Defender of the Crown: The Legend Returns

For nostalgic Gen X players, with a subtle modern pixel art version in addition. I'm loving it.

Habe mir das Spiel aus dem selben Grund geholt, wie viele anderen hier, weil es Retro und so schön nostalgisch ist. Und genau das ist auch das Problem. Die Steuerung und Spielmechanik ist leider genau da, wo sie vor 40 Jahren schon war. Beim Lanzenreiten fliegt man auf seinen Gegner zu, die Lanze tut Dinge aus Gründen und am Ende hat man das Turnier immer verloren. Das Überfallen der Burgen und Befreien der Prinzessinnen folgt immer dem gleichen Muster, Kämpfe gegen drei Lumpen und duelliere dich ewig mit dem Boss - langweilig!! Die Kampagne ist so gottlos schwer. Mit etwas Glück bekommt man zwei, vielleicht drei Gebiete. Dann muss man zwangsläufig irgend so einem Knecht den Krieg erklären. Mit dem Ergebnis, dass sich die ganze Bande auf dich stürzt, wie auf die letzte Jungfrau der G...b... Party und dich auch dem entsprechend aufreißt. Fazit: Die ganze Nummer wirkt wie eine grauenhafte Hausaufgabe, die du genauso runter spulen musst, wie sich Herr Lehrer das vorstellt. Spielspaß und Wiederspielwert sehe ich da nicht. Wer meint: Wow toll, aber Retro. Viel Spaß damit. Es ist nur wenig hübscher, dafür viel schwerer als früher. Ach ja und es gibt einen neuen Modus. In dem man Armeen verschiebt und kämpfen lässt. Wobei die Zusammenstellung der Armee, wieviel Ritter, Schwertkämpfer, Bogenschützen völlig egal ist, weil der Kampf über einen Mix aus Würfel und Kartenspiel ausgetragen wird. Diese Karten haben aber wie erwähnt nichts mit den Truppen zu tun, sondern werden bei Händlern oder Ereignissen der Karte generiert. Klingt blödsinnig? - Ist es ja auch!

