Welcome to the Stronghold Crusader II Review!

Starting words: I really dislike writing Reviews but for this game there are so many lack luster reviews it saddens me and they are not really reviews just garbage and people complainin about bugs, wich has nothing to do in a review but in the support forums of firefly and bug support.... so i was thinking my self i do a review.

First up, i do nor own the dlc's yet soon as i get them i will get to do a review on them aswell

Pro's and Con's:
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+The grafics arent as bad as everyone is claiming them to be, they are solid.[and Grafics are not really important for the amount of fun you can have with a game!!!]

______________________________________________________________+The AI is punishing especially on very low resources makes for some great game[the AI cheats but it does nowa days in everygame!) ______________________________________________________________+Map versatility there are a good amount of different maps to play with and it can be interessting fightin an all out last stand against 7 AI's ______________________________________________________________+Gameplay is far better than in other Stronghold's, battle is more intense more often and you can have a 500 strong man corps wich is very large! ______________________________________________________________+Music is just great, i don't get why people say it is not epic??? most of it is from the Original Crusader ______________________________________________________________+Multiplayer with AI( very important for me since i hate playing with random douches..) ______________________________________________________________+The UI is simple and easy to use/get used to, wich is great for newcomers ______________________________________________________________+It is actually dedicated to the Former Crusader fans therefore it is not a new supremecommander,Starcraft 2 or any other RTS it actually stays true to the FANBASE[ the universe can't comprehend this many Pro's i am giving for this fact!). ______________________________________________________________-The AI is using more and more little ambushing troops instead of massing units and siege you allout, wich makes it some times bothersome to play specific AI. ______________________________________________________________-Map's are not Large enough(for me that is) and there for no one needs horses ?!(and horses are lackluster). ______________________________________________________________-Ballista does not one shot units ????? i think it should no man or Woman can survive a 2 meterslong bolt throug their body?. ______________________________________________________________-Unit stacking on Towers(really really unencouraging people to build big nice looking castles and get people on the walls... ______________________________________________________________For me this is what i love and Hate bout the game, the AI is far Superior to Crusader, but only for the aggressive part dfeensive they are really not doing anything except using traps,(differs from AI to AI) the weak AI enemys are not utiilisyng anything that could let them survive a serious besiege'ing wich is.. sad. They are also not using the full potential of there Castels there are rarely any units on the walls.. ______________________________________________________________So why do you need to buy this game? ______________________________________________________________Well the Anwser is easy, really; It is a Great GAME that gives you alot of time to play around there is even a Map Editor wich you can play hours with it before actually creating you're own map and SHARE it on Steam Workshop, if you have friends you can have some tight battles against the ai if you combine different strength lvls on AI it is getting even more interesting. ______________________________________________________________ BTW: i did not encounter any bugs, they have been tended to, and been fixed. Please ignore those reviews who are just writting something on 1 Dislike basis and one stupid bug... games where never perfect and they just get more complex so they never will be perfect! ______________________________________________________________ i can Reccomend the vanilla game for full price, you won't regret it if you love building you're own castle and then battle it all out!

For the longest time, I've ignored the "cheating" AI because I actually enjoyed the game. How ever I had something happen that I just cant ignore anymore when it comes to cheating AI... The AI built a siege camp right where my wall was, it made the wall disappear and they were able to come in as they wanted. I now longer recomend this game because of this even tho I still like the game.

evidence of my issue - http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=724089443

A very quality Game with Great Graphics and down to earth gameplay. I really enjoyed the Military options and diversification of units.

good game but i think a new perfect version beetween strong hold 1 and this should come out.

Good game.

I still really believe in this franchise, and still believe in the stronghold series. The old stronghold games were brilliant, and this game is an okay addition for the time being. This game is a waaaay better game than Stronghold 3 (but any stronghold game is better than SH3).

I personally think this game is certainly worth the money for any fan of RTS games.

