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A very mixed bag, to say the least

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 120 / 125
Date: April 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I would really love to give this game a better rating, because there are some aspects to the new version that I rather enjoy. Some people have complained about the new details of castle life, such as the piles of human waste & criminals running amok. I suspect that these are players who take more pleasure in warfare than in the management of infrastructure, and find anything that detracts from the waging of war to be an unneccessary intrustion. However, I have always enjoyed the micromanagement aspect of Stronghold, which set it apart from other games, and that the additional details by themselves are not a problem. Yet I would agree that there is now one detail too many, to the point that you are frantically trying to keep all of the balls in the air. It ceases to be enjoyable when you are simply racing from one problem to another.

This is compounded by the fact that, even after the downloading of the new patch (after only ONE WEEK from the game's release), the new features do not always work as they are supposed to work. In particular, I would point to the criminals, the Courthouse, and the punishments. Ideally, the guards catch the crooks, take them to the judge, and then the judge or a torturer will mete out a punishment to rehabilitate the crook. However, the game has a bug that results in no crooks receiving punishment --- instead, they pile up in the dungeon, never going to trial. The consequences are a tremendous negative number from all of the unpunished criminals, plus industries that languish indefinitely while the peasant assigned to that building rots in prison. Meanwhile, the player is forced to double rations or bribe the remaining peasants in order to stave off disaster. This alters a fundamental aspect of the game, and detracts from the overall enjoyment.

As many other reviewers have noted, this game runs very slowly, regardless of your systems specifications. The patch has not helped this problem, and I very much doubt that any future patches will improve this aspect of the game. I am not someone who has to have top of the line graphics in a game, but when one has the game set at top speed and the peasants are slogging across the screen looking heavily medicated, I tend to get frustrated after awhile.

The 3-D graphics? Novel but unnecessary. When it comes to warfare, it actually interferes with gameplay at times, particularly when I am trying to select military units and target enemy troops. Another reviewer mentioned Medieval TW and I regret that I have to agree that Stronghold 2's graphics and gameplay fall short of a game that is several generations older in terms of development. It is disheartening that the developers could take the great franchise that the Stronghold games represent and turn out this tepid, uninspiring effort. I can only hope that there are many more patches to come, which may help improve the game's many problems.

*******************************

Patch 1.2 update (6-7-05): it seems only fair to note, after commenting on the game's many deficiencies, that the developers seem to be doing their level best to address the problems. The latest patch seems to have corrected a great number of the problems. I don't play multiplayer, so I am in no position to comment on any problems on that end, but solo play seems to be much less buggy.

However, speed issues continue to bedevil the game, and I do not believe that it is simply because everyone is working on elderly obsolete machines. I am left with the impression that the developers simply piled too much detail into the game --- again, it leaves the player micromanaging to a frantic degree while causing the game speed to become sluggish.

Having said that, it appears that the developers are trying to make this game as playable as is possible. This gives me encouragement. I would now give this game a four-star rating with some qualifications.

Great gameplay

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 55 / 63
Date: May 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I'm a huge fan of strategy games and of empire-building games. Stronghold 2 does a really good job of balancing the aspects of gameplay and warfare.

First off, I really love the graphics and atmosphere. I love medieval research and recreation, so I was quite impressed with the attention to detail here. The game is in fact educational, helping you learn how the complex interplay of economy, land usage, mineral resources and even social balance all helped to keep a village or castle area going.

I love the fact that there are management issues to deal with - that you're not just cranking out troops and blasting away at enemies. Those troops had to come from somewhere. The money to pay the peasants who mined the ore had to come from somewhere. If all you're out for is build-and-blast, there are plenty of games out there to do that for you. Stronghold lets you delve more deeply into the actual world that these struggles took place in.

There are in fact different modes of gameplay that focus either on world-building on or conflict. Depending on your aims, you can choose one path or the other, and focus on whichever pleases you more.

