nickpy said:
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CrossLOPER said:
Stronghold: Crusader from the Warchest collection is superior to the original in many ways. Both are far better than Stronghold 2, which was apparently never finished, and Stronghold 3, which was apparently never started.
Both 2 and 3 were finished and published, 3 quite recently on steam. Having said that, I have mixed feelings about them (see below).
Tanis said:
Did the later games improve upon the series, or did they get worse?
I've not played Stronghold: Crusader, but I've heard good things about it. Stronghold 2 is OK, but not as good as the original in my opinion. I've not played Stronghold 3 but by all accounts its a totally unplayable game, which is a shame.
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As a general review of the game, I'd say the reviewer was mostly right. Personally, I love the game dearly, though I do recognise that it has its faults and percularities, I consider them part of the charm. You can really sense that this game was created out of a desire to create fun and a love of creating, something sadly lacking in the later, higher-budget installments and indeed in many other modern games.
Also, the real-time map editor is pure genius. What this means on a functional level is that the mapmaker is actually just a normal game with terrain editing and godmode tools turned on, so you can set up the level literally however you want. You could even save the scenario mid-battle!
As a long-time fan of the Stronghold series and owner of every (non-browser based) game in it, I would actually say that "Stronghold 2 was never finished and Stronghold 3 was never started" seems like an apt description.
The original game is the classic that introduced the best gameplay in the series, Stronghold Crusader had exactly the same gameplay, but with some nice additions. The mercenary post as an alternartive to the barracks, with as many arab units as the barracks had western. Barren and non- barren terrain, with plant based farms only being able to build on grassland, and of course the main addition was that of singleplayer skirmishes and AI opponents.
Stronghold 2 was an actual attempt at creating a worthy successor to the original, with an incredibly large amount of new additions and entirely new subsystems. Law and crime, dung collection and prestige with different approaches and buildings as part of each system (except dung collection ehich only featured one approach and few buildings), the mercenary post make a return eith some new mercenaries and some old. Knights are reworked from 1 and Crusader , new siege engines were introduced and the singleplayer skirmish and AI opponents also make a return.
The increased complexity however, meant that no scenario or campaign could feature all the new subsystems without feeling cluttered and without focus, while there were more rough edges and lack of polish than the original and Crusader. Add in the map-editor no longer being real time, and you had a game that genuinely tried to be a worthy successor, but didn't feel like it. "Never finished" is an apt description.
Stronghold Legends tried to go the other way and removed much of the increased complexity in economic matters, in order to focus solely on increased complexity and options in warfare. However, many felt that it was too "action oriented", and with streamlined gameplay, three different factions with special abilities and no economic campaign, it sacrificed much of what made Stronghold Stronghold, in order to try to win over a market that would never be interested.
Which brings us to Stronghold 3, Firefly talked a lot about going "back to basics" before release and it was basically an attempt to update the original Stronghold with only a few of the new mechanics from 2. It didn't even have the singleplayer skirmishes of Crusader, and it was buggy and completely unplayable both from what I heard and the little I experienced. It
feels like they tried to remake Stronghold 1 in 3d, but ended up blowing most of their budget on the custom engine and shipping not even a rough version, but an
alpha build. Which is why I find "never started" so hilarioudly tragic in how true it is.
In conclusion, the entire series feels like what the original shows. They were a studio who wanted to do something different from others and had some good ideas, but they didn't really know enough and which the sole exception of Crusader (which is basically a stand alone expansion from before that was a thing), they usually ended having to ship an unfinished product after a development where thay didn't know how to fully implement and tie together the ideas they had, while making biting off more than they could chew with what they did implement.
