Robin Hood: Defender of the Crown (Mobile)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 2.5 stars OK
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 5.0 (2.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Avery Score
• Reviewed on: 09/24/2004
• Originally published on GameSpot: Robin Hood: Defender of the Crown (Mobile) Review

Robin Hood: Defender of the Crown is essentially a version of Risk, the Parker Brothers' military strategy game in which you fight for control of territories adjacent to yours. In Defender of the Crown, you play as the legendary Robin Hood, instead of as some anonymous tactician, and fight for control of England, instead of the entire globe. Other iterations of the game, such as the consummate Amiga version, were very rewarding. Unfortunately, Digital Bridges' mobile version suffers from some fundamental design flaws that prevent it from re-creating this experience.

Defender of the Crown is loosely based on the movie Ivanhoe, in which a civil war breaks out between rival lords after King Richard's death. Each of the King's former vassals annexes a small plot of England, with the intention of conquering more. As Sir Robin of Locksley, your intentions are--no doubt--much more honorable than those of your competitors. That said, you'll be doing quite a bit of looting and murdering in order to accomplish your noble goals.

The majority of the game takes place between a menu and a world map. From the menu, you can buy an army and command it to go somewhere in England with the intention of winning that area in battle. That done, you can assign--through a really counterintuitive process--some of your forces to remain in that province to act as a garrison. Strangely enough, it's impossible to switch between provinces in order to call your garrisoned men to arms. Furthermore, you'll have to remember how many units you've stationed where, because there's no way to tell until your opponent attacks you, and then you find out the hard way.

In order to switch control from one region to another, you must first enter the "transfer units" menu, then select "no units to transfer," click "ok," and choose, from the dialogue box that appears, to return to your base--the first province you owned. Now, you'll once again be free to raise an army and take it somewhere within your territory. You can only have one mobile army, and where that army stands is the area over which you have control. Making matters worse, is the fact that when you purchase soldiers they'll be automatically generated at your home base, so you'll have to return there, via the process described above, in order to use them.

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