MrEon rambles about the game:

Robin hood, out law and vagabond loved by mostly everyone. The medieval batman so to say, if you like analogies that is. The games plays fairly well, though perhaps it tries to do too much for itself. But then, for a game based on a movie, which are notoriously terrible, this is perhaps one of the few exceptions to that rule. (Anyone remember E.T. anyone? one of the early precursors to that rule)

But this game, actually hit on alot of high points. First, its rather faithful to the actual movie! Alot of games either change the plot or do a 'alternate' telling of the movie, which is all in all terrible idea. (or maybe good idea just often done terribly) But this stays close to the movie, starting in the prison during the crusades as a sort of intro level. Where you play the game mostly from a top down, semi isometric perspective. However, some battles are done in 2D side scrolling for fencing, which can be hard. You can jump, duck, roll and stab stab stab. Just be careful of the villains who have a longer reach then you do.

There are also large scale battles where your friends join in the fray, these how ever take a new perspective, top down again, but your little character gets MUCH smaller, but your party comes out to fight too, though this is usually where you get mobbed by dozens of enemies for awhile, never fear if you have a bow though!

Now, what else does the game do well? Well side missions, now I know I said that many games add things that were never in the movie and do it terribly. Well this is a example of them doing it well, because they draw on the original Robin Hood story as well. Such as Guy of Gisborne sent to kill you, and expanding upon the home base in Sherwood forest, which makes it quiet fun as you see it progress.

Now this can be a very challenging game! Whenever you can find potions, food, and bandages, you'll need them for a quick health boost, especially right before fencing with the enemy like the Axeman, or Guy himself. Also, don't forget to outfit your friends too! The better equipment they have, the better they can help you fight.

Now as much as I personally love this game, it is not without some flaws, a case of perhaps trying to do a little too much...

Now on to the real review!

MrEon breaks the game down:

Graphics: 7
I gave the game a seven because while they certainly aren't the worst graphics out there, they still aren't the best either. While some games get away with simple looking graphics ( IE: Zelda, Megaman etc.) Robin hood attempted to give the game more graphical depth, however it ended up giving it a messy look, where the graphics glitch from time to time. Not to mention, wall collision (Or collision with any object including enemies) is a little strange at times and can be frustrating when dealing with narrow hall ways and being able to attack in only one direction.

Sound: 6
Here is where I had to dock a few points. Namely because of the 'Ching ching ching ching!' you will here hundreds of thousands of times in the course of the gameplay... if not just in the first fifteen minutes of the game. The game music is fair, but nothing memorable, however I did like the 'Twang' in the intro when Robin fires off the bow, that was a nice touch.

Addictiveness: 8
This could be considered a early Action RPG for most of its elements. While the inventory equipment you can find is not expansive, it is rewarding, however finding gold, food, recovery items becomes something of a obsession especially late in the game when you don't want to die! So I do very much enjoy the general gameplay as far as sword swinging, dungeon crawling fun goes, this game does it right, and the bosses, while very challenging, aren't impossible either. (Except for maybe Guy, but then he's one of the end game bosses)

Story: 7
They took the story largely from the Robin Hood movie around the same time. And they did a fairly nice job with the portraits of the character likeness from the movie. However they went about adding a few things as well, like Guy of Gisborne, Boar hunting, expanding the Sherwood forest base, and so forth. But they left things here and there out, but understandable as trying to put it all in would have been very difficult to accomplish for a simple NES cartridge, but all in all, they did a very nice job of it.

Depth: 7
As mentioned previously, this game does quiet a number of things right. 2D fencing, dungeon crawling, large battles and RPG elements. However while it does them WELL its not great to be honest. More items would have been fun, less bouncing off walls would have been better, and the sound effects at times makes it hard to immerse into the game. But over all, it doesn't do it badly, just not exceptionally.

Difficulty: 9
You will die. Not because you aren't skilled but because at times there are 3 or more baddies ganging up on you and forcing you to bounce all over the place making you rethink how to move your pixelated character about the screen to fight since you can only attack in one direction at a time. So it can be very difficult, which is one of the larger flaws of the game unfortunately because you wouldn't think it would be if the controls were a little tighter, however they aren't so bad (like Dino Crisis, god I hated capcom for that) that you can't play it, just be careful and consider your moves ahead of time and you'll be fine.

MrEon Says:

Great game! Not perfect, but great. Defiantly worth a playthrough for fans of the genre.

Sounds like it might be a good game but robin hood has a long history off falling cause there is only one path you can take or the story of robin hood goes from good to bad quick