I like the direction they took with this game, primarily focusing on new interesting AI. I like the varying AI's that were developed. I just wish they did more to increase the population limits, features, economic complexity, etc. I wish they had more time, resources, and staff to make this game what it could have been.

But for what the game is right now, it's still a good buy for a stronghold fan or a RTS fan.

Just play the original, this one isn't as good, sure there are some different types of troops and buildings, but the original is so much better, it doesn't crash all the time and the AI is somewhat competent.

I always was a big fan of Stronghold and I own EVERY existing Stronghold so far ( except Stronghold Legends I believe ).

After firefly kind of messed up Stronghold 3, they came up with a huge promise, they said something like " Stronghold Crusader 2 will be like the loved title Stronghold Crusader 1 and will be carefully overworked to not make it a mess-up like Stronghold 3 and as similar as possible to SHC1 " But what happened?

They messed it up, completely. Stronghold Crusader 2 is literally NOT playable, the game terribly laggs and even crashes when having more than a hundred or two-hundred troops on the battlefield, multiplayer so on is dying or even dead already.

The campaign is alright but nothing compared to the lore and story telling campaign of Stronghold 1.

As disappointed as it makes me feel, I have to NOT recommend this game, it's a total mess-up. If you want to play REAL-STRONGHOLD as it was born and created, go for Stronghold 1 and Stronghold Crusader 1. If you can deal with the outdated graphics, you will enjoy it a lot.

PS: Thanks for messing up one of the greatest game-series firefly.

lots of people say crashes but i've never had that problem, couple of bugs nothing too major.

The game ruining part is the building +unit cap, each player gets 1000/no. players (for units) and 400/nomber of players (for buildings) which means no epic battles, small forts with limited production. The cap completly ruins the game.

***Die-hard fans of the Stronghold series, please read this review before making your purchase. You won't regret it.***

As a long time fan of the Stronghold series, this game was such a let down. Yes, it is *technically* a Stronghold game, and it technically is the sequel to Crusader, but overall it is not even close to being on par with the rest of the series.

--First, the Good--

At its core, the concept of Stronghold is still the same here. You'll start off building a settlement, gathering resources via a supply chain, ultimately crafting weapons to arm a force of soldiers.

There are familiar units: Archers, Macemen, Crossbowmen (Crusader). Horse Archers, Slaves, Assassins(Arabic)..as well as some new ones, including the Healer and many other Arabic mercenaries not previously seen. You can build walls, towers, siege weapons and all sorts of defense mechanisms for keeping the black knight at bay.On top of that, many familiar faces return, such as The Rat, Richard the Lionheart and more.

The game is, of course, a 3d Model game, bringing the Crusader series at least one generation ahead.

And...that's about it. Honestly. If you were a fan of the original series, it may warm your heart to actually have some new Stronghold content to play with, but there really isn't anything new and exciting here.

--Now, the Bad...where do I begin?--

First of all, the game is somewhat broken. There are plenty of times where characters models won't animate, and it's not uncommon for characters to simply float across the map in the standard model "christ pose" without any animation. Even the oxen who carry the stone in the game would freeze when moving on an angle. Stone walls are another mess. Too often, staircases would end up with a wall piece right in the middle of them, creating a strange unrealistic graphical error. These are only some of the visual phenomenen that occur while playing.

That brings me to another issue...wall building. Not only do walls cost way too much in this game, but there is pretty much no room for creativity when building your castle. In the original/Crusader 1, you had so much control over every little aspect of your wall design. You could build walls of all different heights, staircase pieces, granulated walls all down to the very last square. This gave us castle builders so much of a blank canvas that virtually anything was possible if we knew how to use those pieces the right way.

In Crusader 2, 90% of the wall building is done for you when clicking. A wall piece is pre-built for you to include parapits on one side, a wall space, and parapits on the opposite side. You can no longer just build a simple piece of stone wall, the basic building block (almost literally) of the original series' castle building element. Sure, you can add towers and all kinds of siege weaponry, but the fun and joy of really creative a keep down to the last detail is completely lost here.

