"Over the last year,
real-time-strategy games have been making a come back.
In years past, the genre was limited to games such as Civilization
and Warcraft. Now, a whole new breed of game is
born."
Limitations
One of the biggest lures of RTS games have been
the freedom to explore and multiply. The first thing you
will notice when starting up Stronghold is the
limitations that constrict you. There are two major game
modes are Military Campaign and Economic
Campaign. The military campaign consists of an
ongoing series of military missions. You are given
certain scenarios in which to defend and strengthen a
castle. While economics play a minor role in the
military campaigns, increasing your strength through
defense and repair are the primary motives. The economic
campaign is similar to the military campaign. Instead of
an onslaught of attacking bandits, you are in control of
the economic well being of your followers. The mission
quality isn't incredibly deep, but still fairly
enjoyable and light.
The second limitation is the actual size of the maps.
When you place the base for your castle, there are
strategies involved, but viable locations are few and
far between. There is no room for exploration either.
Once you set up camp, you are stuck there for the entire
mission. Outside the castle gates, you can expand your
dominion somewhat by setting up other establishments.
These establishments can be anything from apple orchards
to wheat fields. However, if they are placed too far
from the castles base, expect bandits to hit them first.
Game genie
As with other games similar to the genre in order to
keep the castle running like a well-oiled machine takes
a little bit of luck and a boat load of trial and error.
The basis of development is the inhabitants of your
community. Their two primary means of happiness lies
within food and taxes. What makes the game
enjoyable, is the light simulation involved, and you
don't have to dig too deep into the constructs to
discovery what makes the game tick.
There are numerous means of producing food sources.
Planting wheat farms, along with building a bakery and a
mill will allow you to make bread for the masses. Dairy
farms produce milk, and orchards produce apples. You can
also set up hunter stands (when available) to
catch wild game to feed the peasants. Since most of the
game revolves around keeping your people happy, making
sure they have full rations is crucial to keeping your
castle fully staffed. Once citizens start to leave,
other functions cease and grind your production to a
halt.
Similar to the old Warcraft series, you can also
mine iron and stone to produce weapons and building
materials; not to mention a ton of wood cutting sheds.
Once establishing these mines (and wood sheds),
materials are brought to the castles stockpile and will
be used when required. Building castle walls will reduce
your stone stock, as well as building various structures
will deplete your wood supply. Depending on what your
goals are within a mission, depends on what you should
focus on. If you are required to gather 100 stocks of
bread and 30 cheese portions, just remember you also
have to feed your people. The same goes for producing
weapons. Producing archers will lower your wood stock,
even though you might need them to build another granary
to hold new stock.
More sir!
The menu interface is a questionable one. It seems quite
user friendly, but sometimes what you are looking for
isn't where you think it should be. Once familiar with
the menu system, it is very elementary and
self-explanatory. Your squire in the lower right hand of
the screen will always tell you when you are doing
something wrong, just don't get annoyed by his overly
positive nature.
The first half of the game is actually one long
tutorial, and doesn't really pick up until you are
nearly halfway through the game. The game becomes much
more interesting and fun when you are given more complex
structures. These include boiling oil you can pour on
incoming enemies, catapults (which you can
shoot cows) and moats.
When it comes to battle remember you have the upper hand
since you have the castle. Positioning archers
atop of walls will rain down a shower of arrows. A major
gripe with the control of your army is the lack of
control. You can select and deselect troops, but once
they are attacked (or attack) they lose their
previous location and the groupings you assigned. The
entire battle system is a wacky one, which I plainly
avoided military campaigns for the most part. Enemy AI
is insanely stupid. They always attack from the
same place, and hack and slash at the same point of
entry; even though just two clicks away there is a hole
the size of Rhode Island.
The mindless bandits that plague the game are insanely
tough, and your guys are weak and pathetic. I've had
more success with barley farmers tackling the raiders
and the sissy pikeman act like marshmallow boys. I
discovered that instead of focusing on a huge military
arsenal, to put more attention into the castle itself.
Defensive in nature itself, adding a moat along with
thicker walls will keep the heaviest onslaught from
breeching your defenses. I consistently built more
archers and stayed away from ground troops. While the
dumb bad guys were hacking and slashing my castle (a
la Monty Python and the Holy Grail Style) my archers
would bombard them with an onslaught of arrows.
Aside from the shady AI the game is quite solid.
Graphically, it is reminiscent of Age of Empires,
yet with some choppy animation. I fairly enjoyed
watching the animations from the variety of events that
take place. I was a bit let down to see that there are
only two real views you can take. The close view was my
main window of play, and since there were dozens
of different things going on at one time, it was
enjoyable to see all of the action going on in your
town. Other effects such as weapon fire were slightly
bland, and each character had a robotic pattern they
followed.
The opening musical score was brilliant, but the in-game
music didn't quite match the opening scenes. Sound
effects were quite good, but weren't as ambient as I
would have liked. The squire at times brought you to
tears and I lost a good tuft of hair after hearing him
say "More wood needed, sire." for the
billionth time. Overall, the soundtrack and effects were
standard and fit the game well.
Fish heads fish heads, rolly polly fish heads
Depending on your age, years ago there was a successful
line of games called Castles. It was very similar
to Stronghold, which was the motive behind my
purchase. As Alkaiser states in his review, the
game plays more like a SimCastle. While the game
is dumbed down much farther than games from the Sim
series or even the Tycoon series, it is an
enjoyable romp; despite the many flaws it has.
There are many angles to take with playing this game as
with other RTS games. The games lighthearted gameplay
will attract a variety of gamers. Many times with RTS I
get overwhelmed at the complexity involved. The games
attempt to market huge strategies makes the game more of
a job and not a game; thus losing its appeal to
me. I found that Stronghold was a good balance
between strategy and fun. I found myself addicted to the
game for hours at one setting alone. A good sign for a
good game. While I totally think the game could have
been a hundred fold better by corrected the AI issue, it
is still a safe buy for most gamers and recommended for
novice to intermediate RTS fans.
7.1
