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You could be forgiven for thinking that all Sega games are the same. Except for the odd honourable exception - Thunderblade, say, or Afterburner - they're all hack and slash adventures. Play one Rastan Saga-clone and you've played them all.

A harsh judgement, yes, but Lord Of The Sword does little to dispute this claim. Lord Of The Sword is the story of Landau, a young man on a quest to rid his land of the demons and evil creatures that have overrun it, and in the process become king. Armed with both sword and bow and arrow, he cuts a suitably heroic dash, but is perhaps one of the least charismatic heroes ever.

That is what the whole game lacks: a sense of character. Landau's quest involves finding a legendary tree which is the symbol of the royal family, killing all the Goblins and destroying the statue of Evil.

Some of these monsters are quite inventive, but with the backdrops being mainly wooded areas, and the same beasties consistently cropping up, it really seems to lack the variety to put it at the very peak of this sort of game. There are many better examples of the genre about. It's okay, both attack moves work well and collision detection is fine, and there is a lot of game to explore, but it loses out in an undistinguished plot, a lack of visual imagination and variety.