"One of the three reasons to keep your Genesis"

I just finished playing and beating this oldie but goodie and it really is an awesome game. Warsong is one of the few reasons to keep onto your Genesis (along with Shining Force II and Shadowrun). I remember when I was younger, renting this on Friday and playing it all the way through Sunday night, just to return it after school on Monday, sleepy eyed and fulfilled, at least until the next weekend. If you don't know already, Warsong is a Tactical Strategy game for the Sega Genesis which incorporates some roleplaying elements such as experience, classes, levels, magic, etc. You control your heroes, who in turn control units of normal soldiers, archers, horsemen, etc.

Storyline/Plot: 8/10
You lead Garrett, and his somewhat motley band of heroes on an adventure to take down the big evil guy...Standard Fantasy RPG fare. The storyline is good though, with several twists and a subplot here or there. The dialogue is short enough to not bore you, and long enough to keep you interested.

Graphics: 9/10
All the graphics are colorful, from the maps themselves to the drawings of the characters, and especially the hero portraits, all drawn anime style. The battle scenes are cool, having little soldiers run back and forth and battle other little soldiers, again with colorful and nicely drawn backgrounds.

Sound: 5/10
This is where the game isn't playing par with the rest of it. The music is rather boring, and endlessly repetitive. The sound affects are just as bad with little dings and dongs every time your weapons hit or miss, and little screams when your heroes take damage.

Gameplay: 10/10
This is really where the game shines. There weren't many good strategy or RPG games on the Genesis, and at the time, I was playing my sister's Genesis and hadn't gotten an SNES for Christmas like I wanted. So I was limited in what kind of games I could play, but luckily I found this one (as well as the Shining games and Shadowrun). This game rocks! The battle mechanics are all well balanced. I like the experience system and especially the class change system. After you level up enough, you get to choose which class you want to go on to, allowing customization and replayability.

Replayability: 9/10
Again, due to the amount of customization in the game, different tactics to use, etc. this is where the games shines bright. Every time I played through the game, I used different tactics, chose different classes, and achieved different objectives and after I was done, wanted to do it all over again a different way. I honestly can't imagine how much money I spent at the video store renting and rerenting this game when I could have just gone out and bought it (if it was even possible to find it).

Buy or Rent? If you can find it, buy it. But its such an old game on such an old system, I wish you as much luck as you can get in finding it.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/20/03, Updated 06/20/03