Stronghold: Definitive Edition

This is a great game however this release is very buggy. It has audio glitches, missing information panels, bad AI and Pathfinding. Some of the cinematic features don't play / work fully. Just hopped off to write this review as I was mid-mission and my castle became bugged to where I couldn't close the wall off ("Too close to enemy" which is non-existent). The game is literally called Stronghold and I was unable to finish my Stronghold.

I really love the old-school Stronghold games, and so these recent remasters, I think, are incredible. There is something about 2D sprite-based games with upscaled resolutions that just look amazing. They did the same thing with the Command & Conquer remaster. But there is 1 thing that annoys me so much about this game, and it kind of ruins the whole thing for me, and it was the same in the OG, and I wish they changed it 20 years down the line, but they didn't FOR SOME REASON, and that is the extremely limited UI interface that does not show all information on screen to the player at all times, and so you have to go into submenus to see actual stats, and we aren't talking about some unimportant stats; I'm talking about the most important stats in the game, which is the popularity rating among your peasants. For example, why can I not pin the "popularity" submenu somewhere in the corner of the screen so I can see when a stat drops right away and so I can act on it? Why do I have to go into the submenus to see when a stat drops, and why do I have to keep going back into the submenu to see what my popularity stats are? PLEASE let me pin certain or basically any submenu I want to the main UI in the corner of the screen (like top left or top right). This is really keeping the franchise down. Otherwise it's great. But this is something they should really have considered implementing, and I still don't understand why they didn't after 20 years.

Not recommended. Great game and great style/visuals. But the fact there is not a skirmish against AI is kind of stupid. Forget buying this game if you want to play a medieval city builder where you can forge alliances with other lords cities ... You can't do that in this game. No skirmish. No freedom and nothing more to do other than the linear campaign. If i COULD i would refund this and get the stronghold games where you can have a skirmish against AI's I am new to this franchise and of-course picked the one game that don't have skirmishes against AI ... Looks like it is back to age of empires 2 for me.

联机模式不能加人机，慎入

A great nostalgic return. I always found the original Stronghold harder than Crusader because of its siege-heavy scenarios, but this time I went all in and completed everything, including both DLCs. To achieve 100% I had to really learn the game, check guides, understand the meta and use various tricks to outplay the bots. Very satisfying experience. The remaster itself is excellent — pre-rendered graphics still look fantastic. The only real downside are economic missions where RNG events like random fires can completely ruin a run. Challenging, rewarding, and faithful to how I remember it. 💪

One of the finest games ever made. Masterful game design. If you are mostly a solo player I really would not worry about no skirmish, There is just so much solo content. They added raids to free build that is such a HUGE feature along with so many other options to customize and spice up free build, for those of us that enjoy building and decorating the perfect castle. Also because its so much solo content it is the perfect game for and starter point for the series and learning the mechanics and getting ready for crusader but I honestly prefer the atmosphere of this game more and wish I would have waited on buying crusader as I see myself putting hundreds of hours in this before I even touch crusader de. So much personality and style. I love this game and series so much and I am so glad Fire Fly is still around.

В отличии от оригинала вы можете играть только за одну нацию(стартовую). А так же нет режима игры против ботов, где можно настроить силу ботов их фракцию и тд.

Stronghold is a classic RTS of yesteryear. Unlike a lot of its contemporaries like Age of Empires or Starcraft it's based more on building a balanced economy alongside a military force. The focus of the game is around developing what your citizenry needs (food, shelter, religion etc) and then after doing that being able to then create your military and conquer the enemy. This balance of economics and military strategy is really fun and engaging and creates this core game loop that on paper shouldn't work but somehow does. Part of that is so much of the game feels automated for you. Like you don't need to micromanage what your citizens do. The main thing you end up doing minute by minute is just building new farms, spawning new units and attacking the enemy when they invade. The rest is done for you. At the same time I really wish the game telegraphed what exactly you need to do more. One thing I dislike for example is it's not readily obvious how many bakeries you need for mills, and you end up stockpiling a lot of flour and not delivering enough bread. I kind of wish the game would just tell me "hey build more bakeries" or "hey you should probably spawn more archers". I understand that it would probably be annoying to veteran players but I think if they added more stuff like that it would've made the game even better for new players. This release of Stronghold is the Definitive Edition and it's really good. It fixes basically all of the problems with the original game and runs really slick. At the same time they didn't add a skirmish mode. Which felt very badly needed, as the missions felt overly scripted. Once you complete all of the missions there isn't a lot of replayability outside of multiplayer. But aside from that, Stronghold is a solid RTS with a steeper than I'd like learning curve and if you like the setting it's a no brainer to try out.