There's a large variety in units per race, giving each race its own tactics. The aim for the player is to tilt those melees into his advantage by creating the right units to counter enemy units and cast spells to buff friendly units or maim enemy units. Units will automatically walk towards the enemy camp once created, so a steady flow of units will stream from both sides of the map and will clash somewhere in the middle. The player harvests gold from gold mines using a non-combat unit, researches technology to build better units and spells, and uses those to gain map control. The game mechanics are remarkably similar to a RTS game.

There are also challenges available and multi-player.

In skirmishes everything is available, but the player must research them in the game using a simple tech tree. Throughout the story campaign the player unlocks these for use. Each 'race' features its own specific units, a building and spells. The game features three scenarios: Vikings, Aztec and Chinese, each with a different difficulty level. Swords and Soldiers takes the classic real-time strategy formula and refurbishes it into a side-scrolling game.

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