I'll be honest, when I looked at the trailers and description of Robin Hood - Sherwood Builders, I didn't really think it's going to be anything that can hook me in, but boy was I wrong. The game is rough in a lot of places but the gameplay loop is so fun that you can just put the issues aside and not really focus on them. There are some things that need fixing as soon as possible and voice acting is straight up atrocious, put considering this is developers first game, I'm really exited to see what they're going to do next with this game.

Robin Hood - Sherwood Builders is a mix between a survival game, an adventure RPG and a colony sim/city builder. The survival part is basically keeping your food and drink bar full and gathering different ores and logs to craft different things like armor, weapons, buildings, crafting stations etc. The city builder/colony sim part of the game is putting down houses and different buildings like lumber mills or farms to keep your population well fed and happy. And the biggest part of this game is the adventure RPG part, where you have a huge map spanning four zones with lots of things to do and find. You have side-quests, open world events like saving a villager from being hanged, killing a tax collector, stopping a royal carriage and robbing it. There are also ruins you can find on the map which, when you solve a puzzle, gives you some loot. I've had tons of fun just running around the map finding everything I can do in a certain zone before I proceed with the main quest.

Now, talking about the main quest, most of it is kind of lazy. You basically have to get 40% reputation in a zone to be able to finish the story in it and proceed, which pushes you to do a lot of the side content, which I personally didn't have a problem with, but by the time I started doing the 4th zone I was feeling burned out and I just wanted to finish the story fast, but I still had to grind enemy camps and do side quests before I could even talk to the main quest giver. 

The enemy AI also needs some work, I've used only a bow as my weapon because you could easily walk around enemies and keep shooting them until they're dead, even the bosses were simple because you can just keep walking backwards and shooting arrows. They do have some features to the enemies where they try to outsmart you but it mostly doesn't work, like if you kill someone by a headshot the enemy next to him will raise his shield to protect his head, or sometimes the archers in the back are going to dodge do the side when they see you shooting them. One thing that really suprised me was when there was an enemy with a long shield, I shot his leg and he started limping and let his guard down, which is an amazing touch and I don't really remember seeing games do this, and it wasn't just for people with shields, you can shoot anyone in the legs and that's going to make them easier to defeat. Just like shooting enemies with shield in the arm they're holding them in which can make them drop it. 

Also, one of the weird things that the developers didn't add is simple facial animations. Whenever you talk to someone they just have a blank stare and not even their mouths are opening, even the normal dialogue is weird because you have to keep pressing continue and choosing your responses, but in 99% of cases you only have one response. It could've been amazing if we could actually choose our responses and not always be overly nice to people, but that might just be me wanting to play a bad character to see what happens.

Overall, Robin Hood - Sherwood Builders really feels like an early access title, but beneath all the problems there's a really fun game here one you can sink hours into. I really hope the developers fix some issues and I really want them to expand on this idea they've created with this game.

7/10