The game revolves around the death of the king of England, and the ensuing conflicts that occurred as clans from all over the country fought to decide who would be crowned the new king. As the leader of one of the several factions in the game, it is up to you to conquer as much territory as possible and become the new ruler.

The fact that the game is over a decade old does not detract from the fun. Its basic structure makes it simple yet addicting to get into. The meat of the game is focused on managing your army and deciding whether you want to take over a hostile territory or stay close to home and build up your forces more. With each turn, you’ll receive a sum of gold, depending on how many territories you have captured. This gold can be used to support your army by hiring more units to battle for you.

Your gold can also be used to run jousting tournaments. Here you will have several of your best jousters do battle with the other warring clans in the game. These tournaments - which you’ll also be invited to - can cause you to gain fame (which raises your leadership skills) or acquire land from your enemies. At the start of each tournament, you’ll pick the character that you want to use and then the view will switch to a first-person perspective of you with lance in hand charging towards your opponent. The goal is to either break your opponent’s lance to score a point or to knock him off his steed. If you do happen to knock him down, the game will switch to side view of you and your opponent with maces in hand, where you will beat each other to a pulp until one of you falls.

As far as graphics go, don’t expect anything too impressive. In fact, if you’ve played the first versions of Defender of the Crown, you won’t notice much of a difference at all, neither visually nor aurally. Regardless, looks really don’t matter all that much in this game - and quite frankly, for a 15-year-old game, it looks better than some other GBA games on the market.

In fact, the only real fault here is the fact that the game is a bare-bones port. It would’ve been great if Crawfish were to add a couple of more scenarios, or include some multiplayer support via link cable. This was definitely made for playing against friends, and it’s a shame that the opportunity was wasted.

Nevertheless, Defender of the Crown is a fine addition to any strategy gamer’s library. While many of the modern games, such as Advance Wars, are better games, the mere fact that a straight port of a 15-year-old game can still compare to the newest titles on the market is a testament to the thoughtful design that Cinemaware created when the game first came out.

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