Stronghold (2001)

I recently played through the Definitive Edition that Steam released last year (2024).

I will start by saying I am completely biased for this game franchise. Stronghold was a favorite growing up, though I never beat it. I love the base building, defense emphasis, and even the way your economic options and builds grow and change over time.

The campaign is the way to play this game, it slowly teaches the game, provides interesting challenges, with a variety of maps. The story is passable with some characterful voice acting.

However, there are some issues. There are a few missions you have to attack castles without a base and these missions are a pain! You have limited resources, and the AI pathing/micro ability is absolute trash. I noticed Definitive seemed to do something where moat filling was even jankier then the HD version. This made one scenario particularly extremely annoying.

I didn't play the Definitive missions yet, but I finished the main campaign wanting to move onto a different game.

Overall, this is a fun game that ages pretty well. A few missions are not good, but largely its a fun time!

This game at it's Very Core is a "Castle Simulation".

You can enjoy building your castle, your kingdom, feeding your people, making them happy or turn their life into a nightmare. it's just a pure fun doing that along with the Soundtrack that makes you feel like the wind is hitting your face.

Moving to the RTS side of this game, it's not that Great. The Campaign can be quite frustrating sometimes because of bugs in the engine and the AI is one of the most Basic out there.

Despite all of that, this is one Interesting game. The Campaign can be quite fun if you dodged the problems and even the Sim side of the game. Not the best Features, content or Gameplay, but very interesting game to play.

I really started to love Stronghold! I remember I've seen a friend playing it back in the day and saw it on sale recently. The campaign on easy is so difficult, that I dropped it first but then picked it up again. Good that I did, now I love it!

So, yes, Stronghold is kind of difficult imo. To get your economy working everything has to be balanced out perfectly. With the time speed being adjustable you neither get stressed nor bored at anytime. It's very chill and satisfying to see your empire grow and flourish.

Above all, the game just looks amazing. Your servant's face at the right bottom corner reacting according to the population's reception of your deeds and reporting on recent events, which are also displayed by a small lofi video screen next to him is just amazing. If you go afk your servant even asks you if you went for a snack, and if it's later in the eveing if you aren't tired. That's amazing.

The graphics just look amazing. It's not as good as Heroes 3 but it definetly has the same timeless beautiful sort of old school fantasy appeal. I see that later Stronghold games have never kept up with that, same as with Heroes. I know I overestimate this, but game devs definitely underestimate it. Stronghold is strong because of its beautiful graphics, and modernization necessarily had to destroy it.

This was one of my favorite strategy games back in early 2000s. I liked it so much I played the sequels, Crusader and Stronghold 2, neither of which managed to keep the magic of the first game.

I saw that Steam had an HD remake up and had to give it a try. WOW this game holds up amazing well. The playstyle in the campaign is really fun, I have been playing on Very Hard thru the entire thing, which has only be moderately challenging, but still a blast.

My favorite missions are when you start with a clean slate fortress, so you can modify it however you want. However, taking a junk fortress from one of the villains, and trying to improve on the terrible structure gives the main challenge of the game. I have found that each mission has certain puzzles to it, and once you click those into place it is mostly a matter of time to victory.

Managing your economy and then designing a impenetrable fortress is amazing satisfying.

The story itself is mediocre, but who cares!

I'll do a full review once I fully beat the campaign, only like 6 missions left!