We thus come to Appeal Studios’ Gangs of Sherwood, a co-op beat ’em up action title based on Robin Hood. The flashy art style and fidelity offer their own charm, and the combat has some responsiveness to it. However, it quickly devolves into a repetitive, awkward mess that seemingly forgoes the appeal of its source material in favor of some medieval-meets-sci-fi fantasy dive into the bizarre with co-op.

"The story jumps all over the place, and the lack of context doesn’t help. Yes, we know Robin Hood, but who exactly is this quip-spouting version? How did we even end up where we are?"

You start with choosing a character – Robin Hood, Marian, Friar Tuck or Little John – and rescue Alan-a-Dale, a shady jester. After battling some of the Sheriff’s goons and returning to the hideout, you embark on a mission to help the people of England, forced to pay absurd taxes, and…around this point, I guess Nottingham is under attack? The story jumps all over the place, and the lack of context doesn’t help. Yes, we know Robin Hood, but who exactly is this quip-spouting version? How did we even end up where we are?

Other characters get a bit more backstory as you go along – Marian is rebelling against her father and his despotic policies while battling her extended family. Little John, who usually acts as Robin Hood’s second-in-command, has a past with the Sheriff and was involved in the king’s army or something. Again, it’s very confusing – you’ll receive these bits of lore during stages for each character, but context matters because this isn’t the same world of Robin Hood that most would be aware of. It’s simply a backdrop for retelling this awkward narrative with iffy exchanges.

The kingdom has acquired the power of the Philosopher’s Stones, seemingly leading to some technological revolution. Why are they still collecting taxes when said stones could produce gold? Aside from “That’s how it was in the original story,” your guess is as good as mine. As a result, its forces are wandering around in powered armor; mini-guns and laser sights are abundant. There are even futuristic drop ships for soldiers. Eventually, the story introduces a massive region-destroying cannon and then you battle a four-legged battle tank with gatling guns piloted by the Act’s quickly forgotten villain.

"Most foes are regular pushovers on Normal difficulty. Heroic difficulty ups things a bit, but not in terms of challenge – enemies deal more damage while having more health."

While seemingly interesting, you’re thrown into these trials with little to no idea why. It’s absurdist, but without a solid narrative and well-rounded characters, ultimately lacks substance. The stages are linear and break up the action with some grappling and mild exploration – being able to take different routes with John and Tuck due to their heavy attacks is a nice touch. There are also some Wanted posters to take down and maybe a route or two that leads to a chest.

However, they ultimately fall into the same pattern of running to a location, beating down many of the same kinds of foes – with mid-bosses becoming Elites later – and moving on. There are some objectives to mix things up, like defeating enemies within the time limit or escorting a payload, which does very little to ease the monotony and offer anything that hasn’t been done better in other games.

It also doesn’t help that mid-boss and boss designs are full of some of the most annoying mechanics, like armor that prevents them from being staggered or rapid-firing guns that stun lock you in place, leading to death. Most foes are regular pushovers on Normal difficulty. Heroic difficulty ups things a bit, but not in terms of challenge – enemies deal more damage while having more health. The AI could also use more polish. At times, an Elite shield-bearing foe will stand around, taking ranged attacks and not responding until they’re dead.

Many would probably pick up Gangs of Sherwood to bash things in co-op and ignore the story. To its credit, each character does have a unique play style. Everyone gets a Light Attack and Heavy Attack, while some can aim projectiles like Marian and Robin. Marian’s playstyle involves thrust attacks and stacking magnetic daggers on enemies, which can be activated with her retractable chain sword to deal burst damage.

"Unfortunately, despite the flashiness of it all, combat ultimately gets repetitive, and the lack of interesting enemies only exacerbates the issue."

Meanwhile, Little John uses a gauntlet, and you can hold down light attacks to charge it up. Release it at the right time to strike enemies, and you’ll accumulate heat, increasing damage and allowing for unleashing a powerful AoE with his heavy attack. Upon earning gold from missions, you can return to base and invest in new skills for each character.

