Welcome to our review of Gangs of Sherwood, a game that excels in a promising story mixed with bad game mechanics.
REWRITE THE LEGEND! Gangs of Sherwood is a cooperative action game for 1 to 4 players set in the reimagined world of Robin Hood. Through the powers of the Philosopher’s Stones, the armies of the Sheriff of Nottingham are now stronger than ever, and the people of England have never been so oppressed…
Play as Robin, Marian, Friar Tuck or Little John, four heroes with unique, fully customizable gameplay styles, and set out in search of riches to plunder so you can give them to the poor. From Sherwood Forest to the Sheriff’s flying castle, the way forward is blocked by hordes of enemies. Combine the different heroes’ combat styles to foil the tyrant’s plans and fight performance-enhanced soldiers, formidable war machines and terrifying bosses that you meet as you advance.
Rob the rich to give to the poor as we all remember. Improve your reputation by saving innocent lives and giving your loot to the people in order to unlock new upgrades and even more devastating combos. Spend your remaining gold with merchants to upgrade your equipment and customize your skills to match your combat style. Land more and more impressive combos and cooperate with the other members of your team to achieve ultra-satisfying combos. Meet up with your friends in your hideout and determine the best strategy to adopt before setting off on missions, then put it to the test on the field of battle.
Gangs of Sherwood is possibly the biggest disappointment in a long while and yet, I can not say I found the storytelling and atmosphere bad. It really brings a fun reimagination of the famous story to us, with some steampunk influences and well, a set of puppetry animations that are really fun to watch. This is actually also how the game starts and if you are into these kinds of long shots, you are in for what is likely to be a real disappointment once you get to the actual fighting.
But before we start that aspect, Gangs of Sherwood is an action game with fighting as its main aspect, but there is also a rather big side to the game about exploration and let us call it parkour in a way, you use the surroundings to explore things and well, it has to be said, this part of the game, while boring in itself to search every nook and cranny, it is not unwelcome. In fact, once you look past the clear clues some of these hidden parts have, it becomes clear the main focus is obviously on the fighting aspect.
Armed with your weapon of choice or should I say armed according to your character selection and its benefits, you are engaging in physical combat and well, the cameras ruin everything. The automated aim is both a curse and a blessing, if you don’t bother, it keeps hitting the enemies and if you try to aim, you mostly miss. A very messed up approach to fighting. Most battles, even against the lowest of grunts, are mostly boring. You just can barely ever really make combination attacks across multiple enemies if they are not within arm’s length and well, it is just very much not fun.
Most of my time spent in the game, I was struggling hard with the controls and I am not even exaggerating, this game is annoying to play once you take the auto-aim issue into account, it distracts way more than I wanted and it turned me off from liking the game, despite the fun atmosphere it does have. But you play a game with its mechanics, not solely to enjoy the story. If the controls suck, so will everything else.
In conclusion, Gangs of Sherwood fails at capturing you once you start fighting, from weird decisions in the home base to just bad fighting mechanics, the good atmosphere can not save it from grace…
