Estou gostando do jogo. Tem umas arestas a aparar, mas, no geral, o jogo está bom. Ainda não joguei o multiplayer para falar. Para quem gosta de RTS clássico, vai gostar de SH Crusader 2. Porém, o pessoal que jogou SH1 e 2 vai notar que faltam várias unidades e mecânicas no jogo. Com razão, esse pessoal está reclamando. O jogo foi capado. Mas, mesmo assim, ainda é divertido. Mas que realmente SH 1 é o melhor da série, acho que ninguém duvida disso. Uma pena tirarem os engenheiros, os escaladores, terem diminuído os requisitos para as unidades de elite...

Jogo fraco: os soldados são muito burros, há poucas construções e guerreiros para criar e os gráficos não são como eu esperava. Está com alguns bugs. Pelo preço não vale a pena. Espere uma promoção de pelo menos 50% para comprá-lo.

Melhor jogo de estratégia que já vi, gráficos espetaculares e jogabilidade muito dinâmica!
Recomendo!

Please read on before simply accepting this as another "Yes" review, because this a very mixed opinion. First, I would like to clarify this is from the Point of view of someone who has been playing Stronghold since the first game came out, and has consistently played every single installment to near completion - Aside from Kingdoms, which is mediocre imho. Maybe you'll agree, maybe you won't - Anywho, this is how I felt.

The Good:
- Solid skirmish mode, much like older renditions of the game.
- Very old school Crusader vibe/feeling to it. Remake successful.
- All of the new units are interesting, aside from the slave driver - Which I don't care for.
- New Unit special abilities are cool and add depth without overpowering or ruining units.
- New Siege engines that are also interesting and for the most part useful.
- Resource caches, Lion Dens, Outposts are all neat additions to the old crusader formula.
- Varied AI characters like the original and a promise of DLC Lords in the future.
- Really like the "curtain walls." I was skeptical of them until I used them in a trail mission.
- Took the good things from SH3 while leaving out most of the bad things.
- Neutral territory reminds me of the old territory system of SHC.
- The new buildings (like the wooden barricades for example) are interesting.
- Genuinely enjoyable game with as much replay value as the original.
- New ally system where allies mood affects how willing they are to do your bidding.
- Departure of Free form SH3 buidlings. Return of efficient, grid-based building system.
- Better physics, especially in regards to arrows - which bounce off and break on walls.
- More realism, such as troops pulling out pick axes and tools to smash walls down.
- Beautiful destruction physics. I've gotten into trouble from watching castles go down.
- Unit costs fixed or improved (Assassins especially brought back to reasonable price!)
- Much simpler Editor than SH3, albeit still with as many options.
- Able to play as other lords, and even choose what your lord looks like in skirmish.
- Buildings change when playing Arabic or Crusader Lords.
- Genuinely enjoyable game. Can't even lie, I will put 100 hours or more into this, easily.

The Bad:
- Stone is completely unbalanced. Walls cost 7 stone just for 1 square
- So, 100+ to make 15 Tiles of wall! WTF? So even a basic castle is 500 to 1000's of stone.
- Furthermore, walls also break much quicker - Causing lots of problems in the heat of battle.
- Buildings have ridiculous costs, which is ridiculously high (200 wood for a Market? Seriously?)
- Bare, boring, pathetic campaigns - So much for paying $10 extra for "additional campaigns."
- No campaign is longer than 4 Stages, and the mini campaigns are Only 2 stages long!
- Cavalry units cannot attack buildings anymore, making them significantly less useful.
- All of the Special Edition Features (cost an additional 10 dollars) were pathetic at best.
- Half of the artbook is on the official site for free, and it's only about 20-30 pages.
- The two mini campaigns take 10 minutes, and the 10 shields speak for itself in lame-ness.
- Only redeeming thing was the soundtrack. basically you paid 10 dollars for an old OST.
- Missing the things introduced in SH2 that were memorable, like feasting, honour, etc.
- While many did not like those features, I feel like the economy is really bare without them.
- Mediocre Maps. Crusader only had 3 or 4 maps I didn't like, this one has 3 or 4 I do like.
- Many maps don't have any resources available, or are too unbalanced to enjoy.
- Pretty much need the Map Editor if you want to have truly good maps.
- some glitches and crashes, though this is to be expected.
- pathetic sized unit caps and building caps.
- At 1 v 1 it's perfectly fine, but even 4 player matches feel very tiny.
- Bland building selection, needs more towers, bastions, etc. SH3 had so many options!
- Overpriced with the promise of even more (paid) DLC in the future.

All in all, I feel like the game as a whole is really good - But I feel like it is horribly overpriced. 50 Dollars is too much. I felt like none of the features I got in my "special Edition" were all that special, and were not worth 10 dollars more. I feel like this game would've been much more fair to be sold at around 20-30 dollars instead (Crusader was 19.99 when I got it on release). Do yourself a favor and try and get it on sale, or at discount - it is a very fun game and I will keep playing, but it is incredibly over priced - Especially the "special edition" which was anything but special.

