Stronghold 2 – PC – Review

Stronghold 2 is a very entertaining castle-building RTS that is
not only beautiful, but is also loads of fun to play. In short, you micromanage
supply lines to gather resources and build equipment to make your castle thrive.
In addition you can build weapons and armies for battle to either protect your
land or attack a nearby enemy. The two campaign modes are either combat or
economic oriented. There is also a skirmish mode or if you just like to free
build, you can do that too.

Though Stronghold 2 looks very similar to Stronghold, there are
plenty of added weapons, traps, and commands that will entertain fans of the
original. If all the new tools and gadgets were not enough, the new 3-D look
will have any RTS fan foaming at the mouth. The new camera angles make the game
so much more enjoyable than the original, not to mention add to the ease of
gameplay. NO MORE BLIND SPOTS!

The visual effects are quite impressive. You can tell that a lot
of detail went in to the animations of the town’s people, the environments, and
the battles. I liked how the water splashed against the rocks and formed a mist
on one particular scenerio. Although everything may not be highly detailed,
there is enough there to simply zoom in and gaze in awe at your castle and the
workings going on. Watch the townspeople chopping down trees, tending to the
sheep, hunting wild game, spinning wool, and the list goes on. Watching the
enemy fall victim to your traps can be quite entertaining, and enough cannot be
said for watching a group of archers taking down a small band of enemy swordsman
from a watchpost.

Some of the battles that take place are mind-boggling. They can
get immense and really give the feel of epic proportions. These big battles
immerse you into medieval gameplay and should please any Middle-Ages RTS fan.
The added camera angles or top-down view allows the player see the game from
every perspective. Not only is the game fun to watch with these angles, it makes
playing the game easy as there are no blind spots.

The AI of the game leaves something to be desired. Not only is
it predictable over time, it can be frustrating when your armies do not quite
respond to what you intend them to carry out. In addition to the AI bugs, there
is lot of things that need to be tweaked. At the time of the review there is
already one patch out that has a bunch of fixes on it, and there are reports of
more on the way.

The musical score is right out of the period and the sound
effects had me believing that I had taken a step back in time to a medieval
period. The voice acting had its moments, but could have been a bit better. In
fact there were times it was quite comical. I do not think it was meant to be
that way, but needless to say it was. In either case, it did not take away from
the gameplay whatsoever.

You find Internet games hosted by Gamespy quite easily and it is
simple to either create or join a game. Most of the games found are skirmishes
and are extremely challenging against real players. This takes the enemy AI
problems right out of the picture. These games will surely keep Stronghold 2 off
the shelf and keep players intrigued enough to keep on playing.

Overall the game still needs a bit of work but is still a lot of
fun. Future patches are in the works so hopefully all the bugs will be worked
out. This medieval RTS is truly fun to play and was worth the wait.

Gameplay: 8.0
It is a breeze to get started and there are helpful hints to aid those new
to the genre. The manual is detailed and quite honestly one of the best I’ve
seen. The game played great except for a few minor glitches or an occasional
crash. Some future patches should remedy this.

Graphics: 8.5
Some of the maps were a bit bland, but this was not really even noticeable
once you had a few buildings built and your workers started leading productive
lives. The care that went into the character animations is nicely done and is
worth taking a closer look at with the aid of 3-D zoomed-in camera angle.

Sound: 8.0
The sound effects and music were true to the period and sounded pretty darn
good. Some of the voice acting could have been a bit better, but was decent
enough.

Difficulty: Medium
There is a good variety of games that range from easy and hard with many
levels in-between.

Concept: 7.0
We have seen this type of game before, and it is much like the original
Stronghold. There are tons of more options and better graphics so it is
definitely worth having.

Multiplayer: 9.0
Games can be played played online via Gamespy and are a breeze to set up or
join.

Overall: 8.0
I really enjoyed this title and would highly recommend it to any RTS buff.
The game still could use some polishing, but Firefly Studios claims they will
fully support the game.