Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood

The Good
Yes its medieval fantasy but its got real historical characters, and its more true to the spirit of Robin Hood than most games, books or films I've seen. It therefore has a special credibility, and it resists the cutesey and kitch excesses that some of the other Sierra games (eg Kings Quest) are prone to. It also has an interesting structure whereby the action is divided up into days, which are like episodes or chapters. I liked this aspect of it.

The Bad
I know some of you like difficult puzzles. I don't. Life is too short.

The Bottom Line
Get it. Less well known than Kings Quest, but better in lots of ways. Worth trying to get the VGA version.

The Good
I have always liked the legend of Robin Hood, so when this game came out, naturally I had to get it. The artwork for this game was the best I had ever seen at the time, and I still love looking at it. It had some very wonderful music, as well. But the thing I found the most surprising was what had been written into the game. I played this game three times, once to get a feel for it, once to be the best Robin hood I could be, and once to be the absolute worst Robin Hood I could be. Yeah, yeah, I know--not exactly what Robin Hood's about, right? However, I found that the game had been written with that in mind--if you didn't rescue certain people, then your failure triggered a different event--maybe some little bit of dialogue that tells you what happened to that person, or something like that. It's impossible to fail completely in this game if you want to get to the end trial, though, but the crowd of people will be much smaller. I was still very surprised, though, because most of Sierra's games are made with the premise in mind that you have to solve one puzzle to get to the next--but here they've made the game more flexible, in my opinion, by allowing you to fail if you can't figure it out. It isn't easy to get full points, but you don't have to in order to win the game. Varying difficulty levels made things like the archery contest a real challenge!

The Bad
Winning the game and marrying Marian was a different matter, though. You do have to get the full points to marry her. Otherwise, you're just made a yeoman. Also, there is one point where you would get stuck if you didn't do what you were supposed to--if you didn't rescue Marian the first time you met her, you could not continue with the game. There were also some odd elements in the game that I didn't really identify with being a part of the actual legend of Robin Hood. There is also a point in the game where you have to click the hand icon on Robin, and sometimes what was supposed to come up wouldn't, unless you clicked in a very narrow area.

The Bottom Line
This was a very beautiful game for its time, very well thought out and dimensionalized. You were given a broader range of how to play Robin Hood if you wanted to. The puzzles were sometimes difficult, sometimes easy, but all in all a lot of fun. I played this game in one sitting, in one entire day--and it's not easy to keep my attention that long!

The Good
Finally someone did an adventure game about the legend of Robin Hood, he is the perfect character for an adventure game, Really nice graphics for a game as old as that, there are some real good effects (like flowing water, which was really well done) The music was beautiful (perfect for a game ambiented in the 12th century) The gameplay is great, as almost all Sierra classic adventures. Lots of different ways to advance in the game, and hey, there are more than one possible endings! So replayability is asured.

The Bad
Maybe some cut-scenes lack of 'realism', they were only backgrounds with some moving sprites (like a head moving when the character speaks) and that was kind of odd. There are too some arcade sequences (but hopefully difficulty can be adjusted at the game control panel) If that game had a CD version with speech it would have been almost perfect.

The Bottom Line
A classic of the genre, not as popular as other Sierra titles but very interesting, if you like bard stories and all that kind of stuff check that game.