Stronghold Crusader 2 is the successor to the successful RTS castle simulation game of the same name from 2002, With a full skirmish mode supporting up to eight total players (including fan beloved AI bots) and all new castle co-op skirmish mode, Crusader 2 is your ticket to castle simulation paradise.


Stronghold Crusader 2 is a real time strategy game set during the crusades, it has a stronger focus on combat as the ingame economy has been streamlined from the other Stronghold games. You are charged to provide food and entertainment for your workers who, in turn, form the backbone of your economy. Mine Stone, extract pitch, farm wheat, or chop wood. Once your stockpile has a steady flow of raw goods you are ready to refine them into weapons, drink, or processed food types. A strong economy is mandatory to support an ever growing military.

On the militant side of the game you have one of the hallmarks of the Stronghold franchise, entirely modular defense system. The map has a grid superimposed upon it which is used to align and place structures. Each wall is placed piece by piece, every tower and gatehouse where you want them. Lay traps such as killing pits and pitch ditches for your enemies and garrison your archers atop your great towers. There are many defensive and offensive tactics to experiment with, sally forth and meet your enemy in the field or bring the fight to your castle and employ traps and tower mounted siege engines to your advantage.

In skirmish mode the base objective is to kill all enemy lords, although multiplayer games have a greater range of victory conditions. The single player campaign has custom objectives and scripted invasions/events. When Steam Workshop becomes available for Stronghold Crusader 2 players will be able to create and share their own skirmish maps and custom missions.


The biggest difference players coming from Crusader HD will notice is the transition to a full 3D game engine. Many of the same units feature in both games but I'll make a note of where they differentiate. Crusader HD fans will also notice a simpler overall economy with many previously gimmicky mechanics streamlined or just removed.

Maps:

The following times were recorded using the time it took an archer to traverse a flat terrain map and are done on the diagonal (corners: top left to bottom right). Stronghold Crusader 2 has an additional map size and all map sizes for Crusader HD use numbers to represent size (eg 200x200).

	Stronghold Crusader HD		Stronghold Crusader 2
Map Size	Time in seconds	Map Size	Time in seconds
		Tiny	20
160x160	46	Small	60
200x200	58	Medium	100
300x300	88	Large	140
400x400	118	Extra Large	220

Buildings:

-Changed! Faith - churches now operate similar to the Granary and needs candles to operate which are built in the chandler's workshop.
-Changed! Inns have remained largely unchanged but you only need to place one inn now to cover your entire populace.
-Changed! The Stockpile, Granary, and Armory now have unlimited storage capacity meaning you only need to place one.
-Changed! Iron Mines now require an Ox Tether much like Stone Quarries
-Changed! The Market can now be set to auto sell goods when they reach a preset threshold.
-Changed! each weapon type requires it's own unique workshop.
-Changed! Tower mounted siege engines can not be placed on stone towers, they incorporate their own wooden tower.
-Removed! Hunter's Hut, replaced with Pig Farm
-Removed! Fear Factor has been removed, troops will no longer receive a malus or a boost based on your economy.
-Removed! While not exactly a building, moats do not feature in the game.

Units:

-New! Slave Driver - whips nearby slaves into a frenzy
-New! Healer - units within range slowly regenerate HP
-New! Whirling Dervish - a poorly armored melee unit with a strong first contact attack
-New! Sassanid Knight - light knight with special charge attack
-New! Ranger - proficient with both sword and bow but has poor range
-New! Sergeant-at-Arms - units within range receive a HP boost
-New! Conscript - basic weak units, no weapons required to recruit
-New! Hussite War Wagon - can station units inside, provides protection and mobility
-New! War Wolf - super catapult
-New! Burning Cart - creates fire on impact, triggers traps
-Changed! Spearman now called Man-at-Arms and can throw his spear
-Changed! Maceman only requires a mace to recruit now
-Changed! Knight now called Templar Knight and can fight mounted or on foot
-Changed! Fire Thrower renamed to Oil Pot Thrower
-Changed! Battering Ram - Can now only destroy Gatehouses
-Changed! Catapult - can no longer throw diseased animals
-Changed! Portable Shield renamed to Mantlet
-Removed! Slinger
-Removed! Ladderman
-Removed! Siege Tower
-Removed! Tunneller

Engineers are no longer recruited but automatically provided if required when recruiting siege engines. Also, due to the 3D engine many of the map tricks previously used to create eye candy are impossible but there are a fair selection of set pieces to add some much welcomed variety.

Note: for those wondering how to access the map editor, go to your steam library dropdown menu and elect to filter your library by Tools. The map editor should show up on the list of utilities as 'Stronghold Crusader 2 Map Editor'. After a small 2MB install you are ready to start map making.

