Archon Ultra gives a much-welcome face-lift to the deceptively sophisticated Archon franchise.
Archon Ultra's premise is very much the same as its predecessors': (yet another typical) war between the Light and the Dark (or Order and Chaos; the player needs only to know that both sides have irreconcilable differences) had erupted. The fate of the world in Archon is dependent on the outcome of a battle that would be played out on a chess-like board with special pieces representing units available to both sides. However, the thematic similarities with chess pretty much ends here.
Being a board game, the players (one human, the other being another human or the AI) take turns to move their pieces or cast a spell. When a piece - or more precisely, a unit - is moved onto another square occupied by an enemy unit, battle commences in an entirely different screen (which is a battlefield of sorts). The automatic elimination of the defending unit is not for certain.
When battle commences, each player takes control of the unit under his/her/its command, and attempts to maneuver it around the battlefield while attempting to launch attacks in order to harm each other. Depending on the combatants' respective natures and the skill difference between the players, the fight can either be an intense duel or a beat-down.
Speaking of units, each side has special units, each being an analogue of a chess piece. Both sides tend to have virtually equivalent units, i.e units that have almost the same stats and capabilities. For example, the humble Knight on the side of Light is the equivalent of the Goblin on the Dark side. However, apparently in an attempt to address a criticism of the previous games that the sides do not seem so different from each other if they have similar units, Archon Ultra has provided each unit type with a secondary attack, which can be toggled from the primary one and back.
These secondary attacks give players more ways to decide the outcome of a duel. For example, in the hands of a skilled player, even the lowly Knight can defeat the mighty Dragon if he/she/it can swap between different attacks as when convenient.
Other than the improved graphics and secondary attacks that Archon Ultra introduced over its predecessors, it still uses the game mechanics that the latter were known for. One of the game mechanics made actual use of the typical design of chess boards, namely the squares of alternating colours. If a battle occurs on a square with a colour matching one of the combatants (which is always the case), that combatant will gain an advantage in hit points. The intensity of the colour further determines the extent of the advantage.
However, the intensity - and even colour - of the squares changes with every turn, further reinforcing the need for a player to think through decisions more thoroughly before making one. Yet, the advantage gained from battling on a conveniently-coloured square is not so huge as to upset gameplay balance.
Unit designs, other than the new secondary attacks, have been carried over from the earlier Archon games. There are units that can move on the ground, fly and teleport (though teleporting is only restricted to the spellcasting unit of either side). Considering that a battlefield may have hazards like lava pools (which harm a ground-bound unit moving through them) and water (which slows them down), flying units would appear to have an advantage, but they are also not so able to make use of beneficial terrain, such as damage-boosting runes scribed onto the soil or healing runes.
However, taking advantage of these hazards and beneficial zones is a bit difficult, as the screen is zoomed in relatively close compared to the size of the battlefield. Fortunately, a mini-map helps a combatant locate the other should they get separated; when this happens, the combatant with a long-ranged attack will have an advantage, so the mini-map is helpful if the player wishes to keep the enemy at an optimal distance. (If two human players are involved, the game handily splits the screen.)
Similar to the presence of special terrain in the battlefield, there are also special squares on the board (other than squares of different colours and intensities). These are Power Points, which lets their occupants regain hit points every turn that they are occupied. There are five, with one of two being owned by either side. Incidentally, these power points are also the objectives leading to victory in this game. If either side can have units occupying all Power Points at the end of a turn, it wins. However, three of them are of fickle allegiances, colour-wise, so these power points can be heavily contested, which makes any session of this game interesting (as long as the players know what they should be doing of course).
In lieu of moving units across the board and fighting battles, a player may instead choose to cast spells using their spellcaster unit (which is the equivalent of the King in chess - albeit much more mobile and powerful). The spells usually consist of magical fantasy archetypes, from teleportation and healing to revive and imprison. The caveat here is that each spell can be cast only once, and that spells cannot be cast on units occupying Power Points.
Considering that the spellcaster unit on either is overwhelmingly powerful in battle yet is not immune to spells once moved away, deciding when to commit them is a decision fraught with risk. Still, this option, as well as any other regarding the securing of Power Points, certainly spices up gameplay.
Considering that the game mechanics can be relatively too sophisticated for a board game, the developers of the Archon series have also wisely included other conditions for victory. Archon Ultra, thankfully, has these too. A session will end if a stalemate has been in place for too long, or if there are no more units for one player to move around during his/her/its turn (in which case, the session ends in defeat for said player).
The graphics of the game are a definite improvement over the game's predecessors, but most importantly they now clearly make every unit distinctly different. Previous Archon games represented units with static icons, which were relatively more difficult to distinguish compared to the sprites used for them in this game. The units appear to be relatively static when on the board, but they come to life during the battles. (Their animation sets are of course very limited to those in latter-day games, but they were especially varied during the VGA/SVGA era in which this game was released.)
Tinny 8-bit sound effects accompany most occurrences in this game, especially unit animations. They do sound underwhelming, but so were many other games of its generation at the time. The moody music, however, is a treat and adds to the theme of bitter war in the game.
In single-player sessions, the AI is quite competent to have as an opponent, though it has mostly reactionary behavior that can be exploited to some degree. However, the game is best played in multiplayer, which can be experienced by two players on the same computer, or via modem-to-modem communication, which was a novelty during the era of this game.
In conclusion, Archon Ultra can be said to be a mere update of the Archon game with its contributions being mostly graphical in nature, but it certainly has not diminished the iconic qualities of Archon in any way.