I am a huge fan of Defender of the Crown and went nuts for the GBA version since it was such a perfect copy of the original NES version that I loved so much. Cinemaware, the company that originally released this game, decided to put out this Digitally Remastered version for Windows. While I thought it might be cool to play it on my PC, the result was not what I expected. This game was designed to be played on a console system and it all turned out to be a mediocre console port to the PC. It is still basically the same game, but somehow worse.

Defender of the Crown is sort of a cult classic for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. The game has some arcade-like aspects to it, but mostly it is played like the board game Risk. It is set during medieval times and you must fight to unite England under one rule. You play on a map that is divided into about sixteen different sections with five main castles. Your job is to build armies and conquer the territories and castles and eventually take control of the whole island.

When you attack a territory, there is no battle sequence or anything like that. To keep things simple, you only have four choices for how to fight. You can tell your men to stand and fight, use flank attacks, deliver a ferocious attack, or just retreat. Depending on the balance of your army between soldiers, knights, and catapults versus the opposing army, you can switch back and forth between those options. Whether you have twenty or two hundred soldiers, the battles go by pretty quick. I liked that the game doesn't get bogged down in repetitive fighting like similar games do. When you attack a castle, there is a short castle siege sequence where you must use a catapult to knock down a section of the enemy castle wall, then you launch in fire and disease to weaken their army before the actual battle.

In between the fighting and pillaging, there are several mini-games that break the monotony. The main one is jousting, where you can compete for fame or land. This is played by using your mouse to aim the joust while your horse gallops along and shakes everything. On the console, it is difficult but fun and takes a while to master. It just isn't the same to use the mouse and it doesn't look right. On the console, the joust moves steadily like a big heavy wooden pole would. With the mouse, it spins and flies all around.

You can also take part in castle raids, which are frustratingly difficult. They play like a simplistic sidescroller where you must duel a few guys to save a princess. Your fighter doesn't respond to every command and it makes it tough and not fun. I never was able to master the swordplay aspect of this game on any platform.

The graphics look pretty good here and are obviously just enhanced versions of the originals. In full color on the PC, they mostly appear like hand drawn cartoons and seem a little dated. Some nice animation is thrown in where it wasn't before on the console version, but it doesn't add much to the game. Honestly, I liked the GBA graphics better.

The sound is good and bad. The music sounds more like real music than the computer generated tunes from before, so that was a nice surprise. The sound effects in game are pretty good but can be repetitive. The worst part is in the menu system where you get a whoosh sound every time your mouse goes over an option. Considering that you use the menu for every single turn, that whoosh gets old quick.

In short, I was disappointed with the PC port of Defender of the Crown. What added bonus you get with better graphics and sound was cancelled out by the interface. I'd rather play it on the GBA.


Recommended: No