n00b Gaming Review: Stronghold 2 |
Article Rating: Above Average
(# of votes: 1) |
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| Author:
| nirus
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| Submitted: |
01-Jan-1970 01:00:00 |
| Imported From: |
zZine (original author: nirus)
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| I had high hopes for the second installment of Stronghold as I put the CD into the drive; there haven?t been that many truly real-time medieval games on the market, and of those, even fewer have been successful.
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The opening movie sets the scene for what I feel is a rather enthralling storyline. I don?t want to ruin it for you, but suffice it to say that you?ll be surrounded more than once. Prepare your castle well, man the parapets, and you may just survive to tell the tale.
The missions follow common RTS styles with a few interesting exceptions. You?ll gain the ability to use certain technologies along the way, but you are denied certain technologies in certain missions, largely because being able to use them would give you an overwhelming advantage. There's nothing really frustrating in the mission department, and there is no reason that you should need to load a savegame unless you are getting annihilated by an attacking force.
Buildings are constructed instantly, which I find to be a huge negative with respect to the realism of the game. however, there is quite a range of technology and industry available, so much so that you quite often will not be able to implement them all. The learning curve also doesn't seem too steep: my early and somewhat haphazard castles quickly improved to more functional layouts as I learned.
You will get a chance to both defend your castle(s) against overwhelming odds and also use siege equipment to smash enemy?s castles to bits, although personally I love the tension of trying to mow down enemies rushing towards your castles. Rolling logs and flaming arrows add to the feeling that you?re in a truly life or death struggle.
Several of the missions are continuations of previous missions, thus they use the same maps and castles. Therefore, careful planning pays off. Things can turn on you very quickly and more than once I failed missions because I overexposed myself by committing all my troops to a given situation, rather than holding some back to defend my castle.
In addition to the warfare that makes up the core of Stronghold 2, keeping your peasants happy also plays an important role, and once again, structuring your castle carefully will take care of this. The first time ?Gong? showed up I was taken aback, but it adds to the realism, just as the rats and crime that you encounter later in the missions makes for a more realistic picture of castle life. Part of the challenge lies in that you can?t control the peasants directly, and you have even less control ovre estates you acquire.
The graphics aren?t overly amazing, but the lack of unit limit (that I know of), which makes for a more rounded game, also caused some lag on my laptop, particularly during the later missions when there were large amounts of troops. Considering that HalfLife 2 ran like a dream on my laptop, I am a little disappointed in th eperformance of Stronghold 2.
My pet peeves with an otherwise great game are as follows: the enemies are far too scripted, units lack the intelligence to avoid my carefully placed siege equipment from hammering them off of the map, and essentially, unless the given triggers have been tripped, entire armies can be wiped out in a fashion that I find unrealistic. If half your buddies just got wiped out by a barrage of ballista arrows the last thing you do is stand there with your back to them. Troops also lack any kind of morale: they follow orders blindly, and while useful when you know better, doesn?t accurately reflect a realistic response to siege weaponry and the like.
Version 1.0 (there are patches available) also has a few quirks that pop up as you progress through the game. I would assume that they have been fixed with the latest upgrades, but I haven?t gotten around to checking for them yet, and they have not prevented me from enjoying the game.
Overall, Stronghold 2 provides engaging game play and hours of fun. While it lacks the realism that an experienced gamer like myself enjoys, I?m not likely to exhaust the game anytime soon; there are modes and storylines that I haven?t even started yet, as well as the multiplayer options. In spite of the negatives I?ve already mentioned, this game sucked me in and held my attention. I am saddened that they couldn?t take it to the next level and make it a truly great game, but I wouldn?t hesitate to buy the next installment in the series.
All in all, it?s 7 out of 10 from me.
This article was originally published by CyberArmy.net in the CyberArmy Library.
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