Stronghold's strongest feature is also its weakest - castle building.
Designing a castle and seeing if it can withstand a siege is a lot of fun.
However, Stronghold is more of a strategy game than a castle sim. Castles
can often be built into the corners of maps, reducing the resources needed to
construct a castle in half (only two walls need to be built) and making it a lot
easier to defend. Also, signposts are placed on the map informing the
player from which direction invasion will come. Since attacks are
scripted, once you've played a mission you'll know when and where you'll be attacked
and by how many forces. This is a huge advantage when designing your
defenses, and alleviates the need to plan for multiple contingencies when
building a castle. Finally, while there are several types of siege engines
available that will make short work of castle walls, it seems that anyone can
bring down a stone wall. If you allow enemy footsoldiers to stand at the
base of a wall and hack at it, it will come crashing down before too long.
The game's economic model is fairly simple, and it is not difficult at all to
keep your economy humming. This makes it easy to keep the peasants happy
as well, since providing them with large food rations seems to consistently buy
their loyalty. The game allows you to build gardens and statues to keep
the population happy, and even various torture devices to keep them in line, but
they do not seem to have much of an overall effect on things. Keeping
peasants fat is the best way to keep them happy.
The game's graphics are colorful and the map is alive with animations.
Herds of animals roam the countryside, rivers cascade over waterfalls, and trees
way in the breeze. Unfortunately, on the down side the game has a low
camera angle which makes it difficult to lay out castle walls. A player
can lay down what appears to be a solid wall, only to find attackers strolling
in at invisible gaps at corners or sloped hillsides. The game would
benefit greatly from a top-down viewing option as it is difficult to determine
when two wall sections are actually adjacent
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 68%.
Not altogether bad, but not that great either, Stronghold is best suited for
those with an interest in the subject matter or those looking for a
less-challenging strategy game. The pandemonium of a castle siege can be
fun to watch, but experienced gamers may find that this does not compensate for
the game's frustrating points.
System Requirements: 300 MHz Pentium II CPU; 64 MB RAM; 4 MB
Video RAM; 8x CD-ROM; 750 MB Hard Drive Space; Mouse.
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