Tunnel Runner and that’s the game, seriously. You have some tiny, tiny sprites running around the maze, one is a bat, one is the evil wizard, and the other is you. That isn’t the whole game of course, in fact you won’t be spending much time in the ‘maze’ section at all, much of the game takes place in the ‘rooms. The rooms contain many more sprites than in the ‘maze’ section, there are plenty of well drawn treasures and items to collect, but the star of the show is always the goofy looking monster that pursues you in the room, seriously these guys can look so goofy at times. There is also the Magic Menu, where you can view all the items you’ve collected, it’s your basic menu, nothing too special. There is a different screen, hidden to all those impatient enough to be caught by the wizard, the screen has you as your dumpy ‘room’ sprite facing off against a large wizard (seriously he’s six times taller than you), and his army of three giant skeletons (who are also six times taller than you). These large sprites look excellent, that’s why it’s so unfortunate that they were sequestered off to this distant part of the game. So the game looks disappointing to boring at best, so how do the sounds hold up.

Mute please! All you hear in the maze section is the sound of you walking, which unfortunately is a horrific buzzing noise that is murder to listen to. In the rooms you’ll hear the sounds of collecting objects which is an extremely high pitched series of beeps, and the ‘DUM DUM’ of you getting fondled by a monster. There are a tiny few various beeps to indicate the wizard catching your scent, but overall the sound is very bare. I’m sure there are other sounds but I simply cannot for the life of me bring myself to find them.

The gameplay, that’s where much of the hatred for this game lies, and sadly I can see where these folks are coming from, the game is a painful slog no matter how you look at it. All you are doing is running around a maze, entering rooms to collect useful items, whilst trying to avoid the evil wizard and his bloodhound bat. The formula is simple, so simple it seems almost impossible to screw it up, but screw it up they did. The rooms are quite impossible, there are six items to collect in every room and to keep you from collecting these items unchallenged there is a monster in every room as well, and they are nearly impossible to avoid. Unlike in most games where you simply walk over an item to collect it, in Sword of Saros you must stand by the item for a brief period of time before it magiks its way into your inventory, all while a monster is constantly chasing you around the room. Touching the monster won’t kill you or give you a game over immediately, all it does is immobilize you for a couple seconds before you quickly scurry away from the monster who is hot on your heals immediately after escape, there is no way I know of to kill the room monsters, they are invincible. This is usually where most people just turn off the game forever; the frustration of constantly being stopped in your tracks is overwhelming and leads to zero enjoyment whatsoever. Also, have fun finding the exits to the rooms since they aren’t labeled, you just have to run blindly into walls until you find them.

If you can find any enjoyment from this game I applaud you, but this just isn’t the game for me. It doesn’t really matter if I like the game or not, since I’ll never pay what folks on Ebay are asking for it, one sold recently for over 110 dollars, no thank you. This game goes right into the Collector’s Zone, no questions asked, no quarter given. It’s simply not worth the price you’ll pay… Unless you bought it new back in the 80’s, then you simply got lucky, I’m lookin’ at you Golden Boy.