why is stronghold 2 so bad?

The answer to 'why is it bad' is as follows.

The thing that made the original stronghold games so succesful was their extremely detailed castle building in a uniquely engineered RTS. Name one other succesful RTS that allowed you to build walls of all heights, crenallate those walls, and throw archers, ballista, and mangonel up on those same walls?

I'm sure you could think of something, but alll in all the biggest aspect of Stronghold was its realistic sense of war. Sure, it takes about 60 arrows from an archer to kill a swordsman in the game, but thats just to give the game more strategy. Other than that, FireFly chose key aspects of war that many other RTS games hadnt really ever touched on, such as covering the battlefield with oil, or the use of tower-mounted ballista, plus the ability to dig moats.

The new game has these things but not nearly the way i was hoping they would be presented. One of my biggest annoyanceswith SH2 is the limitations on building the castles. Yes, there are several new tower and castle pieces, and you can raise the land much higher than before, however, you cannot alter the wall by just one little in-game-pixel as the way you could with the original.

My favorite thing about the original was the eye candy you could create with the map editor and even in the game itself. With the right experience, you could create the most breathtaking and creative castles one could ever imagine. With Stronghold 2, you are very limited with how you can alter the buildings and walls, unlike the first one, where just about anything you could think of that could be in a castle could be creative with the right techniques. Stronghold 2 simply just doesn't give you those options and techniques.

Plus, there are dozens of new economical buildings and situations to deal with. Some strategists may enjoy this, but it makes the game such a nuisance when you're trying to just throw together a simple army. Basically, there are twice as many buildings you have to build to have a succesful castle, but with the exact same amount of resources. It's just a bad mix.

I'll finish this off by saying that when playing Stronhold 2, it feels almost like a completely different game...which can have some nice effects during gameplay, but overall i expected a nice-looking version of the original Stronghold(s), however, after playing Stronghold for so many years, it has recently become apparent that you can't make the game look any more elegant than it already does. Either way, FireFly already got my 30 dollars for their product. Good on them, they deserve it for their insane programming skills.

Wow, this was just gonna be a quick reply...

Stronghold is bad because its bad makedMynx_15

so deep.

i would play stronghold crusader any day over stronghold 2. only thing i loved in stronghold2 were the thieves. they were pretty funny when you clicked on them.

got it 3 years ago. tryed to play it. the trading cart town resores exchange drove me mad. stop at mission 2.

last year i was going to throw out some games. i gave it one more try. and found i liked it. buildings are to big.

but the pre-set "stronghold" weakness for getting to your enemies