The cost of walls adds to another huge gripe with this game...balance. It's my understanding that a patch has re-balanced some of the economy issues, but the game is still WAY too unbalanced when trying to get your city up and running. Too often I find myself running out of resources right at the beginning of a match, even when set to give myself a huge advantage over my AI counterparts. For example, a windmill in this game costs 200 wood. In the original? 20. So it costs literally 10 times as much here. That would be fine, except woodcutters don't harvest 10 times as much wood here. They harvest roughly the same amount as before.

This leads to a TON of waiting around to gather resources right from the git-go of any match. Sure, there was always that element in the original (as with any RTS), but there is a considerable difference here. I feel like I'm not getting anywhere, even though I have what would otherwise be the basics of a civilization in place.

Ah, civilization...a thriving, breathing melting pot of people going about their daily lives, each contributing to their society in their own way, all while maintaining their own unique personality...yeah, Stronghold Crusader 1 was a fantastic game. Say goodbye to that here.

I mean, sure...you get to see the workers doing what they do in 3D, but it's not the same. Peasants say NOTHING when you click on them. No Monty Python-esque man impersonating a woman "morning your lordship!" or "no taxes is good taxes, that's my motto!", just silence. No adding flowers, maypoles, dancing bears, gauntlets, guillotines, stretching racks...good/bad popularity control is just gone.

Speaking of voices (ha), this might be one of the most dissapointing aspects of Crusader 2, and I honestly didn't see it coming.

The voice acting in this game is TERRIBLE. I mean that in every sense of the word. I have friends who can do cooky voices that would have been better candidates.

A great example is the men-at-arms. Remember the way they sounded in Stronghold 2? They were dopey lummixes, and rightfully so given their rank. Or how about their original counterpart, the spearmen? They were rough, working class fighters ready to stick a spear in whatever you tell them to.

Here's what I want you to do: We're gonna do a test. I want you to read the next sentence I say in quotes out loud. Don't use any exciting voice, or cooky impersonation, or anything. Use your normal speaking voice. Ready? Okay, say this out loud:

"Man at arms, ready. Close ranks."

Congratulations! You've just landed a gig providing voice over work for a video game!

The level of enthusiasm in these vocal takes can only be described as the bare minimum. Without trying to be funny, I've found myself honestly wondering if they simply had one of the programmers provide voices. As annoying as he was, we all have to admit that at least The Rat had a memorable personality. His voice has now been replaced with some Joe Everyguy off the street. You'll forget him as soon as you end the game.

To be fair, I need to point something else out, though, about the voice over work, and that's that there are a lot of recycled vocal takes from previous games. Archers still sound like archers, crossbowmen like crossbowmen, etc. However, it's about 50/50 as far as which characters use the classic voices, and which use Joe Everyguy.

It might sound petty to be so bitter about this, but as (I'm assuming, since you've read this far) you are a die-hard Stronghold fan, then you KNOW how important the voices are to this series. They are the character, the personality and the life of the game! They're what make you feel like you are controlling living, breathing people of all different sorts, whose lives hang at your fingertips!

The original games did all of that in spades, and they weren't even 3D rendered!

--The Bottom Line--

I haven't played much of this game, but I'm fairly confident that won't change. I could go on forever about the other issues that are impossible to ignore (such as the buildings and terrain feeling like they're from two different games), but I feel I've beaten my own horse to death here.

From what I gather, a team of less than 10 people programmed this game. I don't mean this review as offense to them specifically. They created a game, like they said they would. They accomplished something that I, of course, haven't...but it's almost like giving credit to Nickelback. I may hate their music, but at the end of the day they're creating albums and I'm sitting behind my keyboard judging people.

That being said, it doesn't mean that I have to LIKE Nickelback.

That was a bad way to end this review. Sorry to take a punch at an easy target.

Judge me all you want for that, just please don't buy this game. It's something you can't take back.