Silicon Fusion >> Reviews >> Stronghold 2

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Review:

1st June 2005:
Stronghold 2
Time to fight for your kingdom, go forth and show your mettle young master Steele.
Posted by Chris Snook - PC - UK and Europe

I'll say this up front. I like Stronghold 2. It walks the fine line between action and ruler-ship and how the two interlock.

Set in a kingdom that is wracked by a king that is missing rumoured to either have fled or to have been killed in less than normal circumstances. Only yourself and Sir William, the Kings Champion know the truth and it is William's task to set the Kingdom to rights and to defeat the machinations of the evil Lord Barclay and his henchmen.

To this end William set you, "young master Steele", a former page, the tricky job of establishing a power base for himself to begin to right the wrongs and to resolve the mysteries of the King's fate and the kingdom to rights.

That is the basis for both the available options, Stronghold 2 offers a rare choice, either a peaceful campaign where you spend time developing resources and influence in the aftermath and rebuilding phase of an undefined disaster. Or the more violent path of siege and siege breaking, deploying the engines of war to crush your opponents beneath your might.

The peace campaign is built around the staple of building a fief and governing it as you see fir in order to improve your revenues, honour and income by growing an economy, gaining taxes and understanding the complexities of how to balance expansion with being able to feed and support that very expansion. This is well done and can take time to master, it becomes engrossing and provides a wonderful counterpoint to the more normal fare. There are alternative modes including freebuild, where you get to be seriously creative.

The siege campaign is also well executed and provides a solid base for the continuing chapters. As in the peace campaign you need to build your lands and demesne to defend from attacks over time and to provide a secure footing for William to try and resurrect the kingdom as a safe and free land for all involved, so foiling the dastardly plans of Barclay and his supporters. This is well structured and each chapter leads into the next with a decent level of smoothness. Again a balance has to be struck, between the previous elements and the added difficulty of having to form a military force and sustaining it. Pre-planning missions ahead is vital as space is limited. The other modes of play are in a similar vein, with historical sieges, that can be either from the point of view of the besieged or the assailants. There is also a race for the crown, where you hold a county or similar and engage in manoeuvring to become the most powerful Lord of the Realm and thus take the crown. This also is nicely done and is reminiscent of titles from a decade ago - which is not a bad thing.

Both types of campaign also allow for the creation of you own scenarios adding even further to the flexibility of the game.

Graphics are detailed and the animations in the missions are solid, in the cut scenes there is a definite style for the animations, slightly exaggerated and these jar a little with the look and feel of the rest of the game. The still images are superb and the title screen is very well done and picked out. The armour looks fantastic.

It is the audio that steals the show. It is obvious that a lot of care and detail has gone into the design of the sound and music. There are tunes that sound like they should be Arthurian or medieval, with jigs, plainsong, cleric music and a beautiful, haunting piece on the loading screen that sets apart this title from others. The sounds of battle are clear and help convey the action and the voice work is great. Individual accents for different units, ranging from Home Counties to Liverpuddlian and Welsh, each tied into a specific unit. There is even a specific voice for the peasants. Occasionally this is let down by dialogue that seems to be awkward.

As would be expected in an RTS style game, whilst each individual area is limited the total game area is immense, the number of missions in total is quite impressive and they all take time to complete. Both campaigns play well and show a lot of thought but they do suffer slightly at times by repetition. By linking the two branches though, even if it is nothing more than the same timeline there is a sense of continuity that helps keep things running smoothly.

Controls wise it is mostly intuitive and after a few patches most of the problems have been ironed out. Control is almost totally by mouse, select click and away you go. This speeds things up enormously and since one of the best touches is that you can rotate the view by the mouse you can respond to crises rapidly. It is this rapidity that proves to be a problem, it is at times too sensitive, caroming off as you nudge the mouse to move the view around, same for the rotation. This can mean a moment of recovering or disorientation at a crucial moment and despite the option to alter the sensitivity there is no real happy medium.

In total, Stronghold 2 is a fine game to play, there are a few problems but nothing that really detracts from the whole. That you can play both sides of war and peace is a brilliant idea and set things apart for those who are after a more leisurely style of play whilst keeping to others who are after a more tactical challenge to sink their teeth into.

Chris Snook

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Review Summary:

Stronghold 2 is a good addition to the RTS genre, with well thought out campaigns split into two major paths, that of peace and conflict so allowing for a complete experience of war and the ways of rebuilding. There are minor control problems and a few dialogue problems but apart from that well worth checking out.

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