Check out TotalBiscuit's review of the game on YouTube: http://youtu.be/1lORmgVXOFQ

I am one of the stupid ones who got my hopes up after seeing reviews and hearing 'its the original game, but much improved with more additions bringing it up to date' ... and so i bought it.
What a mistake!
IT IS MISSING MANY THINGS FROM THE ORIGINAL!!!!!
No laddermen
No seige towers
No moats
No engineers! to use, build or put into your seige equipment. This changes gameplay massively, as it used to take time to get decent wall defences, because you had to first build the engineers workshop, produce engineers, and build a big enough tower, then build a ballista/mangonel etc on it, and then put your engineers in them for them to function. Now i just buy a bloody ballista tower as soon as the game starts and it begins shooting longrange hail marys from the get go.
What about PIMPING my castle... **** in 2002 i could put flags and the likes around, not in this remake.
No EVIL / NICE system in the castle. Gone are the days of building dungeons and setting out heads on spikes to scare your populace ****less so you can tax them etc... this also kills gameplay in a big way, that was so much of the fun!
Have to agree with most of the other comments.. The WALLS come down like polysterene blocks, so effortlessly and quickly.
Maps are tiny, one of the only flaws in original also. but its 2014 youd think they could have fixed that!!! Makes it annoyingly irritating to have resources far from castle so you can NEVER fully have your castle emcompass everything. You are always rebuilding or defending your resource buildings out in the middle of nowhere.
No more leather armour
No info when you scroll over buildings etc
No more peasants saying provocative gestures when u click em
No tunneling men?? that ive seen
The AI keep repeating the same tripe over n over again, its 2014 ! get a heap of new sayings in there not just 1 or 2 !!!
AI is not improved, they do the same **** over n over again from what ive experienced.
Economy is broken. Just build candlestick maker buildings and sell them at market and basically dont have to build any other resource buildings cause you can buy goods at market from candlestick profits!

Ahh the list is endless.

THIS GAME HAS BEEN DUMBED DOWN !!!

IT HAS LESS THAN THE ORIGINAL !!!

Gameplay is not even as fun as original !!!!! :(
It starts to freeze up on any settings medium or higher... on ultra it sucks as soon as you have over 2 ai one one map.
Not my pc, i built a high specd rig with 4.8 eight core an 3g graphics card etc... poorly designed game. i run all other games on ultra no probs.

Ok, rant over.

Graphics not good, just ok. until it starts to freeze up.
Only cool thing was haybale launcher thingy.
So if your into firey haybales then fork over all your dough, otherwise DONT BUY !
I hope they fix this game but i highly doubt it !!!

I wanted to love this game. I really did. After only three in-game hours, I can honestly say that THIS is not a Stronghold game. I've tried looking at it from all angles; seeing it as not a continuation to a series that was plagued by Stronghold 3, but as a sequel to the Stronghold game that stole my heart - Stronghold: Crusaders.
Even as such, this game fails to deliver. Nothing was built upon - nothing - and if I were to be honest, I would even go as far as to say features were removed. Good features. Important features. What you've been left with feels like the Civilisation game released on the Xbox marketplace; it's cute, but not a full fledged Stronghold game.
Where are my Engineers? Laddermen? Tunnelers? Moats? Why is building my castle so... generic?
I wouldn't have minded a re-skin of Stronghold 2. Nor a remake of the original Crusaders. Given this as the alternative, I would've honestly rather pay an additional $54.99 (CAD) for Firefly to just add Skirmish to Stronghold 3, not release a half-game riding the coattails of previous successes.
Will I continue to play? Yes. I refuse not to. This game may lack... everything... but damn it, if I want simplicity and don't feel like an RTS like the AoE series, I'll play this.
Will I recommend this to friends? No. Friends, fellow fans, I've played scapegoat. I've lost this round. Continue reading if you're interested, I'll try to go more in-depth.

Pros:

• Looks Pretty (Despite a few weirder texture maps...)
  
• Different Style Maps (stone in one corner, iron in another)
  
• Community (whether angry fans or not, it's got a living community)

Cons:

• No Laddermen
  
• No Moats
  
• Slower Resource Gathering (resulting in longer, uneventful games)
  
• No actual Engineers (I guess peasents just magically know how to man ballistae, trebuchets, and so-on)
  
• Poor enemy selection (The new enemies already feel generic)
  
• Many Stretched Textures (it may look pretty, but not as pretty as it could)
  
• Weird in-game stuttering and freezes (Before anyone explodes on me, blaming my rig, I have no issues running Shadow of Mordor on high at 1080p (60fps avg.), or Endless Legend, or Stronghold 2 or 3, or Tomb Raider)

All-in-all, this game is not done. At least, it better not be.
Visuals: 8/10
Combat: 6/10
Castle/Town Management: 4/10
UI: 8/10
Unit Differences: 3/10
Enemy AI: 5/10
Gameplay Feel: 4/10

Do what you will with this, buy it if you want, Hell, you might even like it. But I cannot recommend this as an honest Stronghold game.

Gamers may have changed, Firefly. Choosing to buy into industrious brands like "Call of Duty" and the like, but your audience has not. We have not grown stupid over the years, and we will continue to wait for an actual Stronghold Crusader 2.

Or just scroll down and read the summary.

