A disaster waiting to happen.
User Rating: 4 | Stronghold 2 PC
Did Stronghold 2 deserve the rating it got on Gamespot? Honestly, no; it deserved something way worse, even harsh - anything to warn the consumer about this wreck of a game. I can't believe I wasted $60 hard-earned dollars on what promised to be a 'fun' experience. GAMEPLAY: I run an AMD Athlon 64 2.4 GHz system, complete with 1 GB of RAM - way over the reccomended specifications. Yet, for some reason, the game is very choppy with an inconsistent framerate. If I want to move the screen in any direction just a little, I will end up moving it to the edge of the map. When I try to rotate the camera, I end up zoomed in on a plot of land. Yes, this affects the gameplay, especially in siege warfare. Stronghold 2 is full of major bugs, too - not just bugs that are easily overlooked - bugs that not only crash the game, but crash YOUR ENTIRE SYSTEM. In the passed two days, that has happened to me at least five or six times. GRAPHICS: Don't let the images on the box fool you. Stronghold 2 possess a 'soft' graphical feel, making the entire game look fuzzy. Even my ATI Radeon 9800 Pro can't work miracles. When you have a large number of troops grouped together, they will run into each other and look like one heaping mess. Units occassionally walk through buildings. The only decent graphical standpoint is when you zoom up really close. SOUND: The sound is okay. While the music is fit for the medieval setting, it is just not satisfying. After an hour or so, it gets repetitive. All the voices seem poorly done, and each character says only one or two things. When I first heard the voice of the narrator, I figured he was trying to convince me that he wasn't an idiot, as opposed to telling the story. VALUE: Is this game worth 50-60 bucks? No. 40? No. 30? Maybe. 20? That's more like it. When I usually get a new game, I am all-rilled-up about it, eager to play. Instead, I find myself here, writing my first-ever review on a game that should still be in beta. Hopefully, EB games will trade it in for something that isn't crap. 
