Stronghold 2 is another in a small line of "castle simulation" real time strategy games. As a constant in the series, equal emphassis is placed on both keeping your peasents happy, building up strong defences, and waging war. Stronghold 2 makes some great refinements to the game, while managing to keep it generally the same experience as previous titles in the series, albeit with a much more engrossing graphics engine. For those unfamiliar with the series, the gameplay is a mix of a game like Sim City and Warcraft mixed into one. When you start the game, you'll have a keep with a few peasents waiting outside of it. You'll then have to place a stockpile to hold supplies, and a granary to hold food. Then you must move on to producing some of the basic things the castle needs to operate, namely food and wood. You'll need to place a sawpit quickly, so you can continue to harvest wood that will allow you to build most of the buildings in the game. As well, you'll want to build a few farms or hunter's posts to bring in food for your peasents. From there, the game continues to expand. There is a heap of buildings available, and a solid array of defenses and walls to erect as well. You'll find as your castle grows that you might have a rat problem, or a waste problem. So to counter these problems, you can create gong pits to dispose of the waste, and falcon posts to kill off the rats. Unfortunately, nobody really wants to work a gong pit, and their workers often turn to a life of crime, raiding the local granary. To counter this, you'll then have to create some torture devices, a courthouse, and an executioners guild to train people in the ways of getting rid of criminals. And you need to do all this while building up castle defences and generating an army, too! To build armies, you need free peasents, the apropriate weapons available, and some gold and honor. Gold is made by taxing your people, while honor is gained by treating them well - erecting an inn that serves beer, a chapel, holding feasts, etc. To create the weapons needed, you'll have to create specialized workers who will take the necessary bare componenets needed from your stockpile and then turn them into weapons to drop off into your armory. (Example - a fletcher will take wood and turn it into a bow or crossbow) As well as maintaining an army to fight off invaders, you can also build trap-like devices to assit your troops in fighting off invaders. Fake castle entrances, pits of spikes, torches to light arrows on fire with, tubs of rocks, a pile of wood, and of course, the always popular moat and drawbridge. Of course, you also have the more standard varying sized towers and walls to station your troops on, too. The whole time, you'll be totally engrossed by the games excellent graphics engine. Watching your peasents on one side of the castle harvesting ore and carrying it to your stockpile while some sheep herders wander around with their little mutton buddies, it really sucks you into castle life. During battles, watching all the seige equipment work and soldiers running around, its great. However, the sound is quite minimal, just generic dings here and there, which kind of detracts from the game when your soldiers are wacking on somebody and not making any noise. but hey, at least it looks gorgeous. Stronghold 2 has several game modes, 2 of which are campaigns. The first campaign is more focused on keeping your people happy, while the second is more focused on raising an army and fighting wars. Through both campaigns you expand your castle, aquire new counties to control, and try desperately to balance your peasents happiness and armies strength. As well as the two campaigns, we also have Siege mode, letting you recreate battles at real castles, "kingmaker" mode, which is basically a skirmish like most RTS game have, pitting several players against eachother, a free build mode, where you can build a castle without worrying about invaders, and of course, up to 8 person multiplayer. Also included is a map editor. Stronghold 2 is a feature filled game, the only downfall is that you cant select the difficulty level of the campaigns, and in some cases the missions can get quite difficult. Also, all the management could be a bit too much for most RTS fans. All in all, Stronghold 2 is a good solid game, but it probably isnt a game everyone is going to end up loving. If you like management games and RTS games, give it a shot.
I have been playing Stronghold and Stronghold Crusader since they came out all those years ago and I loved them. So it was with great anticipation that I picked up a copy of the new version, installed it and sat back ... Read Full Review
Stronghold 2: Man the parapets If you’re not of the age to remember when living in a castle was the day to day business, then Stronghold 2, from firefly studios, will be the closest thing you can get to without litera... Read Full Review
