Defender of the Crown (NES, 1989)
Graphics-6.5 Sound-6 Control-6 Challenge-7 Story-6.5
Level Design-6 Frustration-8.5 Fun-6 Originality-7
Overall Score-6
+
Hybrid gameplay (turn-based strategy and siege attacks, real-time jousting/siege defence/raiding combat)
Four different playable characters plus four CPU only characters
Basic character building (leadership (affects how fast your men respond to commands during field battles, when you need to switch tactics in a live fight, how fast your crossbow moves when defeinding against a siege)
Jousting (how fast you can move your lance and how steady you can hold it, how much strength you start with in the melee combat phase of jousting, how hard you can hit with your mace and how long you need to wait between attacks for higher damage)
Swordplay (only affects your starting health during enemy castle raids)) - only leadership can change during the course of a game (winning a fame joust increases it, being stuck in sieges over and over lowers it)
Can get help from robin hood (enter his forest) three times during a game
Real-time field battles
Monthly income stat, recruit and redistribute armies (soldiers, knights, catapults), your character's portrait will change depending on how your game is going, decent cutscenes (full screen artwork stills with text in-between), can investigate any piece of land in the strategy segment (shows owner, vassals (this number adds to your army after conquering a neutral piece of land if the army defends from that position), income per turn), can build new castles/forts, high and low attacks plus blocking during melee combat in jousting tournaments (sadly worse during raids), can retreat from a failing raid to avoid being captured,
+/-
Can't play as a southern lord
Jousting is generally pretty easy even with average skill if you win the first phase but very hard if you lose it
No troop losses when conquering neutral land
Recruiting soldiers ends the turn in this version
You get the first move (good since you get to pick which land to conquer first, bad since the enemy can then retaliate during the same turn)
Can move through your own or "allied" (blue/Saxon) territory as well as transfer troops without ending your turn
Can only have one moving army at a time (can transfer part of it to any conquered piece of land but not move those troops around independently), can only challenge a lord once per tournament, defeated lords still fight in tournaments, sieging with more catapults doesn't give you more ammo to use, retreating your army when attacked moves it back to the home castle, you'll be banned from future tournaments if you hit the opponent's horse with the lance,
-
Some interface/control issues (very poor combat controls during raids, can accidentally skip battle result screens because the d-pad also confirms, simplistic and rather clunky controls for jousting (more advanced but clunky melee combat phase - need to hold the button down a bit with each mace swing, near impossible to predict if your opponent will make a high or low attack), simplistic field battle controls (you can only give a general order to your army - not control individual squads/regiments), can't check your army while reading the map (need to go into the transfer or buy army screens), can't pause during a field battle and they can be over extremely quickly, can't see where enemy armies are or scout their size, can't examine land or character stats during a tournament, selecting icon covers the text in the main menu in-game and movement here is too sensitive (it also doesn't wrap around), )
Geoffrey sucks?
Odd color choices for some cutscenes
Trial & error (learning how to use the catapult properly during a siege)
No diplomacy
No damsel rescuing in this version
No music during the strategy segment and jousting melee combat, some annoying random elements (raids by outside forces as random events which you can't defend against (can lose half your gold), jousting lance movement as you're nearing the opponent), no confirmation if disease and greek fire have any effect or when you win a siege, can only recruit from your home castle, no notification when a lord is defeated, pretty ugly field battle graphics, no difficulty options, 1-player only, no saving
Comment:
I didn't expect to be blown away by this one but seeing as North & South still held up pretty well I though I'd at least give it a chance. The Amiga original has some interesting ideas but almost none of them are all that well realized so it mainly relies on its great presentation for the time and a setting that isn't too common in games (13th century England with some folklore thrown in). The NES version makes some decent additions but loses a lot of the charm by not having more stylized visuals fit for its limitations, and the AI isn't strong enough on the strategic level to keep things interesting for more than a couple of playthroughs. Still I might give the sequel/remake for Amiga CD32 a shot.