Being a fan of the original Stronghold and Stronghold Crusader, it makes me sad to report that this game does not continue in the right path that was set by those two games.
The worst thing about this game are not bad visuals, glitches, unbalanced and unfair skirmish trails or even the opposing lords with paper-thin personalities (yes, even when compared to the older games' lords). The worst thing about this game is that it is not fun. Even if you're a veteran player like myself, who really tried to like the game, you have a high chance of wasting your money on this product.

Why is it not fun?
First of all, the "castle-sim" aspect that was the best thing Stronghold series had to offer is gone. Forget about witty comments when you click on your peasants, forget about fear factor and any kind of happiness management. All you have left is ale and religion, and population management was simplified so its only real purpose is to increase your taxation.


Second thing, the AI cheats. Literally. Stronghold Crusader was a hard but fair game. But this game will make you drop it when you realize how unfair it is. The sieges have been dumbed down to massive tank rushes (btw, no more ladders, siege towers and tunnelers). You think crippling the enemy's economy and destroying key structures used in building the army will stop him from recruiting more troops? Think again. The AI will always pull out more soldiers, even when you destroy their barracks, armory and mercenary post. Oh, and they get walls, siege engines and weapons for free.


Technical side of the game is not much better. The graphic quality would barely pass in 2007, and the engine is poorly optimized so expect severe FPS drops unless you have a monster machine. The FPS tends to drop the most during sieges, as there tend to be hundreds of soldiers, and a lot of wall demolishing.




Stronghold Crusader 2 is a bad game, whether you're a veteran of the franchise or a total newcomer.
If you want a superb castle-sim, with plenty of humour, good AI, interesting opponents, great art style and 2d graphics and compact and fair gameplay - play Stronghold Crusader HD. This game will not satisfy you, unless you're ready to overlook the game's many problems. But beware, there's not much else to see.

No, it's not the world's best sequel - the amount of stuff added to this game in comparison to crusader 1 is minimal, which is sort of upsetting considering this game has come out 12 years after its' predecessor. However, I do not find my money wasted on this game. As a fan of the stronghold series and a proud owner of all the games (save one that I'm not too proud of...you can guess which), I will happily say that this game is the first stronghold game to not be a total waste of your time since 2002 with crusader 1 itself. On top of that, I highly recommend buying this if for nothing else than supporting the small indie studio Firefly Studios in hopes that, now without their 2K publisher forcing release dates on them, we can begin to see some proper sequels in the stronghold lineup to recover from...a troubling past, to say the least. Perhaps a stronghold 4, or even the possibility of a Legends 2 (Don't kill me, we all know somewhere inside we want a better legends :D)

With gamespy down, this is also the only remaining stronghold game besides the abysmal pile that was stronghold 3 to have functional multiplayer without the assistance of a 3rd party tool that can sometimes, to inexperienced users, be a large pain in the ♥♥♥ to use properly. So for crusader multiplayer with ease, this runs through the steam servers allowing you to simply invite your friends and such as you would for Team Fortress 2 or something.

Buy this to support firefly and enjoy the first stronghold game in 12 years to not suck right out of the box...or download in this case. And if not, do yourself at least the favor of, if you don't already, going and purchasing Stronghold HD and Stronghold Crusader HD on steam or GoG.com or somewhere - those 2 games, alongside this one, will not fail to give you hours of fun.

Click for Gameplay Trailer - Review

-
Sound:
+ many comments
+ nice sound effects
- orient music nervs after a certain time

Atmosphere:
+ surprising events
+ nicely hectic
- no cutscenes

Control:
+ simple control
+ castle building is easy
- you dont see the weapon range

Game Size:
+ 60 skirmish maps
+ sandbox mode
+ steam version contains stronghold crusader hd
+ 2 campaigns with 39 missions

Graphics:
+ nice physic effects
+ nice animations
- monotonous maps

KI:
+ attack your castle on weak points
- ki is very dumb

Units & Buildings:
+ 20 units
+ 8 siege weaponary
+ 8 defense buildings
+ good economy
- formation nearly useless
- no experience for units


New Content (short list):
> 8 KI characters. atleast 6 characters are planed to be added after the release.
> new units:
--- european: sergeant at arms and templar knight.
--- arab: whirling dervish, slave driver, sassanid knight and healer
--- siege engines: fire ballista, war wolf and war wagon
> special abilities for some units:
--- whirling dervish: whirling attack
--- slave driver: boost for slaves
--- assassin: togglable stealth
--- siege camp: arrow storm
--- sassanid knight: charge
> multiplayer coop mode - 1 castle 2 players
> togglable dynamic events: sandstorm, fire, tornados and locust swarms
> new economic system
> new housing system: based on distance from the keep
> unit group formation

Stronghold Crusader 2 embraces this warfare, offering a different units you can choose from to form your attacking force while your personal castle hopefully stays safe.
You start with a set population that increases as you become more popular with your subjects. You can make them happier by decreasing taxes (even going so far as outright bribing them), increasing their rations, or building them inns and places of worship so that they can drink and pray.
Likewise, you can adjust consumption in the other direction to conserve resources and gain more gold, but you'll be less popular as a result. Tying popularity and population growth to troop production gives the game a simulation element, and lends the flow of your economy extra texture. At the same time, the fact that you only need to keep track of one statistic ensures that the sim portions don't bloat and consume the rest of the game.
As you start becoming more popular and more people come to live in your keep, you need to build houses to accommodate them. This is in addition to the structures that produce resources like wood and stone, food buildings, and other luxury services (which also require people to run). By the time you're prepared to march an army towards the enemy, you'll want to construct a wall around your precious production plant.

