Metro 3D
Fight for the Crown of England by taking over land and rallying your army throughout England itself, winning tournaments, and defeating the enemy in battle. The enemy wont just sit there and take let you walk in to his territory though. As you play, you will make enemies and eventually engage in deadly combat. What makes this version of Defender of the Crown different is the overhauled graphics and slightly different gameplay.
Most of the game takes place on a map of England, whereby you need to make choices towards the resources and army movement. Often you will need to decide how to spend your money for more troops, and how to divide your forces in such a way that is advantageous for your campaign. Every now and then you will be called to a tournament with your opponents. Here you can joust and even fight hand-to-hand after getting off your horse, just like in medieval times. If youre really daring, you can even raid an opposing castle at nightfall and attempt to fight your way to the end using only a sword. Theres no question that you will need to have cunning strategy and rock-hard wits to win. Lets see what the council had to say:
Features
- Fight in an action/strategy situation on the go.
- Tournaments, sword fights, and sieges use real-time action
- A simple yet challenging strategy system.
Jason Nuyens: I actual came to enjoy my time with Defender of the Crown. It is a pretty fun title that, even though it may not look it, is decent for "pick up and play" gaming. The gameplay can really be addictive sometimes if a neighbour threatens your power. However, the bad menu design and organization turns me off. Not only are the menus really bland, but the text scrolls so fast that you dont have a nanosecond to think about anything else but the game at that point. For instance, when the intro text was scrolling somebody started talking to me but if I spared her even one brain cycle I wouldnt have been able to keep up with the text. This is just plain wrong, and should have been tweaked before release.
On a positive note, the sword battles are interesting. You can jab or swing your sword and the opponent can do the same to you. Its mostly a test of reaction time to see if you can anticipate your enemys movements and defend against them. The action here takes place on a side view with you moving to the right as you fight your way from the outside of the castle to the very heart of it. The difficulty level was definitely a nice change of pace as it was very challenging.
Managing your resources is definitely the key to winning in this game, and it is handled well by the game. Essentially you need land to receive money, and money to receive land. This vicious cycle points to the simple fact that managing the little resources you start with is the only way you will pull ahead. If you have played Advance Wars, then you know of this resource war I speak of. In order to get money, you need troops (who cost money!) to fight for neighboring lands. I wasnt very fond of the wars I must say though. Instead of seeing a graphical representation of the war, you see a badly designed menu that shows how many troops you and the enemy has left while fighting. Obviously as people kill each other, the numbers drop. However, it seems pretty uneventful to have wars that you only see numbers for. If you can cope with that, then kudos to you.
The tournaments I found to be particularly interesting since you can choose to battle for land or title. When you start, you are matched up with another competitor from England (one of your enemies on the main map) and must beat them in a game of joust. Here you only have to aim your lance as the rider rides by you (in a first person perspective. If you aim it properly you will knock them off the horse. Eventually you can fight hand-to-hand using a mace or a similar weapon. Here you block and flail your weapon hoping to knock them down and ultimately rise as the victor. Hooray! Mildly entertaining, even if it only lasts all of thirty seconds.
The visual components come together surprisingly well. Besides the bad menu design and bland map (that you are looking at for more time than any other screen), the graphics are nice. For instance, the graphics for the fighting and jousting are very crisp and bright. The audio however, is not so pretty. As soon as you hear the generic "medieval" tunes you will want to turn the sound off completely. Sad really, as that would mean you have to miss hearing your army charge when fighting a battle. The sound effects are decent in that regard, as they fit the situation nicely even if they are a bit uninspired.
I keep finding myself rolling over the idea of "value" in my head, and what it would mean to you. In the end, value is very important for a Gameboy Advance game since they are very expensive. A game like this would be a value of 6 out of 10 (coincidentally that is the score) because of some tweaks that should have been present. For instance, the menu design needed major work, as did the scrolling. Another complaint in the realm of value is the complete lack of any multiplayer features. This game could easily lend itself to a turn-based multiplayer game, yet it wasnt included. This would have especially been a nice addition considering this game is mostly an upgrade of an old NES game, and could have used more extras. Lastly, the game has a decent amount of strategy and action, but only in small quantities. It suffers from trying to be the "Jack of all trades" and leaving you with only a couple simplistic features that could have been deeper.
If you can find this game at the rental store, maybe give that a go. I would say rent before you buy if you can because this type of title doesnt mesh with everyones tastes. Perhaps you can find a healthy gaming experience that I couldnt while playing. At least you can now say you know what to expect before picking the title up at the store. I hope this helped.
Jason Nuyens