Stronghold Crusader 2

Remember the good old days when you could play LAN without a constant internet connection? I thought that my brothers and I could all sit around a table with a router and play this game together, but I was oh so wrong. You NEED GoG galaxy to play it, and there is no LAN option. I would rate lower if I could because this was the only reason I bought it, to play on Christmas Vacation without a solid internet connection in the rural country where my parents live.

I am a longtime Stronghold fan. This game is fun and probably the most balanced out of the series, but it is brutally difficult. If you are a casual gamer I would skip purchasing this game even if it was sold at a huge discount. If you want a steep challenge give it a try. I hope if they continue to create games for this series they take it the other direction and make it more enjoyable. Be warned that it is so hard at times that it is no longer fun!

Video Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Mad5Z-cncI Stronghold Crusader 2 is an RTS, but I am not sure what kind of RTS it is trying to be. It has city building, castle sieging, and a lot of other neat mechanics with zero depth whatsoever. The gameplay of Stronghold is inherently flawed. You are supposed to build up your castle, your army, and then go attack the other person with that army while protecting what you built. The problem here is that the castle building is bland and boring, the castle sieging is lacking so much that the other stronghold games had. For example, you can’t even make laddermen to scale walls. Why not? Because NOW regular soldiers get to pull out picks and break away at walls like it is nothing. Watch entire towers come down to your meager band of peasants and their picks. The building of an army is also tedious with unit caps and having to multitask the castle building every time you start a new match so that you can afford the units in a way that feels like a drudgerous chore. The campaign...or…”learning campaigns”, most of which are sold to you as separate DLC, are the most uninspired storytelling experiences I have ever seen in a videogame. Shooters tell better stories than these. These campaigns are essentially just sequences of scenarios with guided objectives and starting conditions instead of the open gameplay the rest of the game offers. Forget the in depth campaigns and mechanics of Stronghold 2. In Stronghold Crusader 2 we don’t need quality, we need DLC apparently. To read the full review (Since GoG doesn't allow full reviews) view it on steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/Resoula/recommended/232890/

Ok I bought it for 5 euro. How bad can it be? It`s terrible. Game crashes a lot. Game freezes for a couple of seconds a lot. Loading saved games presents bugs, like already defeated lords who start talking again...and a lot. It`s annoying as hell. Economics are very very shallow. Don`t waste your money no mather how much it is. Firefly messed up Stronghold 3 and now this. One of the best castle simulator from the old days is totally ruined.