The difference in speed between foot units is ridiculous – an archer moves at, I think, maybe four to five times the speed a heavily armoured infantryman does. I’ve seen others describe the units as being a general ‘rock, paper, scissors’ deal, but I have to disagree. Unfortunately, the combat is such that I kind of wish I had the opportunity to simply run a town and supply someone elses army with my equipment. These armaments can be sold, just as all your other resources that you make can be sold (like wood, food, stone etc), which makes for a more servile economy – if you have the stock, why shouldn’t you be able to utilise it? For instance: having a fletcher (bow maker) and an armoury will let you recruit archers (bows) and crossbowmen (bows and armour).
#Stronghold crusader review series
I like that in SCII - and I presume the rest of the Stronghold series - that you have to build the weapons and armour for all your troops. NO-ONE KNOWS WHAT YOU’RE SAYING LEARN ENGLISH THIS IS STRAYA. In a way it reminded me of Black and White 2, or a better version of The Sims, that crappy game where people speak gibberish and everyone finds it charming.
![stronghold crusader review stronghold crusader review](https://goldplatedgames.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/crusader3.jpg)
Peasants accumulate according to how happy the populace is, and ensuring that they have not only enough food but a varied food sources is important. Maybe those are legitimate options for players in the game, but for me in particular it had no real use.Īs an ecosystem of resource gathering and town management, I think the game works admirably. There were also times when I was trying to create walls that they would, for no other reason I could see other than the processors having their circuits blown by what I was trying to do, bunch up unnecessarily or just become ridiculously thin. Imagine I’d place the gate along a northern line, and the options for the gate were to face North East, North West, South East, South West. There were a few places in the game where I could put walls up in a straight line, but there was literally no way I could place a gate door along the same isometric angle. Personally, having watched gameplay videos of Crusader II 2D predecessors, I see why that particular dimensional build works - it’s kind of like putting stickers on a picture. Instead, I want to focus on the change from 2D to 3D for the franchise. Reading other reviews, I’m yet to find a complaint about that, but it might be something to keep in mind. Let’s leave aside the game crashing every now and then for the moment, because I have no idea how widespread the problem actually is. Granted, at forty bucks it’s not sporting an AAA price tag, but it lacks some simple attributes that would have made for a far better game. It’s just executed in a way that reminds me more of an extremely good browser game instead of a fully-fledged title. You have an allotted area on the map where you can build these fortifications, along with production buildings and training facilities, and your job is to keep your king or lord or whatever it is alive, and kill the opponents king/lord.Īs a basic concept, it’s actually a lot of fun. To bring those of you who don’t know what Stronghold is as an entity, let’s do a quick recap: it’s basically Age of Empires, but with a focus on building fortifications. But like any eager student with a lacklustre teacher, I’m doomed to the back of the classroom to doodle and pick my nose while thinking of what else I could be doing with my time. It’s incredibly disappointing because I want to get good at the game, I want to find new tactics and I want to beat the AI on a setting other than ‘easy’. I am a giant, clumsy noob, and unfortunately Crusader II does absolutely nothing to rectify the situation. My history with the Stronghold franchise is exactly as long as my playtime in Crusader II.