You can pick many different kinds of units with varying specializations like ranged attacks, speedy movement, or heavy armor. Unfortunately, most of the troops you can employ are really boring. In fact, the Crusaders are all traditional infantry and cavalry. The Arabic forces are a little more interesting, thanks to units like the flame-hurling oil pot thrower, and the stealthy wall-scaling assassin.
You get precious few proactive resources beyond the troops. You can construct turrets and traps to keep enemies away of your castle; you can even boiling oil on them! But then there's the siege weaponry, quite possibly the game's biggest success, and the one way with which your castle walls actually change the way you play. Though castles aren't something you particularly care about tending to, you still must defend them, and their walls serve as a giant target for the opposing teams to breach.
Your army can't breach walls without spending an siege weaponry to break the stalemate that the walls provide. You can also load them with fire or cattle that explode in a cloud of plague.

Make no mistake, Stronghold Crusader 2 is foremost a multiplayer skirmish game. Its single-player campaign is labeled as a “learning campaign”, and though it tries to ease you into the game. it fails to teach you the rudimentary strategy to be successful. The missions punish you with progressively-increasing waves of enemies that quickly outpace your production. The game also provides you with a large amount of skirmishes that challenge you to beat the computer in games closer to multiplayer matches that are more fair than the campaign.

The different maps creates varies points, resource placement and create different game conditions, but the one thing they all share is that they're all fairly small. You need to act quickly and build the right sequence of buildings if you want to stand a chance.

Stronghold Crusader 2 is a good "remake", but that alone doesn't make it a good game. Its lack of interesting units, underdeveloped castle-building options, and terrible tutorials hold the game back. Warfare is still fun, and directing an army never gets old. What is miss, is the long term motivation!
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Edit as of 1/17, scroll down for current review

You know what wasn't so good? Stronghold 3. You know what is comparatively better? Stronghold Crusader 2. Be warned, there are a few 'day one' glitches and bugs, but nothing game breaking and unfixable like in SH3. As stated in other reviews, the game does feel a bit clunky as of now, but I believe these issues can be ironed out in the next week or two. Take note of the system specs, because my desktop meets the minimum but not the recommended and it's definitely noticeable. Assuming you have that, both die hard fans and ones new to the series won't be disappointed with the options to start with. Skirmish mode, (hooray!) multiple campaigns, and sandbox are all playable. I also like the new art style and updated graphics. Overall, it feels like an updated SH:C with more features, hopefully more to be added through DLC. (Additional units, both new and rebooted AI, all new campaigns, etc) In addition, the Arab lords no longer have to build churches; mosques have finally been added. A small thing, but really helps with the balance between Crusaders and Arabs.

The game takes a different spin on how it approaches the Crusades, and now the 'right side' is whichever side you're fighting for. There's no 'good' side, as both sides view themselves as freedom fighters locked in a righteous struggle against the infidels.

There is multiplayer, but I have not tested it yet, so take that with a grain of salt. I somewhat agree with the opinon that Firefly sacrificed some content for a more realistic game, but that is not nearly as off-putting here as it was in SH3. I'm excited to see where Firefly takes SH:C2, especially after the SH3 letdown, and hope to enjoy this game quite a bit in the future.

EDIT: (Since day one was quite a while ago, and the above review is outdated) I don't think considering this as a solid 'yes' review would be correct. Firefly has put in effort to fix the bugs, but the game is still not optimized. As stated in other reviews, really expect those performance drops during sieges. The game does feel somewhat lacking in certain aspects, namely graphics and troop types. As a fan of the Stronghold series since Stronghold 2, (which is still a really fun game for its shortcomings) I will say that, given the price tag, this isn't a 'gateway' Stronghold game. New to the series? Play the original Crusader, or Stronghold 1. Enjoy skirmishing? Stronghold 2 has an above-average skirmish mode, and a nice, easy to use map maker as well. It's not the trainwreck of Stronghold 3, but Stronghold Crusader 2 still mediocre.

