Hood: Outlaws & Legends: The Duel of Thieves put to the test

Hood

A hero in tights, a wildly clever archer, a robber king with a social streak - Robin Hood has already been seen in many forms and facets in the media world. Hood: Outlaws & Legends is now adding a new one: The title, which was released on May 10th for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series S / X, packs the medieval folklore about sheriffs and bandits into a gripping one Hunt-style PvPvE multiplayer fun: Showdown. We took a look at whether the legend of the Sherwood Forest looks good on this transformation.

Anyone who is now waiting for the standard outline of the plot to be demolished will look stupidly into the tube. There are in Hood: Outlaws & Legends namely not. In general, it can be said that for the fact that the title is based on sagas and stories, there is very little narrative in it. The developers of Sumo Digital only roughly go into the template, the name "Robin Hood" never comes up that explicitly, your opponent is simply "the sheriff" - Nottingham has been deliberately ignored. Nor did they allow themselves to be pinned down to a specific historical epoch or a realistic location.

Table of Contents

1 For the people! 2 hammer times! 3 Frustration as a feature 4 Give and take 5 Is that it? Recommended editorial content At this point you will find external content from [PLATTFORM]. To protect your personal data, external integrations are only displayed if you confirm this by clicking on "Load all external content": Load all external content I consent to external content being displayed to me. This means that personal data is transmitted to third-party platforms. Read more about our privacy policy . External content More on this in our data protection declaration.

For the people!

So you're just dealing with the state, which you should make a few gold pieces lighter in the well-known "Take it to the rich, give it to the poor" manner. This works according to a constant principle: In a multi-phase multiplayer match, you first have to steal a key from the guards, then use it to penetrate the treasury and finally to disappear from the map with the box full of gold.

How You shouldn't go ahead with the ax in the forest, because that has some disadvantages. First of all, you attract the attention of the patrols, who then call for reinforcements and cordon off the area. Much more annoying, however, is that you also alert the opposing team of four with your noise, which is on the map with you at the same time and is aiming for exactly the same goal. It is therefore an advantage to hide in the shadows and strike from behind, knock out opponents from a distance undetected or to get them out of the way with a well-planned distraction. That saves you resources, time and sometimes an unnecessary screen death.

The four playable characters are divided into different levels of difficulty by a three-star rating. Source: PC Games Occasionally there is no other way than to go on the offensive. Hood: Outlaws & Legends relies on a simple but satisfying combat system from the third-person perspective. You can burst heads with a targeted arrow shot, hit your opponents with heavy and light attacks, as well as block, counter and dodge - at least as long as your stamina bar is full. If you run out of breath, nothing works anymore, not even the escape. Despite the simple basic features, some tactics are definitely required in the disputes. The four characters that can be selected before each match provide additional depth, each with their equipment favoring different playing styles.

Hammertime!

Title hero Robin with his longbow, for example, is more of a sniper who targets opponents from a distance. Marianne gets up close and personal with a crossbow and a hidden blade in Assassin's Creed fashion. Opposite her is John, the classic tank who beats opponents with his hammer on the front line. And finally there is Tooke, who tends to go to medium distance with his flail and heals his team members with his rechargeable special ability. A really helpful move, because the game does not offer medipacks or automatic health regeneration. There are grenades, smoke bombs and other gadgets as well as minor gameplay differences: John can lift gates, for example, and thus clear an escape route even during a cordon, Robin, on the other hand, climbs up beams with rope arrows.

So it's good Consultation asked, not only when putting your team together, but also during an ongoing coup. This works best with friends via voice chat, of course, but in an emergency you can also use a simple ping system to mark objects or give commands. This becomes particularly important in the last part of the game: Here you have to use a winch to remove the chest from the map by working through a kind of progress bar. You should not only keep an eye on the sheriff, who is stamping over the map in unstoppable Mr. X manner, the opposing team can also become a real danger: That can just make you cold shortly before the end, the last few meters crank the winch itself and snatch the box away in front of your eyes. Quite a dirty number that has already caused some displeasure among players. We would therefore like the developers to have a little fairer win conditions. How about, for example, a separate progress bar for each team? That would cause far less frustration. In the last part of the game, chaos tends to break out. In order to get the opposing team out of the wind, every secret approach is often thrown overboard. Source: PC Games

Frustration as a feature

Although it will come up sooner or later anyway. Hood: Outlaws & Legends has a pretty steep learning curve: you get taught all the basic game mechanics in a tutorial, but you're still overwhelmed at the beginning. Especially since the game doesn't explain some aspects to you at all. The fact that you can crank the winch faster, for example, by holding down the shift key, is only revealed in the loading screen.

