Defender of the Crown

Defender of the Crown was a classic strategy game during the days when I was playing games on my old Atari ST (and if you think that is showing my age, just bear in mind that I can still recall playing games on the old Atari 2600!!).

In DotC, you were a Saxon lord during the time of Medieval England. The king had just kicked the bucket and the country was falling apart. In such troubled times, the country needs to rally under your banner. Unfortunately, some Norman lords disagree with you and foolishly believe that they would make a better king. In other words, time to build some armies and place old Blighty under your benevelent leadership (by killing everybody who disagrees with you!!).

In the old days, strategy games were very often a mix of strategy and arcade action. The strategy element was comprised of a map of England split into different counties that you would need to "liberate" from the Normans. Each turn, you could do various different stuff such as going on castle raids (to steal money!), trying to take over castles (so I could lob sodding great boulders at the castle walls!) or entering jousting tournaments (so I could get knocked off my horsey and land on my butt).

All told, I loved this game. It had great graphics (for the time) and simple strategy mixed in with some arcadey fun and I can't recall how many hours I poured into this game.

In February 2007, the game was finally remade under the title Defender of the Crown: Heroes Live Forever. I always wondered whether this game stood the test of time but didn't want to take the plunge at full price. Luckily for me, Stardock had the game on sale recently where it was only HKD31. At that price, I figured that even if the game was crap, it would still be worth it for the trip down memory lane.

Having played the game for a while now, I have to say that this game has aged surprisingly well - as long as you played the original!. By 2007 standards, the graphics and gameplay are so simplistic that you would hate this game unless you were digging the nostalgia element. The game is more of a repackaging rather than a remake. Having said that, it still seems incredibly fun to wander round England kicking ass.

At HKD31, this game was more than worth the price for the nostalgia alone.