Stronghold Crusader II is a game developed by Firefly Studios in a long line of the Stronghold series. First, some background on me. I was playing games when DOS was still around and when Age of Empires 1 was the new thing on the MSN gaming zone. My video game history encompases every genre but primarily focuses on Strategy games, FPS games, and the occasional RPG. Stronghold 1 and Stronghold Crusader were essentially the same game with a different atmosphere and some unit changes. Both were excellent games and the sucessors to follow did not so well. Stronghold 2 was mediocre at best, the fantasy mythic Stronghold and Stronghold 3 were bad.
Firefly split from their old publisher and became their own, just as many developers are doing these days because publishers like to add their two cents to game they know nothing about. Stronghold Crusader II takes what the original did and improves upon it further. The music and sound and very similar from the first and well done. Some of the original quotes from the units are still there as you move your catapults and archers. The villagers no longer speak to you when you click on them, instead it simply tells you what they are doing.
One of the things that made Stronghold so great for me back in the day was destroying the castles and watching the walls crumble. The massive armies going at it with each other and heads rolling. The physics in this game are much improved as to be expected. When catapults slam their boulders into a wall bodies standing near the point of impact are screwed. See those thirty archers in a tight group? Well now they are at the bottom in a pile where they belong. Trebuchets have great range and destructive power and still need to be setup while the catapults have less range and can be shot by archers. Overall the military feels well done, especially that mace men frenzy charge that leaves nothing standing as they spit and scream their way into battle.
While on the topic of military, some things have been reworked. The laddermen are gone, which wasn't really a surprise, who ever used them anyways? Moats and tunnelers have also been removed. At the time of this review sieging a castle isn't an easy task. Strongwalls are not an option but the time it takes for any military unit to chip away at a wall or gatehouse isn't worth that route. Almost your entire military force would be dead while they were picking away at the walls. While I would still like the strongwall option, it works well as it stands. As said before, catapults, trebuchets that fire boulders, cows, camelheads, and pigs, a bigger version of a catapult, rams, firecarts, and troop carriers are all the siege units.
Archers have remained the same but the crossbows no longer use animal hide as armor. The swordsmen are still slow but the knights can get horses to get them from point A to point B quickly. There is a new unit called the Sergeant at Arms which gives a bonus to troops within an area of effect, this can boost your other swordsmen, pikes, or whatever else you got nearby. Of course, the higher military units cost a fortune to field but can essentially soak up arrows while your catapults lay waste to the walls and mace men haul tail into the base to wreck everything.
While building a military you will notice that you run out of gold quick unless you run an efficient economy. Churches, breweries, and extra rations are all ways to keep your citizens happy to so you can generate more taxes. The market will let you auto-sell and/or auto-purchase items. This can be set as high or as low as you want. Iron, stone, wood, pitch, all the basic resources sell for the least while the armors and weapons sell for the most. Unlike the previous Crusader game, Inns providing ale do not need to be spammed but rather you adjust how much ale is consumed much in the same way as you would food. This will increase happiness to get you the desired level but just make sure you have the hops farms and breweries to accomodate the usage level. Churches act in much the same way in that you only need one but have to provide them with candles. Once again, here you can adjust how many candles are used for the desired happiness.
So far I have played through the tutorial and the lionheart campaign. The story isn't that great but the game does a good job at preparing you for harder battles. Some are so difficult that if you don't complete the level quick enough the army forces become so numerous it is a massive chore to keep them at bay while you invade. Additionally, I have played many skirmish matches, which is where the game is at for me. I like setting up from scratch and playing massive 4v4 battles. The game hosts 8 players, human or computer. As in the old ones, the rat is the worst player while the wolf and some of the new comers bring a better challenge. I have only had one crash to the desktop at the time of this review and that was right after intial installation and launching of a skirmish. I loaded that same map again a second time and it worked fine.
That brings me to the bugs. Most people were holding off on this game because of the reputation Firefly has. Since Firefly is now technically a "indie" developer as they separated from their publisher, I would like to take away the fears of purchasing this game. Other than a few issues with selecting units or them getting stuck in a gatehouse I haven't had any issues. Below are my specs just in case you are wondering and want to compare.

i5-2500k OC'd to 4.4 Ghz
16 GB of G Skill Ripjaws RAM
Dual 7970 Radeons
EVGA FTW Motherboard
2 OCZ Vector SSDs in RAID 0
1200 Watt PSU gold from Corsair
H100i CPU Cooler

With that setup I have no issues. Some people have reported problems while others have not. I am not sure how well they maintain their computer or what they have going on, as a system is going to be different from the next. I run a tight ship on mine and have zero problems with running the game.

Final Thoughts:
Stronghold Crusader II is a well designed game that is being constantly updated with both fixes and soon to be new content. On their forums they have laid out a plan on how they wish to progress with supporting this game. It appears as though their heart is where it should be and a fleshed out game was designed. Is it worth 50 dollars is the next question? I would say no, 30 or 40 dollars maybe but not 50. There isn't enough new content to justify the price but if you are a big fan of the original then price might not matter much to you. I waited for 24 hours and looked at what people were saying before I purchased the game. I hope this review helps you decide for yourself but please watch YouTube videos of the gameplay and try to find the glitches some are talking about and the ones I spoke of. If any of that puts you off, give it a week or two then come back.

