The Stronghold Collection [Online Game Code]

Features:

Stronghold – The original, award-winning castle sim that takes players through medieval Britain as they lead strategic military and economic expansion, defend against invaders, and conquer enemy castles.
Stronghold 2 – The King, having fled after the defeat of his own armies, is now attempting to rule his country from a secret location. Powerful barons are jostling for what is fast becoming a disintegrating kingdom, and it is up to you to stem the tides of their ambition and unite the land again under the King.
Stronghold Crusader and Stronghold Crusader Extreme – Journey to distant Arabian lands and lead a determined group of Crusaders. Relive the historic Crusades in four campaigns as Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, the Sultan of Syria. Stronghold Crusader Extreme adds 20 new missions, new buildings and larger armies of 10,000 troops.
Stronghold Legends – Play as epic leaders throughout history, including King Arthur and the forces of Camelot, Siegfried and Dietrich in the German Ice Campaign, and Vlad Dracul and his evil forces in Transylvania.
ESRB T Teen for images of Blood and Violence

The graphics in this game are quite superb. Effects such as waterfalls cascading over cliffs on some maps and even simple things such as arrows streaking through the air are very well detailed. Visually speaking the game is spot on. Only did I see a few issues here and there, such as animal units sometimes looking as if they had been chopped in half when running through small streams. Alas, what are beautiful graphics without the sound to go along with them?

Again, too many games skimp out on things such as sound and go straight for things that sell, such as killer graphics. Well thankfully, the guys at Fire Fly did not let me down in this department either. They really went at it with the musical score and sound effects. It all works together and fits in how it should. At least you don’t hear music that doesn’t go with the time period as I have seen with other titles based somewhat on history. So, what else does this game have to offer?

Another nice thing is that it contains hours of replayability. It is not a title that gets tossed aside as other ones come into your collection. The online play and map editor features, I think, give credibility to this statement. Was there anything I didn’t like about the game?

The playing is fairly straightforward. You build hovels that attract peasants. The peasants in turn cut and gather wood, mine stone, and provide food for themselves. The collected resources are processed and then used to build additional structures. More often than not, the buildings dictate what your peasants do. For example, build a hunter’s hut and some peasants will begin hunting deer. Erect a woodcutter’s hut and the nearby peasants will chop trees.

Raising an army requires both money and manpower. The manpower comes from excess peasants, and the money from their taxes (among other things). It is here that the economic portion of the game gets interesting. You must have an army to defend your castle, but if you strip away too many peasants your economy will suffer. If the economy takes a downturn, you’ll need to raise taxes to fund the army. Unfortunately, raising taxes ruins your popularity and makes it harder to rule the city. Of course you can build churches, which attract priests who bless the population, which makes them happier. By the same token, building taverns and selling beer can also make the people happy.

It’s challenging fun. Regrettably, the interface makes it more challenging than it need be. Players must navigate though layers of tabs to build their structures. Sometimes the structure’s location under the tabs makes little or no sense. For instance, the hunter’s hut is found under farm buildings. Go figure.

Eventually, the bad guys will come. When they do, you’ll beat them back with a wide variety of units. The baseline soldiers are pikemen and archers, but as the campaign unfolds knights, swordsmen, and others become available. It’s good fun to pour burning oil on would be castle-wall scalers, and a blast to watch archers take down rows of enemy troops. What’s missing are open field battles or in-depth tactics. You place your archers and burning oil on the wall; you kill the enemy troops. The knights need make an occasional foray to destroy enemy catapults and trebuchets. That’s about it.

Stronghold offers to take command of a horde of invaders or defenders of the fortress. Attackers in the role you will, by dint of cunning and strategy to tap into your arsenal to scan humans. In the role of defenders, you need to drill the intentions of the enemy to defeat his assaults until victory.

Stronghold does offer in-depth play options. There is the 21-mission military campaign, an economic campaign that stresses castle management, a sandbox mode, and numerous stand-alone scenarios that replicate famous medieval sieges. For those unhappy with the provided maps, Firefly even packaged a map editor with the game.

This is a good game, but not a great one. The excellent castle management and siege combat is tarnished by the cumbersome interface and mediocre real-time combat. Nevertheless, fans of city simulations and real-time strategy alike might want to give this one a look.

Goal:
For the attacker must be entered as soon as possible in the fortress. For the defender it is enough to delay the attacker and get the fame.
The graphics in this game are quite superb. Effects such as waterfalls cascading over cliffs on some maps and even simple things such as arrows streaking through the air are very well detailed. Visually speaking the game is spot on. Only did I see a few issues here and there, such as animal units sometimes looking as if they had been chopped in half when running through small streams. Alas, what are beautiful graphics without the sound to go along with them?