Robin Hood Prince Of Thieves

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Jerusalem, 1194 A.D.! You, as Robin Hood, must stop the evil Sheriff of Nottingham from spreading his tyranny throughout medieval England. Robin is imprisoned along with Peter Dubois and Azeem and they must escape. You’ll undertake several different missions that force you to explore and seek out answers as well as figure out different puzzles and collect weapons along the way. Exploration and item collection plays a crucial part in the game and you have to be equipped the right way to cope with the situation. Robin will walk around, interact with characters, fight enemies and pick up items. Among the items, there are many types of weapons and armors to use such as swords and bows (with limited arrows), quarter staves, daggers and more. Arrows can also be found in the game. You will meet several warriors along the way (like Little John for example) and, as you progress further, you will end up having many men following you in your quest. You can only control Robin during the overhead view portions of the game but you must also equip the rest of your men with weapons, armors etc The game offers an inventory screen in which you move your cursor and drag-and-drop equipments and items onto your characters (including healing potions like foods etc). What is really impressive here is the changes in perspectives. There are three different gameplay modes that you will come across along the way: An overhead perspective with Robin walking through the environments, fighting and searching for items, interacting with other characters; A duel mode in which Robin goes one-on-one with an enemy in a 2D fighting game style, having the ability to jump on platforms (like a table) or move to higher grounds, which will give Robin an advantage during fighting; There is also a melee mode, in which the scene will zoom out and every sprite will look small. Switching between characters to control in Melee mode is easy. The last mode is a horse chase in which Robin will have to ride through the forest, trying to escape from the Sheriff’s men.
Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves is an excellent title for the NES. The mix of both RPG and action adventure elements along with great visuals and sound, gives impressive results here!

GRAPHICS / SOUND
In technical terms, the game is fantastic and pushes the NES hardware to its limits! The graphics are wonderful, ranging from forests to indoor settlements like prisons, castles, caves and Middle-East style dungeons, swarmed by numerous enemies including skeletons, archers, infantry and more. The fighting modes are nicely designed, offering some neat character animations and backdrops! The sprites of the game are pretty large too! Aurally, the game offers a variety of gameplay tunes (depending on the scene), along with nice SFX (such as grunting, groaning, weapons clashing, swords clinging and more).