Stronghold 2 Review

The enemy AI is even worse: although simple units cannot destroy stone walls, they can deal with simple palisades, but sometimes even that will prove too much for them. Once I built three palisade walls, one inside the other, and watched the enemy destroy the first two layers but miraculously spare the last one. I have no idea what stopped them in their tracks, but they suddenly decided to stand in front of the walls, patiently waiting for me to build more units and wipe them out. The game is full of such bugs. Your enemy also tends to attack you in small groups, allowing you to defend with ease, laughing at his pitiful attempts. Only several of the missions in both campaigns could be called challenging - others are relatively simple and only require good concentration and some good management skills.

We've come to the main problem with this game: developing a village may be fun, obtaining several estates and controlling them may be even more fun, laying a siege on a city may be particularly fun - but if the victory's achieved too easily, where's the fun in that? The repetitiveness of the game includes ever the same process of building your structures and your army and then making use of them by gathering a certain resource, annihilating your enemy and so on. The repetitiveness is not a problem by itself - after all, you can't reinvent the wheel when it comes to a game like this. The problem is this process tends to become rather monotonous with time, and the low AI of your opponents only does to amplify the problem. There is also a problem with controlling a large number of units - you can select units by drawing a box around them, but it is extremely difficult to select them in the midst of battle or even within your village. Selecting a single unit is practically impossible, so some more thought on the interface would've been welcomed.

Several other game modes do little to increase the replay value of the game, as they are neither too varied nor too numerous. Apart from the main campaign, you may want to create a custom scenario, or play the Free Build mode, which allows you to build your castle at your own, relaxed pace, with no opponents to play against. Because of the lack of the military segment in this mode, it becomes a bit boring after a while as it lacks real dynamics. You can also try yourself at the Kingmaker, which is a skirmish for the crown. You may choose between nine maps with a different number of opponents. While it is possible to assign more gold to yourself than to your opponents, I do not think there should be any need for that. This mode also doesn't have high replayability, as your opponents always stick to the same tactics, thus making the experience quite predictable. Maybe the game should have included several difficulty settings, allowing the player to adjust it to their skill, but this is not the case, so you are forced to play against the idiotic AI with a bunch of relatively retarded units.

Slightly more interesting is the Siege mode, which allows you to lay siege to some historical castles such as Hastings, Koblenz, or Wartburg. It is possible to both control the city defenses and lead the attacker's army - in both cases, it plays quite nicely, even with the fact it lacks any real material. This mode focuses solely on the siege process, without the possibility of unit selection or other preparation for the siege, and once you've played all the castles in the selection you won't be coming back for more. The multiplayer comes to save the day, giving you the possibility to play against opponents who, for a change, do possess brains. (Or do they? -Ed)

The predictability and low AI of your opponents do their best to wreck the game completely. So although some missions tend to be fun, the effect is completely ruined by the monotonous process of rebuilding your kingdom or performing a set military attack. The building segment seems to be very detailed at first glance, but you soon discover it's rather repetitive and boring, and some illogical solutions make it frustrating at times. On the other hand, the military campaign is more action-packed, but it lacks substance, so it leaves you rather dissatisfied and irritated by the brainlessness of your enemies. Other than that, I have also experienced several game crashes, as well as serious lag issues during larger scale battles. All in all, Stronghold 2 promises more than it delivers, failing to capitalize on an originally unique and exciting idea.