Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood

This game is great. It gives you problems, not puzzles. You never have to follow the developer's wacky logic, you only have to pay attention and use what you have available.

This game has a great story, great characters, some innovative puzzles and great game play. This one seemed to stay under the radar when it first came out, being overshadowed by the Sierra "Quest" series. It's story, although mostly well known, does have some enhancements to the original tale. When you look back at what was coming out at the time, and look at what this game packs in it, it is quite remarkable. Adventure, action, quick travel, mini-games, multiple puzzle solutions and multiple endings; were so rare when first released, but those features make for a game which can be replayed over and over. Which doesn't always happen with a Sierra adventure game. One of my favorites.

It's hidden in the annals of Sierra's library of games. But it was simply one of the best, if not THE best. It has a great version of the Robin Hood story, the atmosphere and storytelling perfect. Maid Marian never seemed so deep outside of a novel, some of the scenes in the forest still seem magical. It's one of the few games from back-in-the-day I can still fully play through and enjoy immensely. Christy Marx is a very talented programmer, and still deserves the support for her game (it was free on her site for a long time, but I owned the original back in the day). But now you have GOG support for a couple bucks and helps her out. I'll buy it again anyway.

I played this game constantly in junior high. Obviously, it's a Sierra game, but you don't have to deal with an annoying parser system ("Get ye flask...You can't get ye flask!"). Pointing and clicking is handled by large, easy-to-understand icons. "Look" is an eye, "touch" is a hand...very intuitive. The graphics have the blockiness of circa '91 VGA, but everything has vibrant grades of color, kind of like stepping into a pixilated Pre-Raphaelite painting. The animation is suprisingly fluid and the soundtrack will be stuck in your head for days; the widow's theme is a longtime favorite of mine. There's a lot of game to explore, and you can uncover multiple endings. Most of the puzzles make sense and are usually pretty forgiving about letting you tinker with them to arrive at its solution. The difficulty is just about right; I was able to 100% it as a lad in the pre-internet-walkthrough days, but it took many intermittent months to cough up all its secrets. It tries for a few of what it calls "arcade" action sequences...really just more point-and-clicking on a stricter time limit. Still enjoyable, just not the change-up the manual seems to think they are. This game had copy protection on it, meaning you need info contained in the manual to proceed. Kind of a pain, usually, but this game's copy protection is integrated so well into the story that I didn't even realize what it was until many years after I'd played it! It's all fun and thematically appropriate; a hand-speak alphabet to communicate with trees, gemstone lore, coats of arms (this one was bugged; it's always the 2nd one you're shown). If you're not a fan of Sierra type point-and-click adventure games, this probably won't be the one that changes your mind. However, it's very playable and enjoyable with art that still looks good to my eyes and a compelling story. Once you've played through it, it's exactly the same each time, but for my money, it's worth returning to every couple of years.

This is a fantastic classic Sierra adventure game and one of my favourites. It largely avoids some of the problems inherent in many of the games of this era such as excessive pixel hunting and nonsensical puzzles. The puzzles are challenging, but fair, and your choices make sense in context. The characters, writing and story on display here are all excellent as well and really immerse you in the world of Robin Hood. This will always stick with me as one of the best! It's an older game, but I'm confident that someone diving into it today would still have a blast.