Nacon’s and Appeal Studios’ Gangs of Sherwood is a surprisingly fun and beautiful game that will take you to medieval England, where you will fight for control of the lands of Sherwood Forest. In our latest review, we take a look at Gangs of Sherwood, a game that has a lot of potential but is somewhat lackluster out of the gate.
For those who might have forgotten, Robin Hood is a story about a prince who goes against the Sheriff of Nottingham, who exploits and uses peasants and ordinary people for his own gain. And the most famous fact from this story is that he stole from the rich, gave to the poor and used his archery skills to turn the tide in his favor.
Gangs of Sherwood takes the basics of the fairy tale: the four playable characters are the most popular of the Merry Men; Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, Little John and Marian, and of course the antagonist, the Sheriff of Nottingham, but the rest of the story gets plenty of unique twists.
The events of the game will unfold in a futuristic dystopia based on the legend of Robin Hood. Thanks to the philosopher’s stones, the troops of the Sheriff of Nottingham have become stronger, and the people of England suffer under the yoke of those in power. Players will take on the role of one of the members of a gang of robbers and will lead an uprising, fight the army of Nottingham, rob and give everything to increase their reputation and unlock new improvements. And from the first minutes of the game you will understand that the game is inspired by the legends of Robin Hood and action games like Devil May Cry and Warhammer Vermintide, which is not a bad mixture and a great idea. And what else the developers managed to do is make the characters as unique as possible, and this promotes synergy between them.
Each character is based on an archetype. Robin is a long-range damage dealer, and Tak is a tank, there is also a girl assassin Marian at medium-close range, and also Little John who is a cross between a tank and a close-range DPS. Everyone has their own sets of abilities that can be replaced with more convenient ones and an “ultimate” that enhances these abilities. After completing each mission you earn reputation and gold. Reputation allows you to unlock new items to purchase from equipment stores, and gold is used to purchase them, improve abilities, or unlock new ones.
Some rebel abilities are given to you as you progress through the Sherwood Gang story. These abilities provide small buffs such as healing and attack boosts, but can later gain additional moves. For example, Monk Tak can taunt enemies into attacking him, as well as heal other players, or one of my favorites is replacing the empowered attack with a pull chain that allows you to pull enemies in and hit them with precision. Another move that will become available later is called Rebel Takedown, or simply Finisher. When completed, you get a small cutscene with which you epically finish off the enemy and receive additional gold, which I really liked.
I will not touch on the plot in any way to avoid spoilers, and therefore I will describe the missions themselves figuratively. The heroes receive a task, the planning of which you will do in the hub, which is the characters’ shelter in an old church. The missions themselves are separate levels in the spirit of looter shooters or any other cooperative games like, for example, Left 4 Dead. The main difference from such projects here is some kind of requirement for team play. The latter is hinted at by the strikingly different gameplay of the characters.
Since I played solo for the review, I can’t say that I had fun in Gangs of Sherwood. It will definitely be more fun in the company of friends (anything is fun in the company of friends), but somehow I wasn’t inspired to go solo. I also didn’t find much depth in the gameplay. The plot, by the way, is also not particularly interesting, but, again, it can be fun in the company.
The game’s story won’t win any awards, with a standard plot of good and evil, no real character development, just a story in one place or another. But each mission and level is presented in a fantastic little puppet theater style that is shown before the battle begins and also brings levity and humor to the proceedings.
The locations where you have to move look great, but what you will understand and feel right away is that they are narrow and almost linear, and if you look in the corners you can find several collectibles or chests with improvements, but that’s what I felt in this game So it’s that my movements are constantly constrained. You entered an arena with enemies, defeated them – you can’t go back, or you jumped off a ledge just while exploring, realized that this was the main road, you want to jump back – but no, hello invisible wall.
There’s very little real gameplay between battles, and you’ll quickly realize that you’re in a very obvious cycle of “fight, run a little, fight, run a little.” Every once in a while you’ll come across a chest that will contain a minuscule amount of gold or an artifact, which are the game’s versions of stat boosters and, frankly, feel largely irrelevant.
Also, what is also noteworthy is that the game does not have a character level or its strength to a weapon, everything is tied only to the abilities that you discover over time, and because of this, some feeling of “oh I found or received that weapon or a new level” disappears became stronger by so much”, yes, you will receive new combos for attacks and increase the number of cells for improvements for chests, but that’s all.
While the playable characters are varied, the enemies you fight throughout the game are not. They’re just soldiers that are copied and pasted into battles in different colors, and bosses are usually larger versions of special enemies in smaller combat encounters. Even the combat encounters are frustrating as every time you complete a fight there is a ranking system that determines your actions (in the same vein as Devil May Cry S rank/A rank) and although you get gold as a reward it seems that this is an afterthought. And as I said earlier, the most disappointing factor is that all the battles take a minute or a minute and a half and then there is silence for the duration of the exploration.
Combat throughout the game’s missions becomes repetitive because while you can earn different skills and abilities, the most basic attacks are the most powerful. After I added various upgrades to my character, I still didn’t use them and hardly noticed them as I still resorted to using light and heavy attacks. The game places a lot of emphasis on executing mini-combinations to realize these abilities and skills, but I never felt the need to use them as my strategy always worked. The gameplay is like a constant cycle of combat that moves on to the next and then ends the level. Thankfully, the level art is amazing.
The gameplay of Gangs of Sherwood unfortunately resembles a constant cycle of a fight for a minute, explore the location, fight for a minute and a half, and so forth. Then players move on to the next one, and then the level is complete. Luckily, the level art is simply stunning which removes some of the monotonous pain. With the possibilities of selecting your own gameplay for the characters, and because there is enough variability in the game, it is a tolerable, if somewhat lackluster game at the moment especially in terms of combat and its attractiveness. Still, however, Gangs of Sherwood is definitely worth your attention or to keep an eye on over time, especially have someone to play with.
Our review of Gangs of Sherwood was completed thanks to a game key provided by PR.