Unfortunately, despite the flashiness of it all, combat ultimately gets repetitive, and the lack of interesting enemies only exacerbates the issue. Unleashing a rising flaming uppercut or grappling foes in the air as Marian feels good, but there’s no shake-up to the mechanics or fresh challenges. What you see is what you get, and it gets mighty old, mighty quick.

There are also some baffling design choices, particularly with checkpoints. All the gold gathered during a mission is spent at a checkpoint to level up your gang and increase your health. You better hope there’s enough or no free heal.

Gold is also spent on revives whenever you’re downed, with different amounts required for certain HP thresholds. Playing on the toughest difficulty and want to save the gold for revives, say, at the boss? You can’t, as it’s automatically withdrawn, so if you die without enough gold handy, that’s it.

"Gangs of Sherwood’s premise could have made for a run-of-the-mill but solid beat ’em up. Instead, it squanders its source material and falls short of a compelling gameplay experience."

You don’t even return to those checkpoints on death – it’s straight back to the start of the mission to run through it all over again. It also doesn’t help that the bonus gold for completing a mission on Heroic isn’t much higher than Normal difficulty. At least you get enough gold per mission to afford upgrades at a solid clip, for whatever that’s worth.

Not everything about Gangs of Sherwood is terrible. The aesthetic is distinct, and the environments are brimming with enough detail that you want to see what the next stage has to offer. The performance also is pretty decent while in combat, though that was while playing solo. I also liked the intros for main missions, presented as puppet theater with Alan-a-Dale as the narrator. Despite how odd his voiceovers felt when building up the Style meter, it didn’t feel out of place or outright annoying.

If you’re going in for some mindless button mashing with little regard for anything else, there are some hours to be had, though it’s far from offering the replay value of a Warhammer: Vermintide 2 or other co-op titles. While each stage feels well-paced enough, there aren’t that many missions overall.

Gangs of Sherwood’s premise could have made for a run-of-the-mill but solid beat ’em up. Instead, it squanders its source material and falls short of a compelling gameplay experience. Some may appreciate the style and snappiness of its combat but will quickly tire of the lack of variety and hamfisted narrative and setting.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

NOTE: This interview was conducted prior to the game’s launch.

Gangs of Sherwood’s blend of Robin Hood-inspired elements and a futuristic dystopian setting is a fascinating one. How did the game’s core concept first come about, and what were your primary sources of inspiration?

While Robin Hood as a character is well known, we were always fans of the whole cast of characters that tag along with him in his fight against the Sheriff of Nottingham. They’re all very different from each other and make for a naturally great cast of heroes for an action game! It took us a lot of research and iteration to nail down a technological setting that we were happy with and that felt unique. We didn’t want to be labeled as steampunk or any other classic technological trend. Ultimately our goal was for Gangs of Sherwood to be “its own thing” enough that ten years down the line, whether you liked the game or not, when looking at a screenshot you will immediately recognize GoS, that you have a memory of it!

Gangs of Sherwood is clearly placing a great deal of emphasis on co-op gameplay, but is it also a viable single-player experience for those looking to jump into it solo?

It is! But for the anecdote, we tried for a long time to match the solo and coop experience. In hindsight, I think that was a fool’s errand honestly. When we decided to embrace the fact that both experiences were going to be different, we started designing around that and the game is much better for it. Long story short, playing solo is certainly a different experience than going at it with your friends but I think it’s really an enjoyable one. It’s like having two games in one!

"Ultimately our goal was for Gangs of Sherwood to be “its own thing” enough that ten years down the line, whether you liked the game or not, when looking at a screenshot you will immediately recognize GoS, that you have a memory of it!"

What should players expect from the game in terms of enemy variety, especially where boss fights are concerned?

Gangs of Sherwood has several enemies split into three categories: smaller, elite units, and mini-bosses. Mini bosses are actually the Sheriff’s sons and Marian’s brothers. She’s on a quest to rid the world of her family members. We also have big bosses that punctuate the end of each narrative act. And there’s a fight against a giant machine!

