Hood: Outlaws and Legends Review

Hood: Outlaws & Legends is a dynamite concept.  Team up with 3 other players in a third person stealth game to do a medieval heist, trying to get past the AI unawares, while a further 4 other players also attempt the same thing.

In theory, the team will skulk through the shadows, slitting throats, spotting enemies, and putting crossbow bolts through heads. The theory seems solid, but the reality is disheartening.

The backstory for all the skulking and stabbing is unclear. Although the character classes are based on Robin Hood legend, that’s about as far as backstory goes. Loot must be collected to unlock perks, upgrade the player’s hideout, and unlock new character and weapon skins and that is more important than story. For an entirely multiplayer focused this seems perfectly fine for me, as the compulsion to keep going is fuelled by the gameplay.

The premise on each of the 5 starting maps is pretty straightforward. The team first tries to pickpocket a key from an indestructible sheriff to use in a vault which is found in one of the random pre-set places.  Inside the vault you find a chest which you then carry to a winch to extract to safety. The scenarios vary from a wooden fort surrounded by marshes to abbeys and stone keeps built over waterways, all with multiple routes and points of access.

Each of the 4 characters plays very differently and fulfils different roles – there is Robin the archer with explosive arrows, John with his ability to lift portcullises and powerful hammer, Tooke who is a healer/tank combination that is able to regenerate abilities quicker, and Marianne who can turn invisible and is particularly good at catching people unawares with some good stabbing.

Avoiding the AI guard’s attention means that players can move around the map without closing off pathways, but also has the added bonus that they aren’t marked for all enemy players to see. A good run is done quietly, and a good team will be able to get the treasure chest to the winch almost completely undetected, or undeterred by the opposition.

Except the game is consistently nothing like that, and many of the game’s mechanics and rewards actively discourage approaching the game like that.

More frequently stealth is all but abandoned within the first 2 minutes of play and the game devolves into frantic melee. This is because of what the game incentivises versus what it punishes. At the end of a heist the game awards XP to the first player to grab the key, to open the vault and deposit the chest on the winch worth 500 each. This encourages greedy play and people to rush forward eager for the extra experience regardless of a win. Further to that, I’ve seen plenty of aggressive players ignore the AI in favour of pushing past them. This is exacerbated by the fact that no matter how quiet a team has been, once the chest is ready for extraction they will be attacked by constantly spawning AI, and the opposing team will know the exact location. Then the game becomes reliant on the melee combat which is a less refined version of For Honor.

There is also a very short respawn time on death, no more than 15 seconds, which leads to skilled players being less concerned with death as long as they can take out 2 or more of the opposing team. Again, this doesn’t encourage thoughtful stealth and instead produces frenzied brawling. It is especially galling when a well-planned execution is simply undone by a high-powered berserker with a hammer.

It is a confusing situation to be in when the game clearly tells the player it wants to be one thing, but everything, in practice, screams at the player to do otherwise.

This is not the only problem the game has either. Game wait times are long because the main heists require 8 players to start. It is possible to play against AI only with just 4 players but players gain no gold or XP, meaning that there is not much long-term appeal to the ‘training’ option. Having Crossplay among the consoles and PC helps with long wait times, but there is no way to invite or join friends on other platforms. This situation found me pairing up with Randoms, who were either unwilling or unable to talk. Although the game has a fairly useful contextual ping system, it is not as effective as playing among friends.

That is not to say the game is without charms, there are moments of delight in stabbing a careless player in the back, or smoke bombing a sheriff in time to run off and hide, having a Tooke player use his heal at just the right time and save a beleaguered team has its magic, it is just that those moments of magic are spread over periods of frustration.  

Conclusion

Hood: Outlaws & Legends is a great idea in desperate need of more revisions – it is stealth game in which devolving into frenzied fracas is too easy to slip into.  

This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox One console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.