5/10
I wont lie, I was a little dissapionted with this game when I first stared playing, I was a big fan of its predecessor 'Stonghold crusader', this was by far one of my favorite games when I was younger.
Pros and cons:

PROS- The graphics in-game have been updated, although not as much as you might hope for, especially for the fact that the old one came out 12 years ago.
- It is much harder to appease the peasants who flock to your castle, this does make the game a bit more challenging when it comes down to 'laying siege' to an enemies castle, at least in multiplayer. You can starve your enemy in a manner of speaking.
- There are new units, athough most of these are nearly identical to the predecessors, using some of the same quotes and one-liners.
- The walls fall down in 3D, instead of dissapearing,
- Destruction of castle walls and towers, looks better,
CONS- the Opening menu was a major dissapointment, i dont really know what i expected but the predecessors kicked ♥♥♥ compared to this new one.
- The new AI sucks, really sucks, (eg. the enemy computer always gets free siege equipment)
- The graphics aren't that imppressive for the amount of processing power it takes to run the game.
- The price tag for what you get is practically extortion.
- If you arent familiar with the game it is quite hard to understand the mechanics of the game, depsite the introduction campaign/scenario
- The new voice acting for the AI is just generally annoying, in my personal opinion they should have used the old voices from the last game.
- The mulitiplayer menu, is the same as the opening menu, a dissapointment
- There is a building and troop limit, whilst understandably for lower end computers is unchangeable, but there should be a way to adjust it.

All in all the game leaves you feeling a little underwhelmed, to be honest if your thinking of buying this game do yourself a favour and wait until a sale, save yourself the dissapointment of spending a lot of money on something that isn't quite up to standard.
I do know that Firefly are releasing updates and extensions so hopefully in the future they may be able to fix some of the problems, and annoyances.

The enemy burned my land, so i threw camel heads at his castle.

Think twice computer.Think twice.

10/10

Do you want a castle sim? Do you want that medieval atmosphere of Stronhold 1? Dealing with famine, diseases, economy and war? Well, my friend, then you are in luck! .... For this is not the game you are looking for!

I get that the devs gave it a shot. The game has a heart. As someone who throughout the year followed firefly studios, it is clear that it is now but a shadow of what it used to be. With very little resources they wanted to do their best.

However, as hard of a shot they gave, to me, everything just fell apart from the very moment you start the game, and here is why:

The artwork is just sad. Egyptian hieroglyph looks better than what we see here.
UI is terrible, it feels very alpha. *cough* look at that type font *cough*
No economy, just a lifeless corpse of a castle that spits out little clones to either attack or defend it.
If you wanted a sim, like me, you wont see people chatting and going about their lives, there is no micro management. Nothing to see. Where are the citizens, the animations?
Take SH1, just awe at the amount of detail that it had, moss in the walls, cracks in the wood and stone. Even wind ffs.
Unfortunatly, you cannot stop and think: is this just a SH3 reskin with less bugs?

Is it a waste of time? God no. The gameplay is bland but at times, you may find some joy in it. Fans will do a fair bit of it out of pure nostalgia. Smashing walls can be fun.

In the end, the game just doesn’t do much for you to like it for very long.

I loved the Stronghold crusader 1 as a kid, so as soon as i saw Crusader 2? i hit the instabuy button.
Boy was that a bad idea after playing the game.
(i havent touched the multiplayer so i wont comment on that part)

I'll list some of my pros and cons about the game so far:

Cons:
------------- In General -----------------------------
-Menu, really simple (looks too "clean/old fashioned") [maybe just me? but thats what i thought]
-Artwork, Seems a little simple and cartoony for this sort of game.
-Options, Severe lack of options customisation! No controls changing! No advanced graphic settings (for a 2014 game).

-------------Moving to gameplay now---------------

-Unit Pathfinding sucks. utter terrible. (could be improved with a patch so wouldnt worry too much)
-Wall building system is terrible, i could place a wall then try to delete and not work.the wall is still there! (probably a bug)
-No moats! What happened to Crusader 1's moats??
-Everything is over simplified by a lot compared tot he original.
-No tooltips or explanations ( have to look on game wiki but i think the devs are being lazy here)
-Graphics in general,Textures are horrible! for a 2014 game
-LESS buildings than the original, YES, LESS STUFF, (isnt the point of a sequel is to expand the original?? not take stuff out!)
-Maps arent well designed, not many trees, not enough grass etc.
-Expensive! Everything is so expensive and selling doesnt get you much, (maybe needs a balance)
-They got rid of the happiness, decorations system! (sandbox without decorations?! thats suicidal)
-Units dont look as good as they should for a 2014 game, (maybe i should include this in graphics?)
-Right/left clicking was weird, cant change controls for these.
-Building against a natural ditch or water doesnt work very well, wall might cut off randomly without the battlements.
-Natural disasters!! Who the heck thought it was a good idea to include this??! (well at least you could turn it off xD)
-Did they recycle voices from the original? (i dont really mind but might not sit well with some people)

Pros: ( lets end witht he happy stuff)
-AI changes were much better than the original, although they still fall for the same tricks used in the original.
-Likes the market auto sell system!, nice touch!
-Got the same old Crusader 1 feel to the game!
-Liked some of the new defensive attachments.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Somethings devs might want to consider:
-INFORMATION! Add more tips!
-When your resources are low make it blink or something!
-Can still repair walls instantly while enemy blowing up walls with trebs.
-Add moats back in.
-Maybe try some better graphics? ( dont know if its possible at this point).