I've read some reviews where people complain about game speed. I haven't had ANY issues at all with the speed of the system. When I watch the little people on the screen, they appear to be moving at "actual normal" speed compared to the buildings and objects around them. What, do you want super-human little peasants that can zoom faster than Speedy Gonzales?

That being said, this is of course a new game. That means it runs best on newer systems. If you try to run a new, graphic-rich game on an ancient P-100, then of course it's not going to work. That's always true with any game. PCs are not meant to last forever. You need to keep them upgraded and RAM-filled to handle what the new games offer. I find that a quite reasonable thing. After all, I want new games to be as great as they can be. I don't want them to have bad graphics and tiny maps in order to still work with ancient systems.

I do have a complaint with the marketing which incessantly promotes that you can "see maidens bathing" as a selling point. Good God Almighty, isn't it enough to say it's a good game, without trying to push porn points? You don't actually SEE anything, for those who care :)

Well recommended!

This game is under-rated !!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 18 / 21
Date: July 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Let me preface this review with two data points. First I have played every RTS and civilization type game that has come out - its my favorite type of game. For me resource management and city building are cool and the fighting is just a test of what you've built. The second data point is that I do have a modestly fast machine - its a 3Ghz Dell with appropriate Ram and video card.

I didn't buy this game for a long time because the reviews were so mixed - many compelling reviews complained that the resource management was over the top and the castle details, particularly the "Gong" or dung piles, and the crime were just too much. The game seemed too complicated somehow - also there were many complaints about bugs and slowness.

However, I have found this to be the most fun games in my collection of the moment and in fact my kids also think its the greatest. Why? Well it takes a little practice to learn how to play it but once you do its really rewarding.

Of course the graphics are great: Most games seem to have that these days. But the game play is really good. There are some neat concepts here like estates which are independent lands that can be owned by you: you can receive important resources from them as well as income, and they need to be protected. There are intestesting aspects of village life that must be ballanced such as crime - the bigger you get the more there is. Rehabilitation is time based - It takes longer to rehab a criminal in the stocks than it does on the rack! The sooner he is through rehab the sooner he is back to work. You have to earn money of course, but you also have to earn honor in order to get access to more and more Castle items. To earn honor you have to make the items neccesary to hold dances, feasts, jousts, etc. If you don't keep up with building your honor your castle will fall as the enemies will come on with progressively stronger attacks which only the more up to date technology can stop.

The AI is also very good. You can set up all sorts of enemies of different calibers and they will attack in good order and with reasonable effectiveness. Your castle will get a good test. Basically they will keep after you until you knock their castles down.

Regarding the complaints about crime and "piles of human waste" this is very easy to manage - build a few extra "gong" pits and there won't be any waste problems, build a few inspiring "rehab devices" and the population won't want to commit crime anymore. Its part of the challange of running a castle. It takes a little practice to get it all done in time before the attacks come, but thats why its fun and enjoyable to play many times.

Regarding the complaints about bugs: it simply hasn't been an issue for me -the game automatically updated itself when I loaded it and there haven't been any bugs in many hours of play. Regarding the complaints about speed - well what can I say here? - its no problem at all on my 3Gig. Since play is effortless on this machine with all the settings maxed, I have to assume that you can still get good game play on lesser machines - up to a point. I think this game woudn't work too well at 1Ghz and below - just my estimate.

We use the very powerfull map editor to create our own maps - it took about 30 minutes to master but once mastered you can do a lot. You can use all the features of the games including estates, mountains, cliffs, rivers, fog, bird flocks, dear heards, terain sounds, bridges, etc. You can pre-set boundries between different estates and castles. Once the game gets going, the AI will automatically start building up communities in those areas.

Here's a few ideas for the game creators for the next version from me and my kids. First, the voices need improvement - its a fine ballance between realism and comedy that's required- We think you had a better ballance in Stronhold 1. We love the regional British voices for different classes of population - keep this up and extend it without too much comedic reading. Second, We were in a village in France recently that defended itself by throwing behives over the walls at attackers - As you have behives already why not add that to the defence? We would love to see attackers coming up the ladders only to receive a behive on the head. Third, the burning logs and rock boxes are great but we wish that they could be set to automatic. One of our favorite things to do is set up a castle and watch it defend itself - you need the defences to work automatically for this.

