I think Archon Ultra had some GREAT ideas, but it was just poorly implemented. It just needed more playtesting and a longer development cycle, I'm guessing. I can see where they were going and it was the right direction, but the implementation...

First off, I like the audiovisual update but it wasn't enough. I would have liked to see a lot more animation on the board, and the side by side worked better than the top bottom piece arrangement. I would also have liked better movement and control. For some reason, Ultra just handles weird. You don't get that tight, super-response of Archon on Atari 8-bit or C64. I usually don't harp on this kind of thing, but with this sort of game you really need precision. Ultra's control feels loose somehow.

What I did like was the secondary abilities of the pieces. It's cool to have an attack and a defense on the pawns, for instance. I think to make the most of it, though, you really needed a lot more health (or less damage). The battles are just too fast and frantic to even think about using those abilities or developing a strat. As far as I'm concerned, an equal battle (i.e., pawn vs. pawn w/o color advantage) could take upwards of 2-3 minutes. These battles are more like 10 seconds. Just not enough time to make them interesting.