#425: conquests of the longbow: the legend of robin hood
christy marx returns to bring england’s other legendary hero to sierra’s adventure game catalog
conquests of the longbow: the legend of robin hood (1991, PC/amiga, sierra online): you know, considering that sierra’s most famous adventure series is king’s quest, it’s probably not a surprise that the bulk of their other adventure titles would have medieval settings.
conquests of the longbow, the followup to sierra’s earlier title conquests of camelot: the search for the grail, heralds a return of christy marx to game development. marx, mostly known for her role in creating the 80s cartoon jem, clearly has a passion for english legend; the back of the box for conquests of camelot features a small rant about the devolution of king arthur into a cartoon character. while apparently no such diatribe was written for longbow, the passion for the character of robin hood and the culture and folklore surrounding him and the england of his day is no less evident. this is shown by the extensive research bibliography in the manual that, among other things, provides information on english heraldry, the local flora, and medieval poetry. marx has taken care to create a robin hood who is less stereotypical cartoon character and more of an actual person, something that feels more grounded than, say, the kevin costner film. the story is more or less the same one we’re all familiar with: robin hood and his merry men are a group of outlaws living under the tyranny of prince john, and they’re waiting for king richard the lionheart to return from the crusades. but in a twist from ivanhoe, they receive word that richard is actually imprisoned in austria, and must raise the ransom while simultaneously staying ahead of prince john and the sheriff of nottingham.
in general, longbow is a step ahead of camelot in terms of graphical quality, trading the EGA graphics for much nicer-looking VGA. the backgrounds are well animated, with gently flowing water and swirling fog. the animations in general are all top-notch, robin especially. even the UI is pretty fancy-looking. accompanying this is a pretty good sound system; the MT-32 music is gorgeous and, at times, very peaceful to listen to; like camelot before it, the music is probably the one thing that holds up the best.
gameplay-wise, longbow was part of a shift in sierra’s games from the use of a parser to a more straightforward point and click interface, using icons to do what the parser otherwise would have handled. this makes the game a little more easily accessible, though like camelot, the core of the game revolves around opaque puzzles and infuriating riddles. probably the most annoying ones involve anything to do with hand code, in which you must put your finger to your opposite hand to spell out letters. unfortunately for you, other than a brief flash of the code chart, you’re forced to rely either on memory or the manual to spell out words; worse still is that the game doesn’t inform you that to actually input the word, you have to tap the middle of your palm, rather than outside of the hand screen. i struggled to solve a particular riddle for a while because i didn’t know this; i had to do some serious googling to figure it out. this whole thing felt counter-intuitive; while i understand the habit of putting important information for puzzles into manuals (to deter piracy) no mention of this is actually made in game or manual as far as i can tell. even with the manual, however, some of these riddles require some serious thinking; if you’re not good at applying logic, you will probably find yourself cracked over the head repeatedly by evil monks, or turned into a tree.
it’s the typical adventure game bullshit that, in all honesty, is at least part of why the genre pretty much fell off a cliff towards the mid 90s. not helping it are the arcade sequences, which, while less infuriating than in camelot, aren’t much more fun. probably the worst one is the archery minigame; while the game provides you with a helpful flag to tell which way the wind blows, it doesn’t seem to make any difference on where your arrows go. it seems to be almost entirely random, and the game doesn’t explain to you how you’re supposed to load a new arrow either. you can skip all this by setting the game’s arcade difficulty slider to zero, but that feels unsatisfying too.
still, though, it’s worth playing with a guide at your side, because with christy marx at the helm the writing is top-notch, filling the game with realistic, charming characters, with some well-placed jokes (my favorite is if you try to talk to the ewe) and no less than four endings to pick from based on your actions in the game (acts of charity go a long way.) between this and the music, you’d almost be better served watching an LP of it on youtube and just skipping trying to wrangle the logic of this game if you don’t have the patience for this kind of adventure title.
i don’t think i’ll ever actually like traditional adventure games very much, at least not without a guide (but, in fairness, with a guide they tend to be very short.) still, conquests of the longbow is at least a good yarn, a clear labor of love dedicated to one of england’s most famous legendary figures.
