Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood

Moby ID: 1967
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The year is 1193, and the Third Crusade has just ended. Richard the Lionheart, King of England, returns to Europe from the Holy Land. On the way, he is ambushed and abducted by the soldiers of the Austrian duke Leopold. The duke demands a large ransom to be paid in exchange for the king's freedom. However, the king's brother, Prince John, is content with the situation and plotting to take the throne for himself. That is when the legendary Robin Hood, one who robs from the rich and gives to the poor, decides to raise the money needed to liberate the king, with the help of his fellow outlaws of Sherwood Forest.

Conquests of the Longbow is an adventure game and a follow-up to Conquests of Camelot. It uses an icon-based interface common to most contemporary Sierra adventures. Like its spiritual predecessor, it differs from most other games in the genre by reducing traditional inventory-based puzzles in favor of exploration and varied tasks dictated by the situation at hand. These include talking to characters, gathering information, making decisions, solving riddles, or participating in mini-games such as combat, archery contest, and Nine Men's Morris (with adjustable difficulty).

The game is divided into days; each day is completed when certain tasks have been fulfilled. It is, however, possible to fail some of those tasks and still advance the plot. Several situations can be handled in different ways. The player's decisions affect Robin Hood's ranking towards the end of the game. Number of points scored, the amount of money collected for the ransom, and the fate of Robin's fellow outlaws are considered when awarding the rank. Depending on these factors the player reaches one of the four possible endings, ranging from Robin getting hanged to a happy conclusion of his love life.

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Credits (DOS version)

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 81% (based on 18 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 66 ratings with 5 reviews)

Medieval fantasy but with a hefty dollop of realism

The Good
Yes its medieval fantasy but its got real historical characters, and its more true to the spirit of Robin Hood than most games, books or films I've seen. It therefore has a special credibility, and it resists the cutesey and kitch excesses that some of the other Sierra games (eg Kings Quest) are prone to. It also has an interesting structure whereby the action is divided up into days, which are like episodes or chapters. I liked this aspect of it.

The Bad
I know some of you like difficult puzzles. I don't. Life is too short.

The Bottom Line
Get it. Less well known than Kings Quest, but better in lots of ways. Worth trying to get the VGA version.

DOS · by jossiejojo (37) · 2004

Great Surprise!!

The Good
I didn't get a chance to play this game until a couple of years after its release. At first when I looked at this title I wasn't impressed. The advice "don't judge a book by its cover" is relevant with Robin Hood. The depth of the game was wonderful and like other sierra adventures of its time it was filled with wonderful music and blessed with a well written plot. The characters were well crafted and often I found myself thinking I was there. I got really wrapped up in Sierra Adventures back then and boy do I miss them now.

I want to say something about the music of this game. It is rare for a game to have music so good that it can carry a game. Had Robin Hood had fair or poor gameplay I still would have played it for the excellent music. Instead all three were excellent thus making a classic

The Bad
It has been a few years since I played it and today I am only left with the good memories. Few games are that lucky with me.

The Bottom Line
A classic.

One of the top ten adventures of all time.

DOS · by William Shawn McDonie (1131) · 2001

A very well thought out game

The Good
I have always liked the legend of Robin Hood, so when this game came out, naturally I had to get it. The artwork for this game was the best I had ever seen at the time, and I still love looking at it. It had some very wonderful music, as well. But the thing I found the most surprising was what had been written into the game. I played this game three times, once to get a feel for it, once to be the best Robin hood I could be, and once to be the absolute worst Robin Hood I could be. Yeah, yeah, I know--not exactly what Robin Hood's about, right? However, I found that the game had been written with that in mind--if you didn't rescue certain people, then your failure triggered a different event--maybe some little bit of dialogue that tells you what happened to that person, or something like that. It's impossible to fail completely in this game if you want to get to the end trial, though, but the crowd of people will be much smaller. I was still very surprised, though, because most of Sierra's games are made with the premise in mind that you have to solve one puzzle to get to the next--but here they've made the game more flexible, in my opinion, by allowing you to fail if you can't figure it out. It isn't easy to get full points, but you don't have to in order to win the game. Varying difficulty levels made things like the archery contest a real challenge!

The Bad
Winning the game and marrying Marian was a different matter, though. You do have to get the full points to marry her. Otherwise, you're just made a yeoman. Also, there is one point where you would get stuck if you didn't do what you were supposed to--if you didn't rescue Marian the first time you met her, you could not continue with the game. There were also some odd elements in the game that I didn't really identify with being a part of the actual legend of Robin Hood. There is also a point in the game where you have to click the hand icon on Robin, and sometimes what was supposed to come up wouldn't, unless you clicked in a very narrow area.

The Bottom Line
This was a very beautiful game for its time, very well thought out and dimensionalized. You were given a broader range of how to play Robin Hood if you wanted to. The puzzles were sometimes difficult, sometimes easy, but all in all a lot of fun. I played this game in one sitting, in one entire day--and it's not easy to keep my attention that long!

DOS · by OceansDaughter (106) · 2002

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Trivia

Cancelled CD version

After the disk releases, Sierra decided to re-release this game on CD. The CD version was to feature full speech and be distributed around 1993, but was never fully completed. There was a demo released with speech however.

Distribution

Conquests of the Longbow was available in four different packages: a 16 color version (supporting EGA, MCGA, VGA, Tandy/PCjr) with either 3.5" DD or 5.25" HD disks, and a 256 color version (supporting MCGA, VGA) with either 3.5" HD or 5.25" HD disks.

References

  • If you open the control panel and hit the Sierra button, the game will give you the credits, then inform you that "no guys from Andromeda" partook in the creation of the game, as a reference to Space Quest.
  • At the fair, there are a lot of little in-jokes. Try talking to everyone at the fair and you will find several Sierra programmers and employees (including the Two Guys from Andromeda) and also George Bush and Dan Quail.

Information also contributed by Ju, just Ju..., Ricky Derocher and Servo

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  • MobyGames ID: 1967
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Blacksun.

Windows added by Cavalary. Amiga added by Jeanne.

Additional contributors: William Shawn McDonie, Jeanne, Patrick Bregger.

Game added July 16, 2000. Last modified January 19, 2024.