Posted on: August 30, 2022
cthonic_horror
Possesseur vérifiéJeux: 234 Avis: 1
Fun, but didn't age well.
Stronghold is an interesting dilemma. It floats in a primal soup of Tower Defense, RTS, Squad-Based Tactics (like Commandos), and City Manager. All of these parts were done above average quality for the time, making it more thant he sum of its parts, but today the seams are obvious. Stronghold has trouble synthesizing the proto-genres it explores into a cohesive experience. Generalism doesn't really work with Stronghold - the missions expect you to recognize what "type" of mission they are and optimize for that. Missions also feature a lot of scripting - you'll face the same waves of enemies at the same times, the same "surprise" demands will be made of you, the same "unexpected" problems will crop up. And if you aren't prepared for them ahead of time, you probably need to restart. The problem is there are no clues as to what's coming, so a lot of Stronghold comes down to the metagaming of learning to see the future. You can see how Stronghold would have been impressive in 2001: unlike most RTS-ish games, Stronghold terrain is both heightmapped at can be rotated at 90-degree angles - not a true 360, but you can see every side of something. Projectiles and their collisions are convincing - walls will block low-flying catapault shots but arced trebuchet shots will sail over. Bodies, trees, other buildings, cows, and more can also block projectiles, often to hilarious effect. Honestly it doesn't appear to be much different from what you'd see in a modern Total War game. It's impressive for the time and feels modern today. The controls, however, didn't age well, and are firmly a product of thier time, when nobody had really agreed on anything when it came RTS controls. Engineers and siege equipment are especially miserable to manage and control. Ultimately it was enjoyable enough to finish the "combat" campaign of, but I doubt I'll go back to it.
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