Upon receiving an email from the team at Wargame Design Studio, one of my preferred publishers, a couple of weeks back, inviting me to preview their upcoming medieval-themed game slightly ahead of schedule, I eagerly accepted the offer. Turns out, it was a wise decision. It seems I may have discovered another superb addition to any medieval strategy games enthusiast’s collection.
- Genre: Turn-Based Medieval Wargame
- Developer: Wargame Design Studio
- Publisher: Wargame Design Studio
- Release Date: 14th March, 2025
- Price: $39.95
- Buy at: Wargame Design Studio
- Reviewed On: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X 3.70 GHz, 16GB RAM, NVIDIA GTX 2080
We, medieval-loving gamers have been eating well these past couple of years: we had Field of Glory II: Medieval, Crusader Kings 3, Field of Glory II: Kingdoms, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Manor Lords, the up-and-coming Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition. And to a certain extent, even Assassin’s Creed: Mirage can enter this list. All excellent games in their own right. The main question here isn’t if Sword and Shield is a good game or not. It is. The question is: how well does it fare up against it’s main competitors?
Wargame Design Studio is mostly known for its work on the Second World War front, with its amazing Panzer Campaign series probably being its flagship title. So, the announcement that they were taking their engine nearly a thousand years back in History came as quite a surprise, and I raised my eyebrows as to how well it was going to translate into a timeline when battlefields were smaller, battles were mainly melee, and sieges were a regular occurrence. Well, after spending the last couple of weeks dressed up as a Crusader trying to conquer Jerusalem, I think the battles are intense, the sieges plausible, and the results historically accurate.
I have to praise Wargame Design Studio for going with the Crusader setting. Having, no doubt, identified an opening in the medieval strategy gaming market. It’s incredible how few games take advantage of such an interesting, rich, and historically complex setting. Set between 1096 and 1148 A.D., it encompasses the 1st and 2nd Crusades period, and the time in-between. There’s an argument to be made, by historically handicapped and ignorant people that the setting may be a bit too political for today’s day and age, but this can be easily dismissed if you just pick up a book and make an effort to understand why the Crusades were a thing, instead of boiling everything down to identity politics (which- surprise- were not a thing one thousand years ago), but I’m getting side-tracked.
Let’s talk about the gameplay, and I’ll start with the scale because this is of massive importance to understand if this is something that’s going to interest you: each hex is 40 meters wide, and each turn represents 10 minutes gone by, so you could say we are looking at a small scale of battle, something that I think makes perfect sense, because medieval battles were, for the most part, rather small and local affairs, that took place over a day or two. If we’re talking sieges, those could last for months, and even years. Units are also small, with each individual unit packing around 100 men. The point is, I think this scale is a good fit for Sword and Siege.
As you probably suspect from reading the previous paragraph, battles are turn-based, and these can last for quite a while, but that’s not dissimilar to other Wargame Design Studio titles. Each turn is split into two different phases, one of movement and attacks of opportunity, and one of melee engagements. Melees happen when you select the target you wish your unit to attack, and they’ll engage and fight each other, with the results of said engagement coming out immediately. Battles are, as they were in real life, not a fight until the last man, but all about making sure that the enemy loses heart first and turns their backs and attempts to flee the field to regroup. So if a formation of 100 guys loses 10 in a fight, your force just decreased by 10%, lose a couple more, and the rest of them might just decide it’s not worth it, so be careful and pick your engagements wisely, and make sure you can overwhelm the enemy. One thing I’m not sure I have seen in action is mass routing: a unit routing because they saw another unit routing near them. I know that Field of Glory II does that, and I read in the manual that Sword & Siege also has this mechanic as well. I’m very glad to see this because, in real life, this is how most battles usually end, with a small portion of the line losing heart, and the adjacent units panicking.
There are a lot of smaller, but equally impactful mechanics, like leadership, command range, terrain, fog of war, fatigue, unit quality, armour and melee values, unit formations, and special units like siege engines and sappers. Every movement can be a microcosm of decisions if you want to go absolutely in-depth and discover how all these systems interact with one another to help you decide what’s the best course of action.
Content-wise, it’s always hard to point the finger at Wargame Design Studio. Off the top of my head I cannot remember a single title whose amount of content I would look at and say “Well, that’s not a whole lot”. Sword and Siege is not different, and the game is packing 65 stand-alone scenarios and 2 campaigns. As for military units, there’s everything you would expect to see in a medieval battlefield: spearmen, swordsmen, axemen, macemen, archers, crossbowmen, skirmishers, and all kinds of cavalry, from horse archers to heavily armoured cavalry. There are plenty of siege engines as well: mangonels, onagers, siege towers, ballistas, battering rams and a couple of others. As for battle variety, the Sword and Siege name might imply it’s focused on siege battles, and it definitely shows, but there’s plenty of variety in here: from small-scale skirmishers to iconic open battles like the ambush in Dorylaeum, and the pitched battle outside the city of Antioch. Of course, the iconic sieges of Nicaea, Acre and Jerusalem make an appearance.
Despite medieval warfare being one of my areas of expertise, my knowledge doesn’t extend itself to the Crusades. I’m sorry, but I cannot give my opinion on how accurate the orders of battles are, and what sources were used to put these together, because medieval battle reports can vary wildly depending on where you’re getting your information from, from the information provided on their website, they have a bibliography that you can check for yourself.
I don’t think, for a second, that anyone interested in a Wargame Design Studio game is looking for cutting-edge graphics, and good sound design, and is probably already familiar with its user interface. I’m on that boat. With that being said, it wouldn’t be fair to judge the game without the same standards I apply to other titles, so I’ll try to look into this section with the eyes of someone who never played a WDS game before. The top-down, 2D graphics are simple, but serve a functional purpose, and make reading large battles easy at a glance rather easy, but it’s hard to see unit stacks without clicking on them. I was pleasantly surprised with its “3D” graphics, and how charming and clean they look. Not everybody is going to feel this way, but I enjoy those unit models. One thing that surprised me in a very positive way, is how units don’t all look the same, they all have different stances, different banners and carrying different flags. One thing I love is how colourful they feel, and that’s an amazing nod to something that was, in fact, very true back then. Unlike what Hollywood told you, the Medieval period didn’t have a permanent grey and brown palette. People being people, they loved colour, and took pride in the possessions they add, adorning them and making them unique. They painted and dyed their armour, their shields, and their clothes if they could. So I really enjoyed that WDS went with this design decision. It also serves a great gameplay purpose, which is to help you differentiate different units in the desert.
There are no fighting animations other than a few, generic effects to give feedback that an action took place. Battle results are displayed after each scuffle with white-numbered results. Sound effects are functional as well, with their main purpose being feedback, rather than entertainment, they are repetitive and dull. The user interface is rough, but not obtuse, with plenty of tooltips to help you decipher what each button does, and to be fair, you won’t be using 70% of them. A single, introductory mission should be enough to ease you into the game, but WDS really needs to start scripting tutorials, instead of relying on PDFs.
Final Score: 8/10
After everything is said and done, Sword and Siege is a worthy addition to any medieval strategy gaming enthusiast. With an impressive roster of units and an even more generous number of scenarios for the price point, paired up with historically plausible battle outcomes, it’s hard not to recommend Sword and Siege if you’re looking for an oasis in the desert that is the Crusades. Were it not for its presentation, and lack of a proper tutorial, no doubt Sword and Siege would be ranking higher. One thing I know for sure, it’s already on my list of favourite games released this year.
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2025-03-17 20:50