My subject today is a remade, modernized version of a game that was reportedly popular nearly a decade before I was even born, which I’m sure means I’m more than qualified to evaluate it. What we’ve got here is Defender of the Crown: The Legend Returns, developed by Black Tower Basement and published by Nordcurrent Labs. Defender of the Crown: The Legend Returns is a historical grand strategy game set in the year 1149 in what we now know as England. The Saxon king has just died, and to add to the mystery, the crown itself has also disappeared.

In its main campaign, you play as your choice of four Saxon knights who were all close, trusted allies of the king before his demise. As it happens, all the playable characters are also allied with Robin Hood (yes, that one), who pledges to aid you on a maximum of three occasions as you attempt to wrest control of all of England. You start in a state of very fragile peace with all the other notable Saxon knights you did not choose to play as, and in a state of open hostility with five notorious Norman lords.

That peace with the other Saxons probably won’t last long at all, however, and then you’ll have to fight them for control of England as well as the Normans. You can basically break the truce between yourself and any of the other Saxons if they so much as hear from an unreliable witness that you may have looked at them funny one time several years ago. That is to say, you might as well account for that very early on. You don’t necessarily have to personally eliminate every enemy lord in order to win, so long as you’re the last one standing.

That means you have the option of biding your time, building your defenses, and letting the other enemy lords exhaust themselves fighting each other. With any luck, at least a couple of enemies will be knocked out of the game this way. Then, once you think the time is right, you can turn your attention (and your armies) to whoever remains. There are three common attributes (called “talents”) among all four playable characters: leadership, jousting, and swordplay. Respectively, your character’s level in these stats affects your army’s effectiveness in battle, your performance in jousting tournaments, and your skill in battle during raids.

Based on those attributes, I decided to play as Wilfred of Ivanhoe in my first campaign, since he’s the “all-rounder” of the four. That turned out to be a pretty smart choice since I had no idea what I was getting into. Every so often, a maiden will be kidnapped by one of the enemy lords. The first time this happens, if you rescue the kidnapped maiden, you’ll marry her and be granted control of her homeland. These rescue attempts, as well as raiding enemy castles rather than besieging them, is where your character’s swordplay stat will be really important.

Somehow, it took me a good while to realize continuing to rescue maidens after I had already married one probably wasn’t worth the effort. I eventually began ignoring these opportunities when my messengers brought them to my attention. Nevertheless, I successfully completed so many rescue missions during my first campaign that I actually said aloud: “Henceforth, I shall be known throughout all of England as Wilfred of Ivanhoe, savior of maidens and stabber of men!” I honestly got a huge kick out of that, and Defender of the Crown: The Legend Returns won a major (albeit subjective) point in my favor because of it.

To attempt a rescue mission, you’ll personally sneak into the castle holding the kidnapped lady and fight off several enemy guards in one-on-one sword fights. If you slay all the guards, you’ll successfully rescue the maiden and escape. If you fall in battle, however, you’ll lose the opportunity. You can rescue a maiden every time one gets kidnapped, but you can only marry the first one you save. You can also kidnap the wives of enemy lords, and they can do the same to you. That was how a badly weakened enemy kept annoying me until I could finally finish him.

Defender of the Crown: The Legend Returns features three gameplay modes: Retro mode, Classic mode, and the brand-new Kingdom mode. Retro mode is basically a port of the original Amiga version of Defender of the Crown from 1986, unchanged aside from any adjustments needed to get it running properly on modern hardware. Classic mode is a further modernized version with quite a few quality-of-life upgrades added in. Kingdom mode is an all-new Roguelite mode that focuses on procedural generation and the outcomes of dice rolls rather than traditional strategy. I’ve mainly stuck to Classic mode and Kingdom mode thus far.

Retro mode was a bit too, well, retro for me to really wrap my head around it. Thankfully, I didn’t have that issue with either of the other modes. It took me a little while to get my bearings in classic mode, but I really enjoy its core gameplay loop. In my experience, Defender of the Crown is easy enough to learn once you spend a bit of time with it. From there, you’ll start figuring out how to expand your preferred strategies. Suddenly realizing I was thinking more and more strategically without feeling forced to do so has been great.

My only complaint about the core gameplay loop concerns besieging enemy castles. Your main goal during a siege is to break one of the castle’s walls, after which you can hopefully thin the ranks of soldiers defending it before a full-on battle begins. You’re supposed to fire boulders from your catapults at clearly visible weak points in castle walls. I consistently had a lot of trouble doing so because I couldn’t really judge how far back I needed to aim to hit those weak points. I can’t really pinpoint exactly why I have so much trouble with that, unfortunately.

It doesn’t help that you have to hit those weak points dead-on for your boulders to have any effect at all. If you hit the wall even a pixel above or below the weak point, you just wasted a shot. You’re limited to six shots during a siege, one shot per day over the course of six in-game days. You can storm the castle and begin battle at any point during a siege, but you can make that easier on your forces if you successfully use the Greek fire and plague ammo you can shoot from your catapult.

While I wouldn’t have expected to see anything like the new Kingdom mode added to a reimagining of Defender of the Crown, I’m very impressed with everything the new mode has to offer. Dealing solely with dice rolls rather than conventional strategy puts an enjoyable twist on much of what you’ll find in the core gameplay loop within the other two modes. Even though I’m not exactly a master strategist (despite my love of the Civilization franchise), I would gladly recommend Defender of the Crown: The Legend Returns to nearly any fan of this genre and/or any earlier versions of Defender of the Crown.

A PC review copy of Defender of the Crown: The Legend Returns was provided by Nordcurrent Labs for this review.

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Defender of the Crown: The Legend Returns

$19.99

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Retro mode will likely appeal to older fans of the series and its remakes.
• Classic mode is modernized just enough to breathe new life into the original game.
• Mostly enjoyable and intuitive core gameplay loop.
• Kingdom mode adds enjoyable twists to the original gameplay loop.

Cons

• Certain parts of gameplay, like aiming and firing catapults, may be accessibility concerns for some players.