Stronghold HD

This game has some cool things, but don't goes far from a castle simulator. It's a lot repetitive and sometimes it becomes a bit boring. If you want a castle simulator, take it, but that is it, the game focus in castles. Just don't buy it with Age of Empires 2 in the mind like I did.

This game is not for players who are gifted with the ability of never having to restart a mission. Because you will. The interface is quite dated and can be a challenge to use. However the biggest challenge is in solving the puzzle of properly managing the fine balance of population, production and military. Each of those 3 pillars feeds of or is dependant on the other. You need the production and population to drive the military engine, but the military engine also needs to protect the production. The population must be fed by the production, but too many idle people will eat all your food. You will find that you either enter a slow death spiral or one where you can build up your capabilities to complete the mission. There is very little room for error. If you find yourself in the death spriral, better restart. Positioning your keep and defensive structures is very important and if done incorrectly will also require a restart. In summary: not for the golden ones for whom everything is easy, but a really rewarding and enjoyable game for those who like challenges.

I played it for the first time quite recently, and i would say the voice acting, the animations all make up for a still funny and enjoyable game. The only trouble is the controls which sometimes can be frustrating (you can rotate the map by steps of 90 degrees, and when you build walls, especially wooden one, you are never quite sure there's an hole inside !)

I'm a fan of RTS games and history, which I used to think lived in separate universes. As soon as I saw stronghold I knew it was for me. Yes, there are other RTS games that are historical in their milieux, like Civ and AoE, but this one is definitely the one that stole my heart. Do yourself a favor - get it and enjoy. ~ Thanks GOG for letting me play it in Win7 64 ~

Playing Stronghold is like watching sieges in movies : attacking soldiers charging towards the ramparts and getting shot ful of holes, catapults blasting gaps in the walls, towers crashing down and furious troops storming breaches in the walls or scaling ladders to cut down the archers on the battlements. Unfortunately, it's usually your castle being besieged :) Gamers expecting a more combat-focused game might be slightly disappointed to find that withstanding sieges successfully in Stronghold involves more than simply building strong fortifications and raising an army of archers and crossbowmen to make pincushions out of anyone reckless enough to appear within range of the walls. As most missions usually devolve into battles of attrition where the invader throws waves of troops at your castle (or what's left of it) during each successive siege to attempt to overwhelm your ability and resources to both repair the walls and replace the troops killed, Stronghold can be thought as more as a economic simulation with a military veneer add some excitement and urgency to the town management :) Higher level troops like the heavily-armoured swordsmen are prohibitively expensive in resources and gold to replace and a well-oiled economy makes recovery after repulsing each assault much, much easier. And frankly speaking, there isn't many tactics available to the besieged apart from building towers in mutually supporting positions and stationing enough ranged troops on the battlements and towers. Boiling oil, flaming pitch, spike traps and other nasty surprises for attackers available in the later missions will add some novelty to your defensive arsenal but massed archers and crossbowmen will usually form the mainstay of your defence throughout the game. Nonetheless, The peculiar challenges presented by the terrain and other constraints in each mission of the campaign keeps everything fresh and interesting. On the other hand, missions where you actually besiege an enemy castle are few and far between in the single-player campaign. It isn't exactly a bad thing for me since they can be frsutratingly difficult and puzzle-like. Filling in the moat and breaching walls and other obstacles while under heavy fire from above will kill many of your men - lose too many men and you'll find that taking the keep and killing the enemy lord in the heart of the castle becomes nigh impossible - prompting another restart of the mission. Players who relish such challenges will definitely find the Siege scenarios attacking or defending a historical castle very interesting :) Despite its age, Stronghold is still an immensely engrossing and addictive game. Units are wonderfully animated, voice acting is excellent and the in-mission music and overall atmosphere draw you in and make you feel like you're there in the Middle Ages. The sounds of arrows whistling through the air and then impacting on flesh with dull thuds or the winding of crossbows being reloaded after scoring hits on those damn swordsmen never get old either :)