Overall I strongly recommend this game for anyone interested in RTS and civilization type games -the price is great, the playability is great.

The shortcomings have been well documented

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: May 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I am still giving the game a chance, but all of the negatives listed by others are noteworthy. I personally find the 3D annoying. Of greater importance is the fact that the interface is very cumbersome. I had much greater control in Crusader. I thought some of this was attributable to learning curve, but I have played long enough now to realize it isn't going to get any better.

fun but wish it was better

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: February 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I love this game and have spent a long time playing it. I love that I have to manage castle life and build a military at the same time. I actually wish that I had more castle responsibilities, and activities.
Here are the things it needs to be 5 stars.
1. I want to be able to play a multi team vs. the computer. As far as I can see I can only play people online. That sucks.
2. I would like to have a difficulty level to choose from, easy, med, hard, hardest. When you are new to the game it is frustrating because it seams too hard, when you get good at it, it seams too easy.
3. I would like to be able to read my stats at the end of the game. You know like how many military units I killed, how much gold money, honor, food, weapons total. When you win that is it. Victory, done, I like to see what I accomplished.
4. I wish there was some options for upgrades.
5. I wish it had information on my military units, like how powerful they are, or weak or the level of their armor, how great is their attack, what they are strongest against. I would also like to know how much damage/protection the pits, dogs, and other military protection can do and also know their weaknesses.
6. I wish when I play a single player game, I could be one of the other opponents.

Ok, how about this. What I want is for the makers of Age of Mythology and Age of Empires to make this game, then it would be perfect. Because the overall idea of Stronghold is great.

I still really like it. But I find myself really longing for some of these features.

I think it is really funny that you can catapult a dead cow, and it is all gross and smelly. The comments from the peasants as well as the military are really funny.

If you're unsure about Stronghold 2 - then read this review FIRST!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: April 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Okay, so this is the deal. I wanted to write the best possible review of this game BECAUSE of the horrible publicity it's gotten, that is in my opinion, ABSOLUTELY unfair. First off, I am a Stronghold Crusader fan since the first one came out and I bought it as a double CD along with Tropico by GameSpy. Then I bought the Stronghold Crusader CD which you can get at Wal-Mart for 10 bucks. It was the best game I'd ever played! The only thing that bothered me about that game was that the trees disappeared after several hours of playing and I always wished they had a night-view scene. Other than that I thought the game was flawless. Then one day while cruising the video game section at my local Babbages, I spotted the Stronghold 2 - newest edition to Stronghold Crusader. I read the box cover to cover but at that time it was like 40 something dollars so I opted to read the reviews on Amazon.com first. Boy was I disappointed. So much so I decided never to buy the sequel of my favorite game. :o(

Then the other day I was browsing Wal-Mart again and saw that Stronghold 2 was now listed at $20.00 and I had just enough left from my unemployment check to get it. In reality I didn't expect much because of the bad reviews but boy was I wrong!!! This was like playing the old Sims and finally getting Sims 2 and being BLOWN away by the new 3D engine and the new graphics features of that great game. Stronghold 2 is absolutely the BEST upgrade of my all time favorite game ever. Why is it so good? I can't even name all the kewl things they've added but I'll give it a shot.

