It is the Middle Ages, the King of England is dead and different factions are fighting over control of territories. To make matters worse, the king's crown has disappeared.

The player assumes the role of a Saxon and tries to fight off the Norman hordes and wrestle for control of England. Eventually, the player must fight for control of all territories, even those controlled by other Saxons. The player must amass armies and fight for control of opponents' castles. The player may engage enemy armies in battle, loot or lay siege to opposing castles. From time to time the player may attempt to rescue a damsel in distress and can appeal for help from the mythical bandit Robin Hood.


The game's strategy boils down to a war of attrition as the player tries to amass larger armies than his opponents and manages to attack their territories at the right time.

The high-quality graphics made the game a blockbuster; never before had such detailed, colorful and realistic graphics been seen on a home computer. The art direction by James D. Sachs set the game apart. Retrospectively, it can be said that the quality of graphics in the game is far from the highest that Amiga games later reached, but by 1986 standards, the results were admirable. The music by Jim Cuomo is also notable - though it failed to utilize the capabilities of Amiga's sound chip, since the game did not feature digitized sound effects or instrument samples. Some reviewers complained about the "shallowness" of the game: the game could be finished in a very short time and after that there was nothing new to see. This problem was partially overcome with later conversions of the game.

An excerpt from Brian Bagnall's On the Edge: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore* captures the effect that seeing the game for the first time had on users: