Robin Hood: Winds of Freedom – Review

Alawar Games, the king of resource management games, arrives with a new sequel – Robin Hood: Winds of Freedom. Join Robin Hood and his friends on their quest to rescue King Richard from the kidnappers. Take a trip through the Sherwood Forest, overcome the challenges, and save your royal ruler!

While I have never played Robin Hood: Country Heroes, this new sequel looks promising just by its concept and the prolific developer behind it. With the amount of Time Management games flooding the market as of late, it is difficult for a game from a small franchise to distinguish itself from the pack. It is clear that Robin Hood: Winds of Freedom sets out to be more than just an average Time Management experience, whether it succeeds or not begs another question.

Robin Hood: Winds of Freedom has a cute storyline that is filled with humor and banter. It is definitely crasser than your usual casual game, but not to the point that it feels insensitive or offensive. This is in contrast to the game’s colorful and lively graphics. Speaking of the graphics, the scene designs in this game are often interesting. However, the graphics fall a little flat and do not live up to their full potential.

The game cleverly utilizes the iconic Robin Hood characters. After the beginning few levels, you get the option to select up to three characters to use in each level. It is important to think and choose carefully, depending on the tasks at hand, because all the characters have distinct abilities that can help you achieve those tasks. This is a cool and fun feature that both enhances the storyline and makes the gameplay more interesting.

Nonetheless, this choose-your-characters feature would have been more effective if it was supported by equally sophisticated gameplay. Not only are most of the tasks feel overdone, the pace of the game is also very slow. The characters move at an uncommonly slow speed, the animations are clunkier than in most games of its kind, and there is simply not enough action to inject some much-needed excitement into the game. Thus, the game gets dull super fast and sometimes makes its 45 main levels feels like one long slog of a neverending adventure.

Of course, Robin Hood: Winds of Freedom is available as a Collector’s Edition – which is not to say that the game is necessarily worthy of that title. The bonus section include 9 bonus levels, a strategy guide, wallpapers, and soundtracks.

Robin Hood: Winds of Freedom tries to steer clear of the cookie-cutter Time Management game territory, but not to much success.