Dont believe the glowing reviews, this is not an rpg but more like choose your own adventure with skill checks along the way. its simply retarded and abominable in design. Ignore the comments like "not for Bioware lovers", "Bethesda fans neednt apply" or "old school hard-core only". Its not old-school hardcore in fact lots of old school games like Wizardry were acutally crappy. Its unintuitive in its design, has a dumb as dirt story, assets look like garbage. Its sold as post-apocalyptic but you wouldnt know that when playing it. Its basically a game heavily reliant on trial and error all the while bragging its deadly difficult. It aint. Its stupidly and dellusionally designed. The dev/s must be retarded or drunk to even compare this game to Fallout(which it doesnt). Its not realistic like it says it is. Dont believe the shills from RPGcodex praising the this game. If you must play it just borrow a copy before actually buying the game.
Looking for an exciting story with fantastical creatures , strange and interesting characters and intricate plot? If you are dont buy this game. The story is a slog to get through. Its not gripping or mysterious. Its downright preachy and misanthropic nonsense. The game dumps massive amounts of info rather than giving out small bits as you explore. Combat is a clusterfuck. No Ai scripts. Characters just stand still waiting for their next move or stand still when an opponent disengages. No pre-buffing or casting interesting spells out of combat. The "deep" conversation system is just a rather convoluted way of using stats to block off story options. The world is pretty dead, no random checks happening in the background , no free roaming monsters. Stronghold is like a facebook game. All in all the game is pretty mediocre. It lack the spit and polish of the Bioware releases. Its only an IE game on the surface, its more Arcanum under the skin. Arcanum was a broken piece of shit but I found it more fun than this. Not to mention the fact that it went swinging for the fences world and storywise. The creators in this game made their vision pretty conservative. The vision of this game is not very strong and comes out as lukewarm generic.
Good game but buggy as hell, and too short to really flesh out all the characters. The expansion has some interesting games ideas but the soul eating mechanic is more interesting as a story device, and annoying in actual practice. Clerics are way too powerful in this game while other classes like Palemaster are hard to use. The crafting is kinda painful bec you have to scrounge for stuff, and you can usually survive with premade items that you find. The castle building minigame feels forced and out of place. In summary, lots of good ideas but not enough game to flesh out/maximize them.