Also just a note to the devs!

We love your work, we dont mind how long it takes to come out, be it 10 years or 20 years but please make it a great game worthy of the firefly title. I know you guys can do it from seeing crusader 1. Keep up the good work!

Shroompat out.

Stronghold Crusader 2 offers very little change from the previous Crusader (2001). Hardcore fans and achievement hunters will be the only ones who will appreciate SC2. The "Campaign" trails are back from the original. They offer no more than a series of AI skirmish challenges that vary in difficulty. There's a dozen or so tutorial missions the have some kind of "Narrative" but I use that word loosely.

Melee Fighting: Winning consists of massing a blob of units into another player's castle to kill thier avatar "Lord." I say "blob" because the units clip into each other It's not pleasing on the eyes when a group of a hundred pikemen can't be distinguished between a single guy. To make matters worse, during a fight they all clip into smaller blob. To make matters EVEN worse, a well placed pitch pot can decimate a group of hundreds.

Castle Smashing: The castle walls are no more than ten feet high and seem as strong as paper mache't. A few catapults can blast through a wall very quickly. Probably why they removed ladder men and seige towers from the previous games. They added "ragdoll" physics, when a unit is arrowed they will tumble off the wall, if their foot doesn't get stuck and trap them hanging like maniquins for a few seconds before they disappear. When a tower falls with units on top the ragdoll levitates like Wil-e- Coyote holding up a sign before they fall to the ground.

Themes: The music is the only thing done right. Really great Crusade feeling soundtrack. As for the two religions, a lot of care was taken to avoid controversy. The Islamic Saracens dont eat the "pig" food ration (they grow sheep farms instead) and don't drink Ale, another handicap seeing as how they can't gain the happines benifits from Bars, and no other feature was put in place instead. Churches and Mosques are only distuinguishable from a little moon and star above the Mosque.

TL:DR= Only for fans of Stronghold. a lot of features done poorly, none really dont right. It's old Stronghold with new spit polish. Nab it on a sale and knock out the generous achievements.

Extremely dissapointing and lacking the feel of the original. Realese version feels more like a demo as the options are heavily limited in comparison to its predecessor.

Quite likely long review incoming.
I have gone into the game with having its predecessor played for years upon years.
I have always played either skirmish or multiplayer with friends, so compaign was never, and will not be considered from my pov. I have immediately launched into skirmishes to figure out what is new, how are the systems changed and so on.

I have to say, some aspects have been made simpler.
(There is generally an easier relationship between buildings&mechnisms, such as 1 temple only, you make a couple candle workshops and you can figure out how many more you need for the best effect, opposed to the %of people blessed via priests in the first game)
I do not necessarily consider it a good or a bad point, so long as either fits the game, which it imho does here.
However, I really miss the popularity system. That added a lot to the feels and complexity of crusader. (nice lord/ cruel lord)

The look of the game is the best they have done in 3d, but the art of the original made it visually impressive and timeless, which I miss to some degree.
Also, it seems some settings arent perfectly optimised yet, because despite my PC's strenght, framedrops were present after a couple hundred troops started battling. My greatest concern was with the pathfinding of units in general. Peasants are working allright, but troops seem to glitch out rather often. If they go near impassable terrain in a large group (lets say because of a rally point) some of them will freeze and dont move unless commanded again. The assassins are even glitchier if you control more than 5 of them, they just stop or clump up in certain areas of the castle they should figure out how to use. (stairs seem to confuse them a great deal)

Despite it silly problems, I do not see anything that could not be fixed with patches.
For those who have loved how the archers arrows were shot in the original game (in nice, somewhat slowish arcs), that is not how it is done here. Arrows travel almost instantly. Ranged combat resolves faster imo, probably because they wanted to make the game combat feel faster, more responsive. It certainly feels a bit odd though, on how the arrows travel. Melee combat however, felt slower. I think because units do not stack up to the ridiculous extent they did in the original crusader, and hence 50 units cant swing their swords in a 1 square meter area. I do not really mind this change of feel that much.
Walls are extremely weak vs any sort of catapult, and need to be made extremely thick to be effective. (which is sad because it takes away so much space)

As for the new units and features, I actually like them more than I thought I would. The abilities of units are welcome, the new units are (mostly) interesting.

TL,DR: Has potential to be a really good long lasting experience, speaking from a skirmish/multiplayer mindset. If you want to be on the safe side, wait for some meaningful patches to roll out, which would fix the bad(glitchy) pathfinding, occcasional random crashes, poor optimisation, and odd fps drops.
Most maps are also somewhat small.

Biggest beef with the game by far: There is no space grid watch. As in, one used to be able to press the spacebar to see an up-top view of the building grid for better building placement, and unit directing near difficult terrain/high buildings. It is of utmost importance, and sadly, it isnt included. Not yet at least.

Disappointing game having loved the original Stronghold. Not being able to build out of small and illogical zones is really annoying.