Level Design-6 Frustration-8.5 Fun-6 Originality-7
Overall Score-6
+
Hybrid gameplay (turn-based strategy and siege attacks, real-time jousting/siege defence/raiding combat)
Four different playable characters plus four CPU only characters
Basic character building (leadership (affects how fast your men respond to commands during field battles, when you need to switch tactics in a live fight, how fast your crossbow moves when defeinding against a siege)
Jousting (how fast you can move your lance and how steady you can hold it, how much strength you start with in the melee combat phase of jousting, how hard you can hit with your mace and how long you need to wait between attacks for higher damage)
Swordplay (only affects your starting health during enemy castle raids)) - only leadership can change during the course of a game (winning a fame joust increases it, being stuck in sieges over and over lowers it)
Can get help from robin hood (enter his forest) three times during a game
Real-time field battles
Monthly income stat, recruit and redistribute armies (soldiers, knights, catapults), your character's portrait will change depending on how your game is going, decent cutscenes (full screen artwork stills with text in-between), can investigate any piece of land in the strategy segment (shows owner, vassals (this number adds to your army after conquering a neutral piece of land if the army defends from that position), income per turn), can build new castles/forts, high and low attacks plus blocking during melee combat in jousting tournaments (sadly worse during raids), can retreat from a failing raid to avoid being captured,
+/-
Can't play as a southern lord
Jousting is generally pretty easy even with average skill if you win the first phase but very hard if you lose it
No troop losses when conquering neutral land
Recruiting soldiers ends the turn in this version
You get the first move (good since you get to pick which land to conquer first, bad since the enemy can then retaliate during the same turn)
Can move through your own or "allied" (blue/Saxon) territory as well as transfer troops without ending your turn
Can only have one moving army at a time (can transfer part of it to any conquered piece of land but not move those troops around independently), can only challenge a lord once per tournament, defeated lords still fight in tournaments, sieging with more catapults doesn't give you more ammo to use, retreating your army when attacked moves it back to the home castle, you'll be banned from future tournaments if you hit the opponent's horse with the lance,
-
Some interface/control issues (very poor combat controls during raids, can accidentally skip battle result screens because the d-pad also confirms, simplistic and rather clunky controls for jousting (more advanced but clunky melee combat phase - need to hold the button down a bit with each mace swing, near impossible to predict if your opponent will make a high or low attack), simplistic field battle controls (you can only give a general order to your army - not control individual squads/regiments), can't check your army while reading the map (need to go into the transfer or buy army screens), can't pause during a field battle and they can be over extremely quickly, can't see where enemy armies are or scout their size, can't examine land or character stats during a tournament, selecting icon covers the text in the main menu in-game and movement here is too sensitive (it also doesn't wrap around), )
Geoffrey sucks?
Odd color choices for some cutscenes
Trial & error (learning how to use the catapult properly during a siege)
No diplomacy
No damsel rescuing in this version
No music during the strategy segment and jousting melee combat, some annoying random elements (raids by outside forces as random events which you can't defend against (can lose half your gold), jousting lance movement as you're nearing the opponent), no confirmation if disease and greek fire have any effect or when you win a siege, can only recruit from your home castle, no notification when a lord is defeated, pretty ugly field battle graphics, no difficulty options, 1-player only, no saving
Comment:
I didn't expect to be blown away by this one but seeing as North & South still held up pretty well I though I'd at least give it a chance. The Amiga original has some interesting ideas but almost none of them are all that well realized so it mainly relies on its great presentation for the time and a setting that isn't too common in games (13th century England with some folklore thrown in). The NES version makes some decent additions but loses a lot of the charm by not having more stylized visuals fit for its limitations, and the AI isn't strong enough on the strategic level to keep things interesting for more than a couple of playthroughs. Still I might give the sequel/remake for Amiga CD32 a shot.