Long story short, this is essentially the same game from years ago, with some differences between the two main modes. The retro mode keeps everything intact, while the classic mode comes with redesigned art and a streamlined user interface, more animations, and a few changes that make things harder than in the original game. Regardless of which one you choose, the basics remain the same. First, you start by selecting one of the four lords, each of whom comes with different values across three vital stats. The most important is leadership, since it affects what you’ll be doing the most in the game: determining the effectiveness of your soldiers while defending your castle or laying siege to enemy fortresses. Then comes jousting, because taking part and winning will raise your leadership, and you don’t want to embarrass yourself. As for swordplay, a higher rating means you’ll have more chances and mistakes won’t hurt as much, but it all depends on your button mashing skills. After picking your lord, you end up on a map divided into territories. Most of them are free, while a handful are occupied by other lords, and you can check each one to see two important stats. One is the gold per month, and the other is the number of vassals. Both matter because the goal of the game is to conquer all territories, and when you hold a territory under your control, you get the gold from all of them after each turn. Vassals, on the other hand, add to your army when you conquer a free territory, but this only works for the first few rounds because the enemy lords and you quickly make short work of all the free territories. Gold is used to buy three types of army assets. Soldiers are the cheapest, and you want to have as many as you can afford, then add a few knights here and there. Catapults are the most expensive option, but they are required for attacking enemy castles. The final option is castles, which can be placed in conquered territories to act as vital defenses against invading armies. Except for castles, all three other units always turn up in your home territory the moment they are bought. So, if you have your army away from home, you need to return to add them to your forces. Fortunately, movement across your own territories doesn’t end the turn. In general, a turn ends when you conquer a territory or attack an enemy, but not when managing your army, such as buying units or moving through your own territories. However, the classic mode changes this because buying something ends your turn, which makes things considerably more difficult. When attacking an enemy lord’s main castle, you need to have at least one catapult, and having more serves no real purpose. A catapult lets you play a mini game where you launch stones at a wall to create a hole. This has to be done with a limited number of stones, and the more you destroy, the less effective the defenders are going to be. As for the actual attack, you don’t see much beyond the numbers representing your troops and the enemy’s troops dwindling until one side reaches zero. The number of enemy troops isn’t known until you decide to fight, but it can be reduced somewhat with good catapult work. If you want, you also have a couple of orders that can speed up the conquest at the cost of your men, but it’s probably best to leave things as they are. A couple of different orders appear when you fight an enemy in territories without a castle, and this is where catapults can come in handy with the bombardment order, while knights are useful with outflank. If you win a castle siege, you also take all the territories the defeated enemy held at the moment of defeat. But if you lose, you return to your home castle, where you can build up a new army and try to retake what you just lost. The enemy lord is also defeated when you take his home castle, so even if he holds another castle territory, you can come from behind and take everything with a single attack. Although classic mode requires more strategy, you can easily fix mistakes in both modes because they allow you to save on the main map. So, if you make a move and don’t like what the enemy has done, you can reload and try again, hoping the enemy will stay away from you. In general, winning isn’t that hard, and the ability to save and reload makes the whole experience fairly forgiving. But there’s also a new Kingdom mode, which adds a unique spin to the game with roguelite elements. The map and user interface are taken from the classic mode, but there are a lot more territories on the map, which you conquer through a combination of dice and card gameplay. At the start of a conquest, both you and your opponent roll dice. The number of dice depends on how many units you have, and the numbers rolled add up to your overall strength. Then, you take turns playing tactic cards that affect the dice and their numbers, which also changes your overall strength. For instance, one card increases a die showing a number greater than four by one, while another lets you destroy an enemy die showing a number lower than three. The battle ends when both you and your opponent are left without action points, as the cards you play cost a certain number of action points. The objective is to play cards that increase your strength while lowering the enemy’s until the battle is over, with the side having the highest strength winning. A victory also nets you some gold and new tactic cards, but there are special events that require you to move quickly. Certain territories have numbers on them that decrease with each battle. They also decrease if you move to an already conquered territory, but doing so is basically just a waste of moves. If you reach a territory and win it, you gain more rewards and some unique ones, such as rescuing ladies, which unlocks new starting perks for Kingdom mode. You can also unlock different starting armies and dice with special perks, as well as traits. By the way, the starting lords are the same as in the standard modes, but their stats are replaced with one unique perk. All in all, this is a very nice introduction of an old classic to a new audience, with enough new things and features to keep old veterans interested. Although Kingdom mode is very different from the standard experience and clearly jumps on the current roguelite trend, it’s engaging enough to make you want to give it a few runs.

OK, I rarely leave negative reviews and even rarer do I request refunds. This is doubly so for indie titles. But here I am. I so badly wanted to enjoy this light strategy game from my childhood. But a remake has to first and foremost not take AWAY the flavor of the original. After playing the new "Classic" mode a bit, I found that they seriously nerfed or even got rid of flavor panels (like your damsel looking at you lovingly and then your silhouettes kissing). If the devs found even such a tame scene problematic, then they have no business doing a remake. Part of a guy's fantasy of striking out at the world is to rescue beautiful women and then wed and bed them. If they can't even give us this thing that the original was able to evoke in a boy's imagination, then they don't deserve our support. And this is just one example. And I shouldn't be drawn to play the original "Retro" version within this remake. If they didn't strip stuff out of the original, then I'd have at least left them my money as a show of support. But this modern-day iconoclism and puritanism in a medieval strategy game is ridiculous. Just my two cents.

I like it. I'm used to the Commodore 64 version (parrying/blocking, 3 diff. ammunitions for catapult, etc) Didn't know the Amiga version was released first way back then so the missing features was apparent in Retro mode. Classic mode looked nice and the controls & options felt like the C-64, very fun. $20.00 bucks for a time travel adventure is so worth it. Just do it!

Honestly, I think all retro releases should be done like this. You get the full original, an updated version, and a re-imagined bonus. Great job!

Früher war alles besser...auch Defender of the Crown. Schnell runter von der Platte und refunden, damit ich mir meine schönen Erinnerungen nicht versaue.

far to expensive for what it is. the roguelike mode absolutely sucks and is just RNG based sometimes giving you almost an unwinnable starting hand vs what the computer has been given. for 5$ this would be worth it.