So before I mention all that, let's get into the specifics of game play itself. Yes, I tried playing the game before I downloaded the patch and it lagged pretty bad. BUT then I downloaded the patch, some 62 MB of download off the Internet with a dial up connection that took about 3 1/2 hours (lol) but it was well worth the time. I realized the patch GREATLY improved the load time and the way the sim worked as a whole. My computer is just average compared to today's standards. I have a 1.8 Ghz Computer with 512 MB ram with 32mb video card. Very average. And btw, if a game's MIMINUM specs are a 1.4GHZ processor and recommended Ram is 512 - then figure it out guys. You need a pretty good computer to make this game work so stop F#^%# WHINING! This game plays GREAT on my pc and it's not a top of the line computer in ANY way. Not only that, but I created a castle and surrounding kingdom including EVERY option available - all the farming industries, churches, stone quarys, weavers mill, apple orchards, armory and all that that entails and the ONLY time my computer started to noticeably hesitate was when I pressed F1 and created a massive invasion to test the strengths of my castle. Another awesome feature unavailable in the original Stronghold Crusader.

So that being said, the new Stronghold 2 is just absolutely unbelievable. The new 3/D graphics are UNREAL. Building a castle on a precipice surrounded by moving trees and water below with NO limit as to how you can build and where you can build really satisfied my creative side. Then the DETAIL of every aspect of this game is flawless. You can now see directly into the stone keep and zoom in to see the King and Queen feasting around a large table. This little servant dude delivers everyone's meals on a silver platter and then they eat and drink until they're totally wasted and stumble around burping. Then they dance around and it's major bonus points when it comes to your honor rewards. Then the queen goes back to her chamber and actually takes a bath while the servants wait on her. Come on now, how much more could you ask for in the detail department? The only thing noticeably different in the mechanics of the game is the gong, rat and crime factors. All you have to do is place several gong pits, falconer's stands and guard stands. Problem solved. It worked for me. And like the original Stronghold Crusader, the basic principle is still the same. Set up apple orchards and stone quarys first. Then develop tree mills and build your armies. They kept the original principle that made the first Stronghold Crusader such a success and at the end of my first game I had (without cheating - >:o{ ) $10,000 - 3 stockpiles full, a fully amassed army and every factory and industry available in the game. It was AWESOME! Not only that but they have more missions and scenarios than every before. Although my favorite thing is just building my OWN castle in the map editor and decking it out with every bonus available and then putting it in the free build mode and storming the castle with a large invasion. So cool to watch! And yeah, you can still build an awesome castle and surround it with enemy castles that will try and take it over as the game progresses.

But the real perks for me are small things like the wide-angle view. You can even zoom into the small houses and watch the approaching armies. There's a Lord's kitchen with this lady and her two kids that sit on the benches waiting for the festivals. There's jousting tournaments with spectators that sit in the stands cheering them on. There are even detailed facial features on all the AI! My favorite though is hanging out in the torturer's guild and watching the villagers get put up on the rack or beheaded - so kewl - lol. Once again the ONLY thing I wish they had in this edition is a nighttime view like the latest edition of SimCity4.

So if you're hesitating about getting this game - don't. And don't expect to play it on a 500 MHZ computer or even a 1.0 Ghz because it won't work. And yeah, I'm gonna get a new computer just to play this awesome game...

Thanks Firefly for all your great work!!!

Lord Mitchell

premature release results in tragic flaws

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 11 / 14
Date: September 20, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Unacceptable performance for ATI Radeon 9x00, Radeon Xx00 cards. CPU, memory type and speed are irrelevant. This graphics engine has critical issues with non-Nvidia cards.

There are menus and assets in the installation directory that do not appear anywhere in game. Several very basic gameplay bugs were not addressed until patch 1.2. Several bugs exist in campaign that if encountered will not allow you to finish subsequent missions. Less variation in game types than Stronghold: Crusader. Unreliable online play with frequent crashing experienced by many players. Stronghold 2 is clearly a victim of premature release without adequate QA testing.

If you do not own a recent Nvidia card, I would not recommend purchasing the game before seeing how the demo performs on your computer.

There still is no english demo, for good reason.
German language version available here:
http://www.fileplanet.com/153300/download/Stronghold-2-Demo-%5BGerman%5D

I am a happy fan of Stronghold, Stronghold:Crusader and Space Colony, so I do not write this easily.

