The original Stronghold is a game near and dear to my heart. First introduced to me when I was a wee lad it offered basic city management with a basic, but strategic, battle system. The game itself can be chalenging at times jumping between managing a city life keeping your citizens happy and well fed whilst trying to acrue taxes to fund for defensive/offensive maneuvers. I won't lie, it's nothing groundbreaking. But this game was a core contender for what got me into stratergy games when I was younger. It's dated, the concept has been done a hundred times before. But this game had it all and was, for me, the beginning of my love for RTSs. Firefly Studios is a solid company who have a lot of passion for the medieval ages and you can see that in the Stronghold series. Honestly, for £1 you cannot go wrong. Get this game and even if you only spend an hour playing the basic missions you only lost £1. I can't do this game justice for how much fun I have playing it and the childhood memories of playing this with my dad hold this game near and dear to my heart. 10/10 for childhood memories. 8/10 for graphics (they really do still hold up today) 7/10 gameplay 9/10 enjoyment managing and fighting 10/10 difficulty settings, mapping AI to the equivalent numbers 9/10 mechanics, very basic but enough to keep things interesting 6/10 replayability after main campaign 10/10 seiges/invasion maps 10/10 price, did I mention it's REALLY cheap? Get it, release seratonin into your life, if you haven't experienced it I promise you aren't missing much but you'll be so glad you found this hidden gem. Got the other games in the seriese wishlisted.
