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It is the time of change; the land is in an uproar with
the threat of internal politics and foreign invaders at the
door. You are a good hearted lord who is charged with the
defence of the land and its people. To this end you are charged
with the construction of a medieval castle...
First impressions of Stronghold 2 are not good. The
game seems buggy and ultimately unsatisfying. Getting into
the game is easy enough, with the user interface being fairly
intuitive and easy to pick up. A new player should be up and
running in very little time. Not played a game like this before?
No problem. The developers have included a hierarchical hints
list which goes from gentle prompts to telling you, explicitly,
what you need to do next.
The game play is similar to a number of others in this genre.
You need to marshal your resources to fight off marauding
bands of invaders whilst at the same time building your castle
and supporting community. You are presented with two possible
single player campaigns to undertake: War and Peace, the difference
between the two being self evident from the titles. To be
honest it really doesn't matter much which one you pick as
the missions in each are rather repetitive and the enemy AI
is not very creative or intuitive and with a little practice
do not make a credible threat. More interesting are the skirmish
and multiplayer options, which have the added bonus of dumping
the dreary storyline, for a much straighter build and kill
option.
Graphically
the game is presented in 3D which does it little favours.
The game looks and feels older than it should and has the
air of a rush job to cash in on the success of Stronghold
1. The game freezes at some points leading to great irritation.
Navigation around the field of interest is simple enough,
but zoom into some of the characters and you'll see men walking
through solid object or even merging with them, it can make
keeping track on whose doing what confusing, and in a new
game should really not be an issue.
The
cut scenes are also dated, with fairly poor animation and
some really over the top voice overs, what where they thinking?
Overall
if you've never played a resource management game and your
bag is castles then this might be for you, but you'll have
to put up with the buggy game play, and the sometimes dodgy
graphics.
Charles
Packer
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£18.99
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£31.99
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£26.99
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