Robin Hood – Sherwood Builders: A forgettable experience thanks to its combat system

Robin Hood is a figure well known to the British, who serves as an inspiration to many people and gives rise to many variations of his story. So much so that, for many, whether the person in question existed or not makes no difference, as the story itself already conveys a very important message.

Of course, this also gives rise to many games with the most varied ideas and Robin Hood – Sherwood Builders is a survival that, despite having positive things, is not pleasing in what is most important.

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Evolve Sherwood and earn respect!

Robin Hood – Sherwood Builders begins with Robin Hood trying to rebuild his base with his companions after a fierce battle against the forces of King Richard the Lionheart. Following the objectives, it is very difficult to get lost in what you must do in this game. These are initially simple tasks, but they already explain how the game paid greater attention to expanding its community.

This is where the game shines the most, as the buildings follow the aesthetics of the people of that time and buildings that use larger trees in favor of hiding from the monarchy’s soldiers and providing resources for the survival of their companions. It is also very useful that the materials available to be collected are marked on the map.

As it is a survival game, we have hydration, food and energy counters. A point that I consider very positive here is that, outside of combat, your energy bar does not run out when running and jumping, only to collect resources from the forest and, as it has a very large map, this is a very positive decision not to slow down the pace of the game when it is necessary to cross the fields.

You can also make quick trips around the map to specific points that need to be visited, but the trips cost some of your hydration and food bar.

If we talk about the visuals, the game’s graphics are good and you can tell that they paid attention on the creation of the design of environments, characters and enemies. It’s nothing impressive, but streamers and viewers certainly won’t complain about this point.

The same also goes for the soundtrack that accompanies the game very well, despite the fact that during the combats, the music ends up being endlessly repeated even if all the enemies have been eliminated.

And speaking of enemies, there are many to be faced and there is a variety in them where some use head protection and require additional effort with the bow. But then we get to the not-so-good part of the game: the combat.

Simple combat system and animations ruin the game’s foundation

Now that we have a lot of enemies to eliminate throughout the game, there is a big flaw that prevents the overall experience from being better. Robin’s movement isn’t a problem, but entering combat is when we see that you make a much greater effort than necessary to eliminate the smallest threat.

The game’s hand-to-hand combat is extremely slow, despite using gameplay in dynamic mode. The character delivers limited blows with an “X” movement that do not change and even if you do training to improve some skills, what you get is only a third blow that does not improve the damage, range or feeling that you are causing any injury. on your enemies.

There is also a bow available in the game, but it isn’t much better. Even though the figure is known for his great skill with a bow and arrow, what the player has here is a shaky hand and an imprecise aim to hit the targets.

The game has a skill tree available to improve all types of Robin Hood skills, but they only generally increase damage, resistance and an improvement related to the survival part of the game.

If Robin Hood – Sherwood Builders was an early access title or had a greater focus on its buildings and combat was something more optional, perhaps it wouldn’t weigh as much, but what happens is that you end up facing enemies in the most varied events and that can tire the streamer and scare away viewers in a livestream.

The game’s Artificial Intelligence also has its flaws, where even using stealth through the environments, animals run around like crazy for no reason at all, showing that the game’s animations are part of the problem list. In the tutorial itself, where the player needs to be stealthy and hit an enemy from behind, the game has trouble registering the actions and activating the hit animation.

And there is a strange decision to use an animation in arrow shots where the camera follows until it hits the target, something that is better known in Skyrim, but here with much less polish in the camera game.

The experience of being Robin Hood everywhere

But if the streamer and the player still manage to overcome the problems, the game has no difficulties in running. I played the experience on Windows and most of it on Linux and the game should run smoothly for users who have the Steam Deck.

There are some problems that can be solved with a little research, but overall the experience runs smoothly. So transmitting the experience anywhere shouldn’t be a problem, as long as you keep in mind the limitations of each platform.

It is worth remembering that the game has partial support for controls, but it should not present challenges either. There is also support for Xbox and Playstation controller layouts to improve controller accessibility.

The game only has English dubbing and supports eight languages in texts.

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Katsutoshi