Genre: Base-building ARPG
Developer: MeanAstronauts
Publisher: PlayWay S.A.
Release Date: February 29th, 2024
Edited by AlexKnight2005
Robin Hood: Sherwood Builders is a third-person action-adventure game from the developers at MeanAstronauts and published by PlayWay. Upon first glance, it looks like one of Playway’s highest-budgeted games. It is an Indie game, but it is on the higher end. As the title states, it follows a new story about Robin Hood, which takes place in and around Sherwood Forest. The game’s primary focus is to build up your village and liberate the game’s four areas by increasing your reputation via quests and events. It then culminates in a fight with the Sherrif of Nottingham.
The story begins after Robin and company had moved camps after a raid by the sheriff. In this new spot, much deeper into the woods, you learn the game’s basic mechanics through a series of tutorial quests. It teaches you how to craft, build, and manage your hunger/thirst and everything else you need to know to get started. Managing hunger and thirst seems heavily shoehorned into the game and feels utterly unnecessary. The crafting system is pretty simple and easy to use. However, the building system could use some touching up.
After the initial tutorial, going and building a few buildings gave me trouble. It was hard to find placement for them. More than ten minutes later, I discovered accidentally that you could get rid of the trees to make more room for placing your buildings. This issue could be fixed by mentioning it during the tutorials. After the tutorials, you are told to leave, raise your reputation, and free the land. This is where the world opens up, and you roam the land without any real direction other than the two suggestions given to you by Tuck, who gives you the initial tutorial quests.
Yes, the world is vast for an indie game, but it also has a lot of dead space. There should be more wildlife or random enemies thrown about. It feels more lived-in than it should be for a game like this. For an Indie studio game, the game has excellent graphics. I especially love how the grass swayed in the wind. The music and sound effects are above average; however, the English voice acting could be better. I would rather have the Snoopy teacher voice in place of the voice acting. Some of it was alright, but overall, it was horrible.
Then comes the stealthing and combat. Dear god, save me for the combat and stealth mechanics. Both make the game feel like it’s incomplete. Melee combat feels incredibly clunky and needs a lot of refinement to become passable, and ranged combat doesn’t do enough damage to be feasible, even with points in the skill tree. The stealth mechanics feel very unreliable. I could hide in tall grass, and an enemy could walk past me.
Then, the next time they do it without me even moving from the spot, they see me. I tested this out in several places and got varying results. I had high hopes for the game because I had wanted a new Robin Hood-themed game for a while. However, I don’t recommend the game for the price point it is currently at for what you get.
Pros:
- A different take on the Robin Hood story
- Good graphics
Cons:
- Combat is Clunky
- Horrible English Voice Acting
- Unneeded survival aspects
- It feels like an incomplete game
- Stealth is unreliable
BoxCatHero gives Robin Hood: Sherwood Builders a Drastik Measure of 5.4 out of 10.0 (54)
