This is a cool game I picked up from the App Store. It’s a turn-based strategy game, reminiscent of Advanced Wars and Fire Emblem.

The game starts out with you as a squire. You lead your army through a series of missions, trying to conquer the areas using your army. Every mission you win provides you with new units and artifacts which can be spent to upgrade your army.

Each area has three missions, and three raids. Once you beat all three missions, that particular area is conquered. You earn the ability to play the raids after you have beaten the corresponding mission. So when you beat Mission 1 of an area you unlock Raid 1. Each raid provides you with another scenario in which to fight. The benefit of raids are that once you beat them, you gain a certain number of artifacts which are listed on the raid’s page.

The unit system ranges from regular melee units, ranged units, siege units and hero units. Heroes are seldom given to you during the game, and are usually only obtainable through upgrades using a rare artifact which is only obtained after a landslide victory. You may create as many hero units as you want, but they are expensive to place using the games point system (i’ll get to that in just a second) and only a certain amount of hero units can be placed on the map, which is once again dictated by the point system

Reign of Swords has a great unit placement, and saving system. After you place a unit, merely hold down on the unit for a second, and then you are able to move it within the designated placement areas, which are highlighted on that map in yellow. When placing your units, you are given a set amount of points, which relates to your units. Every unit is given a point value, and when placing your units, you may only place as many units as the point cap of that level allows.

For instance, in one level, the point cap may be a thousand points. The point values for units varies anywhere from 50-500, so if you have enough 50 point units, you can place 20 of them, or you could place 2,500 point units. Unit selection and placement is KEY to victory in this game. Any strategy enthusiast would love it.

The saving system isn’t so much as intricate as it is useful. The autosave works just as one would hope, remembering your last unit configuration for a level after you hit the complete button, and saving after each person’s or computer’s turn.

Another great thing about this game is that it has online challenges and online multiplayer. Just write down your “rival’s” character name and enter it in a section on the main menu to fight your “rival” online.

All in all this is a GREAT strategy game and really shows off the graphical capabilities of the iPhone. Hopefully, more developers will release more innovative games such as this one in the near future. Out of all the App Store titles currently released, this is most definitely in my top 5 and I give it a 10/10

This game costs 8 dollars, but believe me, its worth EVERY penny.

You can download Reign of Swords here.