[strike]Recommended w/ reservations.[/strike]
Sorry, I'm changing this to thumbs-down. It's a jank fest.
Framerate is capped to game's speed, at least at low game speeds (which, is how you win, when things are difficult.) Thanks for giving us 3d stronghold -- AND a steam "enhanced" edition -- so the game can literally framecap itself to 10fps for no reason!
Units just floating around the map in default pose, not doing their walking anims. 🤦
It's "enhanced" with poo tbh.
Also for achievement hunters, u need 200 mutliplayer wins, for 100%. Among other annoying requirements. I'd stay away. 200 mp wins is tedious in any case, but for a game where only about 3 ppl worldwide even like it enough to play .... yeah.
BTW this is a mechanic from the classic game (and basically all SH games as far as i recall), but, upon reflection, the more I think about it, the more it grinds my gears: u get literally zero resources back from "bulldozing" your own buildings. In real-life historical context, this seems highly improbably if not downright punishable. 🤷♀️ Esp. aggravating as, in so many missions, doing well consists of demolishing the assy starting castle and building a real one.
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Orig review:
3d and 3d accelerators (aka "GPU"s) arguably made games and gaming better. But it didn't happen all at once, and didn't happen for every game equally. ;P
Stronghold was an early casualty of the "everything must be 3d now!" transition period. This game was so buggy when it first came out... would have def been a "mostly negative", if steam had existed at that time. :P
The detailed pre-rendered ("2d") graphics of V1 were replaced by blocky low-poly representations in V2. Post-processing was also not a thing, at that point, so the result looks like u are in a very sterile CGI world of castles. Personally one of the things I *loved* about V1 was the diegetic representation of inventory, manufacturing, etc. Your stockpile, armory, granary, etc., had a literal visual for every unit of inventory. This was lost in the "we need to minimize the # of polygons" shift to 3d, and that's kinda sad. We also have other shortcuts/omissions, like, ox cart doesn't have a worker leading the ox any more. (Another way to look at it: I guess the oxen got much smarter in v2 :P)
So ends the short history.
Now, the present. Steam Edition added what, exactly? Achievements! OK, those are definitely welcome. (Only reason I'm playing this, other than a bit of painful nostalgia.)
What else tho? Multiplayer
Certainly no (much needed) QoL.
Autosaves - only created when you start the next mission. So if you beat a mission then quit to desktop without doing a manual save ... guess what -- lost everything u just accomplished. Luckily I learned this early.
[h3]Nowadays, it's called a "misophonia trigger". But before that condition, and word, became "mainstream", it was already rude and uncouth to broadcast loud chewing sounds directly at ppl. Apparently Firefly Studios designers weren't raised with manners, and never got the memo. I *really* don't need to hear the sound of ppl crunching the apple. It's repulsive. Two thumbs-down.[/h3]
btw I'm not going to critique every mission, but, mission 3 in the peace campaign ... everything just catching on fire like what?! an annoying throwback to the "because the game says so" days. There will probably be more of these... (BTW update: fast-forward to basically *THE ENTIRE REST OF GAME* ... does anything [i]ever[/i] catch on fire/do you [i]ever[/i] need wells/water pots? No, I don't think you do... thus it's very important to condition the player as to how very very critical they are, for ~1.25 missions. 🤦)
