Hello everybody, it’s a new contributor! I specialize in gaming topics, movie topics, and most of all critique. Here is my first review for a game you may remember: Stronghold Crusader (Warning- Contains dense vocabulary)
Stronghold: Crusader Review
If you say you have never heard of the (Insert School Name Here) phenomenon “Stronghold” then you are lying. Even if it’s interface and production values aren’t quite up to par with the rest of the market this title’s ease of copying and pirating have made Stronghold the most commonly played game in (Insert School Name Here). Needless to say I’ve completely exhausted Stronghold one so when I saw the sequel on the shelf for bargain price it was hard to resist. This stand-alone expansion pack can be played without the original Stronghold on your hard drive and addresses and tweaks most of the complaints aimed at the original Stronghold while still amplifying all of flaws in Stronghold’s engine. If you can put up with its shortcomings, Stronghold Crusader is a great buy (or torrent!) for anyone looking for a unique way to play a strategy game.
The Stronghold franchise is unique in that it stresses economic objectives and castle design just as much as the creation and manipulation of ground troops. Unfortunately the economic aspect of the game is still painfully underdeveloped and your only key to financial success is growing wheat as a food source and producing stone for export. In order to run your industries and grow your armies you will require you to keep your popularity meter high or else your vital peasants will desert you and leave your kingdom inoperable. Running out of food is a huge and likely fatal occurrence and keeping your granary stocked is either painfully easy or teeth clenchingly broken. All agriculture needs to be placed on green oasis ground in order to grow; thus a common feature in the crusader maps is a central oasis area to fight over for food. Unfortunately the instantaneous process of building creation means someone can easily clog all the area with cheap farms from the outset and immediately rebuild them once your troops walk across the map to destroy them, making it a game changing exploit. Placing down farms and buildings is not worth your time and you’ll wish Firefly had a quicker method of amassing gold. The thing that sets Stronghold apart from other RTS (real time strategy) games are the tactics of building and countering castles, and that is what I will focus on in this review.
Firefly studios learned from the popular multiplayer mode of Stronghold one and focused Crusader on a competition layout where everyone has the same monarch to defend and the same resources. Although the campaign mode does return it is dramatically scaled back and serves mostly as a tutorial stage. The real meat of the game is the Crusader mode, and if you played Stronghold one don’t even consider the other options and start up this game. Crusader mode is identical to the multiplayer mode of the previous Stronghold but has more play options and let’s you play against Stronghold’s infamously brain-dead A.I. The one thing weighing the first game back was the lack of long term entertainment options so being able to customize your own games is a welcome addition for anyone interested in playing Stronghold competitively.
The greatest improvement that Stronghold: Crusader adds to the Stronghold formula is not the impressive new units but all the polish and refinement done to the game’s statistic backbone; Swordsmen are much quicker and can now be used on offense, religion is now a viable popularity boosting tactic, and walls are much less susceptible to ground troops to discourage rush tactics. The original Stronghold’s interface was an intimidating jumble of resources and abilities and this distillation of the interface makes playing the game a lot more elegant and satisfying to play. The other new addition you are probably interested in is the new mercenary post building where you can recruit the fearsome abilities of Arab desert warriors. Unlike the returning European soldiers Arab mercenaries do not require weapons built for them, making building an army a faster proposition for competition. The new units typically have weaker armor but unique special abilities, like the weak but easily mass produced for labor Slave or the napalm hurling Fire Thrower. These deadly abilities are balanced out by the double sum of gold that they cost. Mastering the Arab units and their abilities is thrilling and a major selling point for Crusader if you want to upgrade.
If you are considering buying Stronghold Crusader you will have to contemplate your stance on strategy games and the Stronghold franchise. The graphics have certainly aged and the bizarre interface is a hurdle to jump in accessibility. If you enjoy RTS games and traditional competitive games such as Chess then you will likely enjoy Crusader’s unique blend of action- strategy. If you prefer more accomplished and sensory games than tactical or competitive games then you’ll probably find the game more of a dull frustration than a fun experience. I recognize the flaws in the game but enjoy the army building aspect.
Rating: 6/10 Fair
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April 19th, 2010 at 9:26 PM
This was all done for school if you’re questioning my writing style.