Review update pending patch 1.3 and/or Stronghold 2:Conquest Edition

despite some poor reviews, this game is awesome!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: January 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

when i first got stronghold 2, i wasn't expecting much. i had read many reviews from others after it first came out, and they said that it was a sad, sad game. however, when i started playing it, i realized what a thrill it is! unlike the 2nd game of Empire Earth (the original was one of the greatest games EVER), this game follows the same layout and scheme as the first two strongholds. the simplest way to say it is, it's Stronghold Crusader on crack. there are so many new things you can do in this game, and new opponents, and the soundtrack is FANtastic! they integrated the original 2 soundtracks and added to them! this entire game is simply pumped-up with new features and ideas, and i definately recommend playing it.

*to address the "slow" problems, i have noticed a little lag on my older computer. that is, however, to be expected, as this is a new game. however, when i set the graphics setting to "low" it helps tremendously. i also (wierdly enough) notice little difference between the low and high settings anyway. ... also, i have an ATI x600 card on my laptop, and the game runs smoothely on it... not quite sure as to the earlier problem with ATI support. i don't even have the game patches yet either. make sure your graphics driver is updated, i have had that problem with other games before.

**another note... if you are more of a war-based player, i suggest you go with the new Empire Earth 2 or something like that... this is a game where you have to have to have the economy in order to have the military. i LOVE that, but some do not.

ENJOY!!

Very Fun, with a few bugs.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: April 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I very much enjoy playing both sim games, and real time strategy games, so this game is perfect for me. This game has about everything you'd imagine to see in a castle sim. However, if you are a pure RTS fan, I'm not so sure you'll like this game. Before you start doing anything related to rts, you have to wade through every aspect of "castle sim" part. In other words, you can do the "castle sim" (so to say) without the RTS, but you can't do the RTS without doing the castle sim. I will say that the castle simulation part is super simple. The main thing you have to worry about is your popularity, which is directly effected by other factors; food, taxes, crime, rats, gong (human waste), religion, ale, and entertainment. The big things that cause your popularity to fall are rats, gong, and crime, which can be managed with falconers posts (falcons kill the rats), gong pits (gong farmers remove the gong), a courthouse, and guard posts (guards take the criminals to the dungeon on the courthouse). You can easily increase your popularity by adding a church (religion), inn (ale), traveling fair (entertainment), and a jousting arena (entertainment).

Once you have a steady population, you can start producing an army. However, your army needs weapons, and each type of weapon has it's respectful building, such as the Fletcher's Workshop. The Fletcher gathers the resources needed from your stockpile (filled by other citizens with wood, stone, iron, wheat, etc...), and takes them back to his workshop. If you zoom in on the Fletcher's workshop, you can actually watch him make the arrows. When he's is finished, he will take them to your armory. If you have idle citizens, they can be recruited to bowmen from your barracks.

As for the game play, there are still several bugs, which I hope to see fixed in a much needed patch. I have an athlon XP 3000+, 512mb ram, and a 128mb geforce fx 5200 Ultra, and I have to run the game at 800 x 600, 16 bit colors, medium model detail, medium texture quality, and no DX shaders. The particle effects are spectacular, but they'll cost you. Several catapults firing on stone walls at once can cause a very noticeable lag. I've also noticed that the collision detection between units is very faulty, sometimes units will stand in the same spot. I've noticed as many as 5 or 6 in the exact same spot.

This review can't be ended without mentioning the castle building features... Everything you buid in the game appears instantly (this is an instant build game). Regarding your castle structure, uou can create both wooden and stone walls, square towers, round towers , gate houses, and a few others things of all sizes. You can also attach logs, and stones to the edges of your walls, which can be used as defencse against your enemies below.

Overall, I find this game pretty fun. There are far to many aspects of the game to list them all here, but I hope this gives you a general idea.

Makes you want to play the original instead.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: April 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

At times it's hard to see the big picture of what's going on because everything seems so zoomed-in even when you zoom-out to max. The original stronghold presented the board so one could easily see everything going on.

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