In addition, there is the sometimes fiddly controller control by the PC player when aiming have clear advantages and a few questionably balanced skills. For example, how do I avoid the damage caused by John's hammer? How do I prevent Marianne slamming me from behind again and again? You usually only learn that the hard way when opposing players use such tactics against you. After all: there is the possibility to train your skills in a separate PvE mode. However, games completed there do not bring you any advantages, XP or gold are only earned by completing raids.

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Hood: Outlaws & Legends - The classes of the PvPvE title

Hood: Outlaws & Legends is a new PvPvE title in the universe of Robin Hood. var lstExcludedArticleTicker = '1371965,1366249,1371191,1369749';

Give and take

Generosity doesn't really get rewarded in Hood: Outlaws & Legends. Whoever presses gold to the people, only gets a few skins for it. Source: PC Games What you do with it is up to you. After each match you can use the scales of justice to find out how much of your booty you put in your own pocket and how much you give to the people. However, this is less a moral than a purely tactical consideration. If you save money for the people, you can use it to level up your camp. This in turn unlocks new items. To be able to buy them, however, you need coal. So every now and then you should pick something up for yourself.

We would even go so far as to recommend that you bag all your money yourself! It's not particularly nice, but it makes the most sense from a playful point of view. The clothes and weapons that you receive as you progress in the camp only differ from one another in terms of appearance. It doesn't matter whether you swing a sandstone titanium or a granite goliath. The values ​​always remain the same. The look of your hiding place does not change either, whether it is on level 1 or level 10. The makers wasted a lot of potential here. Same goes for the few actual gameplay upgrades. At a tent you can choose from various talents that grant your characters bonuses - such as improved damage or increased equipment capacity. Your special ability cannot be changed, however, and character values ​​cannot be viewed or improved. We would have liked a little more options here.

Is that it?

There is a kind of story in Hood: Outlaws & Legends. You can only unlock a few snippets of the lorry in text form. Source: PC Games That can also be said about matchmaking: Currently there is only one mode with just five cards. In addition, it sometimes feels like it takes forever to find a meeting and then as a beginner you will also like to be thrown into a lobby with lots of full professionals. Also annoying: there is crossplay, but no cross-platform parties. Anyone who wants to play as a Konsolero with their friends on the PC is currently looking into the tube. At least we couldn't complain about connection problems. Otherwise everything went pretty clean technically. The graphics of the Unreal Engine 4 cut a decent figure, if you leave out the few reloading textures and wobbly animations. Apart from a funny incident where we could still hear the voice chat of our former teammates in the camp, we didn't encounter any major bugs The trick is missing. Compared to the competition, Hood: Outlaws & Legends offers nothing more than a solid framework. The first phase of the key claw seems a bit too short, stealth somehow unnecessary after a certain point and the world just like a chic backdrop. Why one cannot interact with surrounding objects such as chandeliers, powder kegs or fire bowls remains a mystery to us, as does the lack of any kind of statistics. You inevitably have to keep records of kills, victories or collected gold yourself - at least for the time being.

The makers have already announced a roadmap with fresh content for the future. Over several seasons, new maps, new modes and new heroes are to be submitted completely free of charge. It remains to be seen, however, whether the title can last that long or whether the players won't lose their long-term motivation beforehand. A few days after the release, some of them have already reached the maximum level of 100. There is now nothing left for these hardcore gamers to do other than complete daily challenges, collect trinkets, or complete legends by winning even more matches. Whether that's enough as a carrot in front of our noses to stay tuned is at least somewhat questionable.

The developers have already published a detailed roadmap for the first year after the launch. Source: Sumo Digital

My Opinion

By David Benke

Editor

[email protected] "A solid framework, but more has to come!" Hood: Outlaws & Legends does Whim. I really liked the mix of PvPvE game concept and Heist theme, the action is grippingly staged, the gameplay crisp. Nevertheless, there remains a bitter aftertaste, because developer Sumo Digital could have gotten so much more out of this! Characters and equipment could be further modified, maps and modes offer even more variety. Instead, you leave a lot of potential untapped. In part, the title almost feels like early access launch, which is only supplemented by really important features later on. So we can only hope that the players actually have the patience to wait for these announced game elements. Otherwise, the digital Sherwood Forest could very soon return to dead silence. Hood: Outlaws & Legends (PC) 6/10

Graphics - Sound - Multiplayer - Hood: Outlaws & Legends (PS4) 6/10

Graphics - Sound - Multiplayer - Pros & Cons Exciting PvPvE game concept Chic setting Four varied characters Crossplay controls freely adaptable Free post-launch content No cross-platform parties Matchmaking problems Only one mode and five cards Only a few customization options Long-term motivation questionable Do not explain game mechanics Unfair victory conditions More pros & cons ... Conclusion For the currently required 30 euros, Hood: Outlaws & Legends offers a lot of fun, but it could have been a lot more.