This is a fun concept of a game that has a lot of potential but feels like it was a little ahead of its time. There are three factions that are largely similar, but the core gameplay is around building giant stompy robots. Vehicles and aircraft exist and provide good support for the giant stompy robots (called combots). One of the more interesting pieces about this game is that it is fought on three layers - Orbit, Surface, and Underground. Orbit gives you a massive boost to your solar plants, but building space is limited and only hover vehicles and flying vehicles/mechs and get up there. The surface functions exactly as you'd expect and has lower-richness lava deposits. Mos of the fighting will happen here and this is where Combots are deployed. Underground you have to build to get to and has richer lava, but space is limited, so you have to dig it out. Cryo Farms provide supply and train Combot crews; Hover Trucks harvest lava for Metajoules which is then used to build units. They can also build solar panels to provide trickle income that is unlimited. Drill Trucks build Elevators that get you underground, and it's very slow to get units there and back. If you want to move a large force, you'll need to split it up between several elevators or wait a long time. Combots require you to build a minimum of three components - a torso, legs, and at least one arm component. You can chop off components from enemies and use your hover trucks to take them back to your deployment platform to research at your research building (literally called Research). This allows for some fun mix and match, but I didn't really see much difference between the mechs. Jump jet mechs (read: flying mechs) with ranged weapons I found to be the best due to their mobility, but some melee builds are also extremly sturdy as mighty glacier types. The biggest frustration will be around the pathfinding, which, while not terrible, has some struggles. Overall not bad, but not amazing.
Stronghold is one of the main defense-oriented games that came out in ye olden times simulating the construction and defense of a castle. The economic and military aspects of this game are absolutely fantastic and a ton of fun! Building a thriving economy and powerful military is extremely satisfying HOWEVER, when playing the campaign, beware of the scripted random events and a completely wonky difficulty curve. The biggest offender will be fires that completely obliterate your stronghold in literal seconds. This is an extremely frustrating mechanic that doesn't give you time to counter it unless you have Starcraft-like reflexes to delete the burning buildings before it spreads. For example, I was playing a campaign mission where a random fire happened. I got the notification, hit the delete building button, and by the time I found the fire, all of my farms had already burned down, my bakeries were half gone, my peasants were suiciding themselves into the fire, and my mill had lost half its health. This took about 5-10 seconds to occur. So again, a great game with some supremely frustration mechanics. Be prepared for many restarts on an otherwise really fun time!