"Gangs of Sherwood is designed to emphasize player expression through combat. Every upgrade you can unlock and equip either gives you new attacks or allows you to alter their behaviors."

What can you tell us about Gang of Sherwood’s progression and customization mechanics, and how much build variety they will enable?

A lot! Gangs of Sherwood is designed to emphasize player expression through combat. Every upgrade you can unlock and equip either gives you new attacks or allows you to alter their behaviors. For example, you can equip Robin with arrows that stick into the ground like mines. Another Shard 5essentially, pieces of equipment) make arrows rotate around Robin. Combine the two and voilà, you got yourself a rotating mine shield following you around.

Roughly how long will an average playthrough of the game be?

A single playthrough of the game in normal difficulty will last you between 6 and 10 hours depending on your skill. There are moves and moves-altering equipment to unlock for all heroes though!

There are also additional game modes and a super hard difficulty setting which I dare people to try and beat. Last but not least, there are also quite a few lore-related secrets to find.

Do you have any post-launch plans for the games in terms of additional content or new playable characters?

What I can say is that we have a ton of ideas and some of them are pretty wild! First things first though.. . we’re eager to see the audience’s response to the game and go from there.

What was behind the decision to not release Gangs of Sherwood as a cross-gen title? Do you have any plans to bring the game to additional platforms down the line?

I think my reply here will be fairly obvious. Supporting older platforms often means reducing the quality on the current-gen ones and it would have been undoable for a moderately sized team like ours. Plus, I feel that we are far along enough into the current gen life cycle to focus on it and take full advantage of the latest platforms.

"What I can say is that we have a ton of ideas and some of them are pretty wild! First things first though.. . we’re eager to see the audience’s response to the game and go from there."

How much of an impact on development do you think the differences between the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S’ GPUs, CPUs, and processors will have? Additionally, given its relatively weaker hardware, do you think the Xbox Series S will be able to hold up for the more graphically intensive games as this generation progresses?

As I mentioned, the game porting for each platform was done in-house by a single team so instead of digging in-depth into the intricacies of each platform we went for a more balanced approach. It is challenging in terms of time and resources to push each console to its limits to take advantage of the benefits they offer fully. We went to find a common ground to achieve the best balance between quality and performance and to provide a beautiful and enjoyable experience. While differences between platforms do exist and can be taken advantage of for exclusives or more targeted ports, both platforms remain neck and neck on most aspects, and we did not feel restricted by either of them. About the SSD, it is true that it is fast but users can swap it for another one, meaning you can’t rely 100% on that specific SSD being available.

The Xbox Series S requires to optimize the memory requirements of the game even more but this benefits all versions of the game!

What frame rate and resolution will the game target on the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S?

We’re targeting 2k resolution and 60fps on XSX and PS5, on XSS we went for 1080p and 60fps.

What are your thoughts on the Steam Deck? Do you have plans for any specific optimizations for the device?

Purely personal opinion, I think it rocks. However, at the moment we don’t have plans for specific optimizations for this device.

The trailer for Gangs of Sherwood features game director Andrea Steffano introducing the game. The gameplay itself lacks any outside narration, instead featuring the game’s own voice acting and sound effects.

The trailer gives us a glimpse at some of the unique gameplay styles, combat options, and special abilities for each of the playable characters. It shows off combat scenarios with various enemies, including a quick look at the opening moments of a boss fight.

As its name might imply, Gangs of Sherwood uses the same setting as the classic world of Robin Hood. It primarily focuses on heists, and puts players in the shoes of one of four different characters.

Gangs of Sherwood is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.

Developed by Appeal Studios, Gangs of Sherwood is a co-op action game for 1-4 players set in a reimagined take on the world of Robin Hood. With a primary focus on heists, it will see players stepping into the shoes of one of four different characters with unique abilities and skillsets and participate in heists as they steal from the rich and give to the poor.

It’s looking like quite an interesting take on the Robin Hood concept, and seems to be banking on some good idea in terms of not only its gameplay, but also the general tone and aesthetic of the experience. Check out the announcement teaser below.

Gangs of Sherwood will launch sometime in 2023 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.