Clause: I'm basing this review as if the game was running under the Atari 600XL computer and not the Commodore. Why? Because I feel that the Atari is far superior to the Commodore and the game itself was originally written for the Atari PC. If only Gamespot has an Atari section...
The review:
Archon - playing this game whether against the computer or better still, someone who you hate and slaughter their dragon piece with your knight can bring great pleasure.
The game setup is similar to Chess; each player has 18 pieces placed on a 9x9 board with a mixture of light and dark coloured squares.
This is where Chess ends and Archon begins. No more that famous two, three or four move checkmate (try and checkmate my Wizard with a goblin on a light square - I dare you). Once a piece lands on another piece, then the battle screen pops up hence battle until one dies in the field. That's the real way to win at Chess! Of course once you defeated all your opponents then its game over.
Another way to win is to capture all five glowing points which is of course easier (in theory).
There are many tactics in this game; each piece has its strength and weaknesses (e.g. the Dragon firepower is slow however once makes contact will inflict huge amounts of damage plus the dragon itself is an armoured tank) and the board itself will enter a phase of going through light (having the advantage of the light team) to dark. Another words, if you are a dark player and do battle in a dark square, your powers increase many folds.
The learning curve is quite steep as you need to understand the players (i.e. speed of firepower, hit points, difference combat modes on light/dark squares etc) however once grasp the concepts the game play will last for quite some time.
Even the AI is quite good for 1983. I have seen that the computer's Sorceress cast a imprison spell on my Djinn, wait until dark, launch her attack via a teleport spell (the dragon of course however I did defeat it), reverse time hence the dark appeared again and launch another attack (this time an air-elemental which yet again I have defeated it) and then be killed by a goblin (hey my hit points were way-way low) only to witness the sorceress cast a summon spell to resurrect the dragon! Now that's tactics! Of course I did the same thing with similar effect.
The graphics are pretty good at the time (especially the opening scene) and the sounds are pretty impressive. Pretty much all the 'players' have a unique sound however what's disappointing that the same sound repeats itself (e.g. the manitcore and the unicorn, the knight and the goblin etc) and some of the shots fired.
So if you have a 'friend' who's a chess expert (or claims to be one) and has a IQ of 200 who also states you play too much video games and not enough 'intellectual studies', challenge him/her a game of Archon and do go easy!