Robin Hood: Sherwood Builders Gives Players A Beautiful, Immersive World With Inconsistent Gameplay
Robin Hood: Sherwood Builders is an open world survival game. It’s an immersive RPG where players will need to craft buildings and manage workers before they can level up skills, upgrade weapons, etc. Sherwood is a beautiful environment to explore with events Robin can stumble across. Players will need to liberate four regions from clashing warlords. Doing so feels like the story is unfolding with each action despite being well tread ground.
Players can expect to grind a lot to build a thriving village. During all this grinding, expect to replace your weapons. A lot. It borders on the line of being a repair simulator at times. Navigating the inventory feels like a chore on top of this. While frustrating it doesn’t quite break immersion. The challenge doesn’t come off as intentionally unfair. Of course a bow might break while hunting or taking on an enemy. It’s inconvenient but serves to make players feel like they are an outlaw trying to survive in the woods.
Gameplay does not feel streamlined on the controller when it comes to precise movements. Using Robin’s signature bow can feel unwieldy unless using the mouse. Enemies aren’t fast though they can dodge attacks. This slow reaction time can add a sluggish feeling to fights. Some players may find that navigating all the tutorial menus and inventory is cumbersome as well. Switching to mouse and keyboard at times, or completely, is mostly seamless.
Robin Hood: Sherwood Builders really shines in its skill tree. It’s a sprawling web that can create the best Robin for each play style. Sherwood is a spacious area itself. The busy work of running back and forth gathering resources, pays off as Robin’s abilities make him superhero-like. Players also grow a sizable enough village that feels as alive as it can. The issue here is fast travel can make this task slightly less time consuming but comes at risk of a crash. This can also happen frequently when trying to save the game. It isn’t every time, and one player may encounter this less often than another. It does happen often enough to keep in the back of your mind.
Fans of the survival genre will find a lot they enjoy. There are huge lulls outside of combat that might be hard for new players to get through. Robin Hood: Builders of Sherwood does have its own small twists on the story and characters with quirky or tough personalities. If players can get past the text-to-speech voices for NPCs. Builders of Sherwood doesn’t break any new ground, but it just might be good enough for die-hard Robin Hood fans who like to see the Sheriff of Nottingham lose.
