This was a must purchase for myself when it was launched due to the time era the game is based in. I am much more partial to swinging a sword than firing a gun in my real time strategy games. This game looked to me on the shelves as a well put together and more advanced version of the already popular Warcraft and Command and Conquer series. I had read a couple of magazines reviews on this game before my purchase and it was given some pretty high marks. That was all I needed in order to bring this game home and spend time building my own castle.
The game is an RTS (real time strategy) style game with a little of the "sims" style tossed into it. If you play for just strictly the military portion of the game you will feel like you are playing a more complex version of Warcraft or Command and Conquer. If you go for the economic side and just patiently build things you will find yourself in a Sims world watching your castle slowly go up. It will depend on your style of game play on what kind of game you will think this is.
Game Play
At the beginning you are given just three choices of game play. Military campaign, economic campaign, or free build. These are self explanatory. In the military side of things you will be building your castle with the idea of flat out defending it from pesky raiders and bandits. Even wolves and other non-human creatures. On the economic side, you will need to build a finely tuned castle running on all cylinders. You will encounter some battle in these scenarios but, nothing compared to the military campaigns. The free build option one of the best features to the game and is the best way to learn how the game works. You are able to build a castle from scratch with no worries of any kind of battle. This is where the new style of sim games are coming out with a free build mode to just let you enjoy the actual game and how it looks to have something actually completed. All though this is a RTS style game, in this mode you will think of the game as a sim game all the way.
The game play idea itself is very simple. You build a stronghold, get your peasants some work, feed them well, then of course get some of them armed. This is much easier said then done. When your game starts you are shown a map for that particular mission. It is up to you to decide where to place your stronghold on the map. These is also not an easy task as there is never more than one to two good choices on each map. After trial by error you will be able to see these good spots easier. Once your stronghold is up you need to build some wood sheds to cut down the rain forests (no worries, they plant trees as they go) so you can build more buildings and get yourself some food. The food can be in a variety of ways to wheat and apple fields, milk, hunting for meat, bread, and more. They seemed to have spent a little to much time on developing all the many ways to get food and not enough time on some other aspects of the game. As you progress in the game more options (buildings) will become available to you. Such as churches, mines, military buildings, scenery objects, and more. The economic campaigns are where you should start playing the game in the beginning.
The military aspect of the game play is where I had the most gripe. This was also what I was looking foreword to the most when I purchased the game. You have very little control over your own troops and when a good size battle begins you lose even that much control. The computer AL is just not all there. All though you may laugh at what the bandits do, you will not laugh when they take your stronghold apart in the matter of minutes. These mindless bandits may be rather on the slow side, they make up for it in brute strength. The over all military campaign is extremely difficult but, if you stay with it long enough you will find something that works best with your style of play. Avoid the military side of things until you get a good grasp of the game in the economic campaigns.
Overall, the game play is not the easiest thing to master but, with some playing you will find it to be not so difficult. I would have set things up in your tool bars a little different but, I am not a person that makes money at it. With time and effort you should find the game to be more enjoyable as you are allowed to do more things. You will just need the patience is all.
Graphics
The all around graphics are rather good. There are some high and low points here. The character detail in great. Each of your peasants are well detailed depending on the job they have. From the full armored swordsman riding on the back of a horse to the leather wearing hunter with his bow. The animations of each character is also very good. They spent a lot of time here making the realism of the game very well done. Your characters move very realistically as they go along their daily life, even though it is repetitive. But, seeing a drunk leaving a tavern (that you built) stumbling around you castle inner-walls shows they took a lot of time with the character animations of the game. You will also not need a great 3D card to run this game.
The low point here is the landscape. Your castle will not look to bad but, I feel they could have done a little better with some minor graphic tweaks. Maybe adding more windows or places your peasants could go. The grass and mining fields look pretty bad. The only good feature to the actual landscape are the trees. They flow with the wind and look real. This also goes for your orchids. All in all, the animations are great but, the overall graphics combined could have been done a little better in my book.
Sound
The sounds in the game are also good. Each character class has his/her own speech and you can hear them speaking very clearly. The battle sounds are not great but, are also not all that bad. The sounds of the bows firing their arrows to the swords hitting armor are done rather well. The voices throughout the game are also done well. As they have the accent to remind you what era you are in. The in-game music, well, as for all RTS and "Sim" games you will be turning it off and listening to your stereo or T.V. The music is great and will put you in a medieval frame of mind but, there is no selections so it is very repetitive. I'm still waiting for a game to come out that has a feature for you to add your own in-game music as EA Sports NHL 2001 did.
Multi-player
There is, of course, a multi-player part of the game. You can build your own maps and scenarios in single player and multi-player. This may be the only reason you will want to keep the game after you have completed it. Again, the maps are rather small so you wont have a great deal of building at your hands. I played with making my own map for a while and found the map making part very easy. The scenario part was a different story. After a few hours I finally got some bandits attacking but, nothing like I wanted. I was lost and gave it up. I am not a hard core map building type of player though. I have played here some and in other games such as Starcraft and Warcraft
Reply Value
The reply is where the game hurts the most. The campaign part of the game will keep you interested enough to probably want to try and finish the game. Once you complete this though, you are pretty much done. All though there is a free build mode in the game, the maps are way to small to actually build a mighty kingdom. There are different map sizes but, none of which will keep a serious player involved for long.
Conclusion
I would rate this game three and a half stars if I could. This RTS combined with "Sim" style game is well put together and thought out. I feel they may have just rushed it a little not adding enough options. I have said many of times in my past reviews I am a gamer that loves options and Stronghold just doesn't have enough. I think any RTS or "Sim" style gamer will enjoy this game enough to make a cheap purchase but, save your box so you can trade it in when you are finished. You will want to do this.
I recommend this game to only die hard "Real Time Strategy" or "Sim" style gamers.
SRONGHOLD is a castle simulator where your job is to create the best castle you can and then defend it against horrifying hordes. You build and manage...More at eBay
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