Today, I entered a newly oppened EBGames and my father bought me this game for 8 CND. I remember playing the demo a while ago and took this game as an alternative to Commandos. The second commandos was rather easy and then most of Pyro's employees left before the 3rd one was finished.Commandos: Destination Berlin had more action than stealth and had more rush tactics than careful planning. For those reasons, I didn't bother with it.
Now more on the main point:
I expected Robin Hood to be a nice alternative to Commandos, but I got a nice alternative of Jagged Alliance 2: after the first 2 missions, which serve as tutorials, I entered the Sherwood Forest Hideout. There you menage your men. Untrained farmers join the charismatic hero if he knocks out guards instead of killing them, thus you're heavily rewarded by NOT using violence. Every man counts: they can train in Archery (if they have a bow), prepare food, harvest apples, treat wounded, fletch arrows, prepare nets, train in hand-to-hand... After you leave the merry men to their duty, you open the map and prepare for a mission. It seems the missions vary between defending a castle, attacking a castle, ambushing sheriff's convoys and other missions. My next mission was to attack a convoy so I chose a couple of men and proceeded. My two men hid in the dead leaves by the bridge as Robin Hood prepared to unleash the deadly traps on the unsuspecting soldiers. The traps are triggered by shooting the bull's eye above them. As the convoy proceeded, a trap triggered and smashed the carriage. The horses run off, dragging some unlucky man as the soldiers started combing the forest. The first trap alerted a small team of archers which shot three of the sheriff's men. The second, triggered a net which disposed of another pair of grunts... You get the picture.
Every man has his special abilities, for example, Robin can throw leather bags of gold, which spill as they hit the ground. The underpayed low-rank soldiers are attracted to the glitter of gold and they can start fights which often result in all of them but one knocked off. Officers are not such easily distracted and tend to shout on soldiers who fight, yet they have their weaknesses too. In the second mission, I had this problem:
My men were in a church. Outside, a patrol of 4 grunts and one officer iddly patrolled the area. In the middle, some children played and by the wall stood a lazy guard. One of my men, sat outside when no one looked and disguised himself as a beggar, while Robin Hood stood on the other side, hidden by a wall. As the patrol passed, the man stood, threw an apple into the officer and sat into the "beggar position" again. The officer got angry, looked arround and suspected the kids. Shouting "You dirty little bastards", the enraged officer chased the children (who shouted "try to catch us") to the other side of the chirch. Where Robin knocked him out and threw a bag of coins, which fell infront of the guards. They started saw the gold then one pushed another: "Thief! You had your part!" and the fight started. The lucky last man, gathered the money off the unconscious bodies of his comrades in arms, turned, which was the right moment to knock him off...
Robin Hood is as challenging as Commandos 1, yet has RPG elements, and the "base menaging" part, which make this game one of the best tactical strategy games. Despite it being a bit old, it's trully a sleeper hit.
