Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood

Absolutely my favorite game of this genre. I still have the 5.25-inch disks and the hint book and play using scummVM. I have the full-color book which contains all the little things you need to do (which says a lot about how much I loved this game). Knowing your Coats-of-Arms, gemstones and plants is a good start. Great story line, absolutely wonderful music and background sounds, and a few fun things such as having to learn to play Nine Men's Morris and quarter-staff fighting. Must have for anyone remotely interested in this period or type of game. Sierra's best! (I have written exactly one fan letter to anyone in my life and it was to Christy Marx, developer of this game.)

I was around 10 when this was first released and I remember playing it for hours, day in and day out. This was back when game boxes were the size of small houses and before walkthroughs were readily available to anyone with an internet connection. I remember the only way to get hints was to use my dad's external modem to dial up to Sierra's Bulletin Board System and find the answer to questions like "I've done everything on day 1, why won't the day end?" Good times. I must have replayed the game a hundred times, between its release and the point somewhere along the line where my latest PC was unable to run it, just trying to either get the perfect score or making different choices to see what happened. The story keeps true to the Robin Hood lore, with all the characters you'd expect to see, plus a few more. The interface is the classic Sierra VGA point-and-click style that we all look back on with fondness. If you've never played this game before, don't let the above screenshots fool you. Whoever decided to use these screenshots has made the game seem somewhat... perverted and depraved, which it is far from. Sure there is a lot of humour that only adults will understand, thrown in for comic relief, but the story doesn't revolve around that humour as the screenshots suggest. All in all, one of Sierra's best adventures from their golden age, that I would highly recommend,

Although this game is a sequel to Conquests of Camelot, we no longer play as King Arthur (you probably already knew that). What makes it a sequel is that it's the same kind of game. Both Conquests games are adventure games based on well-known mythologies. Both games are a mixture of puzzles, riddles, copy protection, and arcade sequences. I believe Longbow is the better of the 2 games. One reason is that it is nicer with the arcade sequences that Camelot. Longbow gives you the option to skip the arcade sequences, although this forfeits points. You can also set the difficulty to the 2nd lowest rating (making the arcades as easy as possible without skipping them), and still get the full score which you couldn't do in Camelot. Another thing that makes Longbow better is a woman who is worth rescuing and marrying (if you are familiar with Robin Hood, you probably know who this is), who doesn't cheat on you. Longbow also doesn't have any nonsensical "Ask about Hezekiah" type puzzles (yeah I know that's an optional puzzle, but not if you want full points). Lastly, Longbow has multiple endings. There's a good ending, a bad ending, and several neutral endings. And getting a different ending isn't as simple as doing one thing (like eating the fruit in "King's Quest 4) or not doing one thing (like not giving Edgar the extra life in "King's Quest 7"). You have to spend the whole game working for the ending you want. This gives Longbow some replayability which most adventure games don't have. One criticism: The puzzles are mostly too easy. One common criticism of Sierra games is that they are unfairly difficult. Christy Marx set out to avoid that problem, which she did, I think this game leans closer to the other extreme. She may have given us too many hints. I could've used more of a challenge. 2 exceptions are some riddles (which are impossible and there are no hints), and a tough timing puzzle right before the riddles.

'Conquests of the Longbow' is one of the best adventure games in the Sierra catalogue, even though it may not get as much attention as the other "Quest" games. While 'CotL' may not get the same recognition or branding as, say 'King's Quest', 'Space Quest' and 'Leisure Suit Larry', it is perhaps the one that is best written and has some of the best adventure game puzzles. The writing in 'CotL' is superb, filled with Robin Hood lore and druidic mythology that are tightly interwoven to form a cohesive story. Even three layers of copy protection (yes, three!) were designed to enrich the game's setting and lore, instead of being arbritarily included. For a story that spans 13 chapters, mission objectives of each chapter were always clearly defined or hinted. At no point during the game that I felt not knowing what to do (like I did in 'Gabriel Knight'). Allowing multiple ways to solve problems in 'CotL' is one of the game's best features. It was a surprise for me when I first played it, and I still admire the care that Christy Marx et al. had put into the design. This design feature matters a lot, and I won't spoil it for you if you don't know why. However, I assure you that because of this, 'CotL' is very replayable to this day. In spite of the perfect score that I gave 'CoTL', it is by no means perfect. (The perfect score is from my inability to assign 4.5 stars.) The Nine Men's Morris minigame, winning of which is essential, is annoying when most players probably know the rules of the game or strategies to win it. Plus, one key game mechanic could have been made more user-friendly if the player could have easy reference to the fleeting clue. Otherwise, I find 'CoTL' pretty much as perfect as a point-and-click can be. It's a shame that 'CotL' never got a CD-ROM release because I think it deserves to be enhanced by some voice acting and remastered soundtrack. Still, the end product as it is is worth checking out and replaying again. It's definitely worth adding to your GoG collection.

Astounded by all of these 5 star reviews. I tried this as I kept hearing how it’s a forgotten gem (and hadn’t heard much of it before countless YouTube videos began singing its praises recently), but I feel suckered. I must say that graphically and sound wise I find it appealing and it does have a tried and tested interface, there are a lot of nice details put in that weren’t lost on me. But the gameplay, where is it? Point and click adventures are my passion and I know certain brands (notably older Sierra titles) are often criticised for wanting the player to spend days guessing at an arbitrary place to stand or number of seconds to wait before trying an action in order to trigger an event, but this takes it into overdrive. Wander around aimlessly, dozens of screens with nothing to do at all until you strike it lucky with the one you need, guess at which random action will move the scene forward…then back to wandering. If you’re going to want me on rails, then don’t have so much open space to waste my time in, better yet, just play the game yourself, I’ll watch, because I’m not having any interaction or enjoyment anyway. Try doing your own daily routine tomorrow but having someone stop you until you choose to do things in their arbitrary order, your colleagues won’t be at work until you’ve closed a random window somewhere, your toothbrush won’t appear until you’ve found your shoes etc… stupid examples but that’s how this game makes me feel, it’s one of ‘those’ games.