How did this even happen? Stronghold 2 might not have been the best sequel ever (especially due to the fugly cartoonish graphics compared to its predecessor) but at least it added some new gameplay mechanics and buildings. Crusader 2 adds half a dozen new units but takes away more buildings. Fear factor isn't a thing anymore (and unlike Stronghold 2 it isn't replaced by a criminal justice system but just completely scrapped). There's only three tower types and they're the exact same tower varying in size. Plus you can't build round towers as a crusader lord because whoever works at Firefly now must have never seen a European castle in their life. Farms take up a ridiculously small amount of space making the whole oasis concept pointless since you can feed all your people with four wheat farms which take up about as much space as one mercenary camp or barracks. Hovels don't change in appearance from one another like they did in the first Crusader so they look disgusting when placed one next to another. To sum up, there's no reason whatsoever to play this instead of the original Stronghold Crusader.
The good stuff is basically the same as in all previous Spiders games so I'll just focus on the bad even though I enjoyed the game overall. The backtracking in this game is absolutely atrocious, and I suspect it's done on purpose to inflate game's length since around 20 % of the time you'll have an instant travel dialogue option as part of the quest suggesting that the developers know very well how tedious all the backtracking is. A single quest had me go see person A, go to the archives, go see person B, return to person A, then the next quest following it had me go to person A, go to the archives, go see person B, see person C, return to person A. If it wasn't for all the running back and forth, the quest would have taken 10 minutes, but like this it took over half an hour. The whole camp area concept also just needlessly breaks the flow of the game in order to inflate it. Crafting and fast travel should just be possible whenever you're not in combat. And the combat itself would actually be interesting if you didn't have to fight the same enemies whenever you're passing by the same street at night for the 100th time. Now for my biggest gripe - the game absolutely bottlenecks you into being nice to the natives 90% of the time. When you hear about a colonial-themed rpg, you naturally suppose you get to pick your specific flavor of colonialism at least to the point of whether you'll be nice or a dick towards the natives (plus this game is just terrible with the noble savage stereotyping, the natives are just living utopian, harmonious lives until whi... ahem, Continental people come to ruin it all for them just because). It would at least be nice to have a companion who's a complete dick to the natives, but you don't even get that. Each companion comes from a different faction, and some of these factions are at war yet they all get along just fine and it's possible to be on great terms with all of them?
I last played this game when I was like eight years old, never finished it because I couldn't get past Von Beck's tank chase (and the time for a new game to load back then was infernally long). So I decided to give it a shot now and finally finish it. It's certainly uglier than I remember it, but I can't hold that against such an old game. The story is complete and utter nonsense I won't go into for fear of my brain starting to hurt. The voice acting is downright terrible, with dialog definitely worthy of it. Indy constantly repeats phrases which do not deserve to be called one-liners throughout the game itself and the cutscenes. That's right - you'll hear Indy say something stupid like "fortune and glory - here I come" upon finding an artifact, then repeating the exact same thing in a cutscene! There's also no option to save a game, and no in-level checkpoints either. If you die anywhere during a level you'll have to replay everything from the last time you saw a loading screen. This can get extremely frustrating, as a good part of the game consists of platforming and Indy needs more space than my car does to make a simple U-turn. This means you'll often die by falling into some bottomless chasm or another and have to play entire levels from the beginning. Most of them aren't too long, but long enough for replaying to annoy the shit out of you. The platforming feels somewhat clunky, and climbing around the environment is practically scripted. The game's saving grace is it's melee combat, which is overall simply fun (especially grabbing your enemies and throwing them off cliffs, balconies and into the water - who doesn't get a kick out of that!). There is a method to fighting your enemies, and failing to disarm them long enough for them to start shooting at you can cost you a good bit of health. Some of the locations you visit are pretty cool, although extremely over the top at times. There's a couple of lame ones too, though.
The setting and story are compelling - Duinlan Heights feels more like a place than a game map, and by the time you're finished playing you'll know this place very well. There's quite a bit of backtracking in order to complete different quests, but newly-found shortcuts and disguises make sure it doesn't become tiresome. The stealth itself is simple yet multi-layered, there's your common line-of-sight/sound sneaking and a social stealth element through a couple of disguises you can put on (one making you seem like one of the guards at the expense of movement speed, and the other makes you a ranger - a kind of mercenary that the guards don't really like and will shake down constantly but not outright attack). The one gripe I have with the game is that all the side-quests are more about collecting stuff than doing stuff. And to make it worse, you'll often get them long before you can access the areas you need in order to complete them, which has made me spent north of an hour minutiously searching areas for stuff only to find that I couldn't possibly have found until further on in the main quest. I wish your quest log made you aware of such situations, because spending hours on futile searches isn't exactly fun. The rewards for some of the side-quests are also disappointing, probably the longest fetch-quest in the game has no reward beside 100 renown (the game's variant of XP, and the amount you can get by burning four of the banners you find pretty much everywhere). But I'm more than willing to let these flaws slide for a stealth title with an enchanting new setting, which isn't the umpteenth entry of some already-existing franchise.
One of the greatest tragedies of contemporary gaming is that games like this aren't being made anymore. When we had glorious, beautiful 2D maps instead of disgusting cartoonish 3D (although the character icons and some models in this game are kinda cartoonish in both voice and appearance, but hey, you can't have it all). Seriously, the maps in this game are so gorgeous I would have them painted as murals on the walls of my house if I knew anyone half-competent for the job (at least the half of the house I wouldn't do in Desperados map murals). There are some gripes to be had with it - the game rewards you for not killing enemies, rendering Robin Hood's bow and arrow pretty much useless, and the inability to choose your character's equipment means that Robin will have a non-lethal staff in the sherwood missions, and a lethal sword in the cities, again making the titular character the one you're least likely to use unless the game outright requires it of you. And the only reward you get for using the non-lethal approach is more useless generic merry men which fall into three types, only one of which being somewhat useful until you get Little John to join the gang. The only other use for the men is throwing them into the meat grinder once you get to the siege missions. Most of the 1 and 2 star reviews for this game are just giving it shit for not being Commandos. Because what would you expect from a game about a medieval English folk-tale hero other than Commandos, right?
And almost all the flaws of the original Fallouts are still here, but that ain't enough to warrant a score lower than 5/5 for me. Even the inventory screen looks the same! The biggest flaw of Fallout 2 - the very inconsistent location design - is fortunately absent. Some skills are mostly useless (I'm looking at YOU, stealth), but that's a problem hardly unique to ATOM or Fallout. I'd disagree with the 100+ hours of gameplay claim in the description, though, as it took me a bit over 50 hours on normal difficulty to get through any quest that my character's admittedly limited personality and speechcraft would allow me to take on before beating the main quest, and I doubt (albeit I sincerely hope to be wrong on this one) that quests only a high personality&speechcraft character can take on constitute another 50 hours of gameplay. The setting itself isn't as over-the-top as Fallout even at it's most fantastic, which sits well with me, but the perks aren't as fun. Companions which don't waste all their ammo firing bursts from their MG at a pack of rats like a bunch of idiots would be nice too.
