Robin Hood: Defender Of The Crown Review

Anannya Sen ’s Review

A reasonably enjoyable strategy game for your phone based on the PC Classic. Very average graphics and sound but enjoyable gameplay. It's a big game with plenty of options so a lengthy full review follows!

Robin Hood: Defender of the Crown is a strategy game based on the classic original. You play as the infamous Robin of Locksley. You control a county and have to amass your army and take over the south of England (doesn??t sound like Robin Hood to me, more like Attila the Hun ?? you know a wise man once said, I think it was Attila the Hun, it is not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail! ?? mail me with the answers to where that quote is from!)

The graphics are pretty dated to be honest. The main pic of Robin looks a lot like the guy from the 80s Robin of Sherwood TV series (Robin??..the hooded man??..ahhh ahhhh). The in-game graphics are dependant on which mini game and screen you are looking at. The map is ok, and is a useful tool to if you ever need to know the name of the southern counties. The different colours make it easy to read. The graphics for the tournament and raiding look like old Commodore 64 graphics, but they aren??t the main reason for playing the game. Same thing goes for when you are storming a castle. The other graphics are just menu screens which are presented on old looking scrolls.

The sound is actually quite annoying. There is a tune which plays when you load up the game and sounds as if it??s from Ye Olde England. This continues into the game for a minute or so until the tune finishes. Thank God as it??s pretty loud and pretty bad. But there is unfortunately no sound after that in the game. No jousting sound, no storming the castle sound and no sound when you win or lose battles.

The controls seem straightforward, and I suppose they are really, but they are not very accurate on the tournament section. During the game you use the directional or the key pad to move through the menu and use the main button to select. When buying troops or transferring forces, use up and down to select the troop and then left and right to transfer. When you are moving your army, just place the horse icon in the county you want to move to (note ?? you can only move to adjacent counties). These are the main controls but there are three side games which you can play as part of the main game. The first is the tournament which is a straightforward joust for either land or fame (if you are not very good, then go for fame all the time, you don??t want to give up your land!). When you are jousting you will see the enemy coming towards you. Use the directional pad to aim the lance at his unprotected head. Tricky but you can do it. Then there is the raiding which you do at night to steal gold. You have to fight a soldier. Apparently you can move left or right, block using down and thrust using the main button. I never bothered as if you just keep attacking (button bash) with the main button you will ALWAYS defeat the guard. Then walk through the door on the right to get your gold. The last game is storming the castle where you fire your catapult at the castle walls. I think you have 6 attempts and you have to do at least a lot of damage to be able to get into the castle walls to attack. On this game, hold the main button down to draw back your catapult and when you think you have enough strength, release it to let the ball fly. This is also too simple as if you hold the button down for 3 stretches of the catapult each time, you will always get a perfect shot.

The playability is pretty average. The game is a strategy game and you have to rule the south of England. As the days pass you accumulate wealth depending on what counties you own (use the map to see how much wealth each county gives and which are the best ones to raid). There are 4 other protagonists to start with all who also own land. You have to build up your armies, attack and take over counties and also ensure that you have sufficient troops at each garrison to defend your counties. Building up armies is always through gold (although sometimes knights will turn up and join you and if friar tuck helps, he may send some men). You can also accumulate gold through raiding enemy counties but this will take up one day. It??s pretty easy to get gold this way and build up your stock. You can also get land or fame through the joust, but I would suggest you practice for fame first until you start betting your own land. This is pretty much the game, although the strategy comes from building up armies and taking over neighbouring counties and leaving enough men to defend. If you are going to attack a county, you send your troops in and a screen lists your numbers versus their numbers. There are four strategies to the assault, wild retreat (if you are definitely going to lose and want to preserve your men), stand firm (if you have a lot of soldiers or a death wish), barrage (useful if you have lots or archers or catapults) and ferocious attack (when you have a lot of knights). Each type of soldier costs different amounts to buy and one knight can usually take on 4-5 soldiers. I personally preferred to always buy knights and go for the ferocious attack, but hey, that??s just me. The screen will show your numbers changing depending on your strategy and whoever holds out wins. Often if you have superior numbers or sometimes even if you don??t (and just have a lot of knights like I do) you??ll still win or the enemy will flee. This allows you to take over your counties. Once there if you want to defend them you have to build a castle there and then leave a garrison (you can only leave garrison if there is a castle there, but if your army happens to be there, you can defend it with this). Building a castle costs a bit more money, but once done, you have to move your army there and then transfer troops to the garrison there. Wherever your army is, that??s the place you can transfer or buy troops for. What I mean is say you take over another county and build a castle, and your army is still there. If you buy troops at that time, then they will go to the garrison of that county (because your army is there). If you want to transfer troops to your army, you can only do it from that county (because your army is there). So in order to set up troops to defend your counties and also pick up men for your army along the way (you have to take over a lot of counties), you have to move your army around a lot. Ok. In order to defeat another enemy you have to go to their home county and storm their castle (see controls above) and once in, have a normal battle as described above. If you beat them, all their counties become yours and they are no longer in the game. In the same way you can joust against the Lords for land and try and win some of their counties (you don??t lose your army doing this, they just go home to your main county ?? ie you just lose the land). You can never joust against the Lords for their home counties.

The lastability is ok. There are three difficulty levels, but I clocked it on normal after about 40 minutes of playing. The game can be saved and suspended / resumed so don??t worry about long trips. The game has a lot of strategy to it (see above) and you have to spend a while building up your armies, jousting and raiding so you can attack people. My biggest problem was that it wasn??t that much fun to play, just ok, and I have preferred other strategy games. Also the graphics and sound are not that great which didn??t add to things. There are some random elements, people will come and join you, you can rescue a princess for more land, but the game was pretty easy. The enemy armies that come and attack you can be fairly large but if you build up a lot of knights you should be ok. Plus I found that the later the game went on, with the less opponents, the thinner the armies got (as they had to spread out across more counties) and so taking the enemy??s home county was never that difficult. Especially if you have 50 knights on your side.