Errol Flynn, Eat Your Heart Out

By Ahmad Zaki ● UrbanWire
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With so many games, cartoons and movies made about him, it would be surprising if you didn’t know about Robin Hood, the legendary Prince of Thieves, who was a daring medieval swashbuckler fighting for the good of common folk under the yoke of an evil tyrant. And admit it - we’ve all wanted to be Robin Hood at some point in time or another.

Now, Robin Hood: Defender of the Crown (DotC) gives you that chance.

Cinemaware has returned to their strategy game roots, although the old-school feel of Robin Hood: DotC can hardly match up to the artificially-intelligent advanced technology of today’s strategy contemporaries. Reminiscent of the Might & Magic series, Robin Hood: DotC is played like a series of mini-games, ranging from raids, jousts, to full-fledged battles, interspersed with the occasional cut-scene. The storyline and turn-based game play is more immersive than you’d originally suspect, although the game gets boring and repetitive as you progress.

In Robin Hood: DotC, you play Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men – Little John, Will Scarlett, Friar Tuck and Maid Marion – as they attempt to free Sherwood Forest from the clutches of the evil Prince John, who has usurped the throne from his brother King Richard. The first part of the game, in which you defend Sherwood Forest from the Sheriff of Nottingham serves as a tutorial. Directly after that, you proceed to control the entire Nottingham County, and war with lords in other parts of England.

As Robin Hood, you have to gather enough money to pay for King Richard’s ransom and free him from captivity, which you can achieve by seizing control of each of England’s counties with the tip of your sword, raiding the castles of lords and barons of England, and finally, going to war against Prince John in southern England.

Making money is simple – at the beginning of each turn, you collect taxes from the counties under your control. This money will allow you to recruit larger armies, pay off parts of King Richard’s ransom, or to build strongholds and garrisons on your lands. If you have the help of Maid Marion, she can spy for you, allowing you to know the strength of an opposing army or garrison within an area. Control two or more provinces within the same area and you can join them together, to get a bonus amount of gold.

Robin Hood: DotC is a remake of an older game of the same name, released in 1986 by Cinemaware. Probably one of the first games to incorporate action and strategy, the original Robin Hood: DotC was a roaring success. With this version, Cinemaware attempts to recreate that success by using the same formula of action and strategy with mini-games like jousts, castle raids and archery raids.

There are 2 raids you must perform in the game – namely the archery raid, and the castle raid. Either of the 2 raids is sure to make you feel like Errol Flynn (a famous adventure movie star from the 1930’s to 50’s who starred in the 1st major Robin Hood film), what with the swordfights, ambushes and leaps from battlements. The archery raid is a simple game of shooting at horsemen and carriages as they pass by a road or clearing. A relatively easy and risk-free endeavor, it unfortunately doesn’t earn you much cash. The castle raid is more interesting, although defeat means that you are thrown into the castle’s dungeon, and will need to waste precious turns trying to get yourself out.

The jousts provide the most money, fame and lands. With Sir Ivanhoe as your representative, you attempt to unhorse your opponent by aiming your lance at his chest or head. Doing this however, requires long hours of practice, as the rocking of the horse is liable to mess up your aim. All in all, the graphics, artwork and camera angles during this part of the game are quite excellent and stand out from the overtly-simple feel of the war sequences.

This brings us to the war sequences. Whenever you decide to invade a neighboring province and wrestle it from the hands of whichever lord currently holding it, you are forwarded to a strange little mini-game which resembles a chess game without the chess board. Plain-looking tokens represent a group of units, each denoting the total number of that certain kind of units you have. For instance, a token with a horse-head would represent the number of cavalrymen you have, while a token with a man holding a bow aloft represents archers. It’s all really quite simple to understand. Just point and click on one of your tokens and point and click on one of theirs, et voila! The battle is done.

Unfortunately perhaps, a bit too simple. The war sequence makes you feel as if the designers didn’t put much thought into this area of the game, compared the knightly feel of jousting and the daring-do of castle-raiding. This ordinary-looking, water-colored backdrop that is supposed to be a war sequence is really a tedious part of the game that you are unable to skip.

Another worrying thing about Robin Hood: DotC is the fact that there is no difficulty setting for the game. This makes the game too challenging for new players, but not challenging enough for more seasoned veterans, which cuts down on its replayability. Plus, the game’s steep learning curve can put off beginner players before they advance too far into the game, which is always a bad thing.

All in all, Robin Hood: Defender of the Crown is a solid game at the start, which slowly progresses into repetitiveness near the end. Buy only if you’re bored of WarCraft.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars.