Stronghold Reviews

[General Ludd]

Thanks for the links... not easy finding sites for the game, since it has such a common name.


One other small complaint I have is that there isn't a very great selection of stand alone missions that come along with the game. But the map editor is really easy to use, so that makes up for it. Infact... I've almost finished my first map already, just need to add the triggers for enemy invasions.

[November Adam]

nice map... should be fun to defend with the rivers there. How does the enemy cross rivers? Bridges only?

[SerapisIV]

Well here' the first mag review I could find:

PC.IGN - Stronghold Review

[Grumbold]

Duplicated from the Stronghold Demo thread:


I have played the full game and found it entertaining but not one to long hold my attention. I'm a fan of strategy and accuracy over real time arcade stuff. This is very much a castle-based RTS, not a real attempt at historical siege warfare. The enemy can be battering your western gates while you are instantly building castle towers and walls in the east outside the 'no build allowed near a fight' zone. Random events like fires are instant holocausts. One fire arrow can set a whole area alight like a napalm bomb, including several people who will run around igniting anything else they touch. Bucket brigades are far too slow to combat fire spread (and half the time the peasants get burned instead because they walk into fires rather than around them!

The AI is very stupid at times. Build a castle so that it has an open gap in one corner and they will march through hailstorms of arrows to get to it rather than scale the nearest wall to reach the archers on the battlements. The difficulty level comes from the limited building time you get between enemy waves, not their skill. After 12 episodes of the military campaign I can say each map is developed with one particular strategy in mind and there has as yet been no opportunity to use the more imaginative types of troops or castle parts. Just walls, towers, archers and pikes. Shoot the enemy until they run away then rebuild any farms they torched. Repeat. The economic campaign is largely the same except the enemy waves are smaller and the victory comes from producing goods, not surviving an end of level attack.

The PvP attacks may turn out to be fun for RTS fans. The napalm arrows killed that for me instantly since they are deadlier than siege machines and utterly ahistorical.