This game is absolutely amazing... If I were to rate it 0-10 it'd be a 20. The amount of things you have to do to sustain your village and eventually castle, it's ridiculous but that's what makes it fun and keeps your attention. Played it for 8 and a half hours straight after I got it.

12 years later, and the beatiful pixel art castles, landscapes and characters of Stronghold 1 still amaze me. I was overjoyed to see a high resolution release at a reasonable price!

The game's deep micro/macro management castle-building gameplay, tongue in cheek narration and hilarious (authentic) English regional accents all play key roles in SH1's lively and detailed medieval world.

The military campaign is particularly well paced and challenging when played on Normal or higher, and there's even a level editor, freebuilding and multiplayer mode to explore... great replayability.

At £3.50 there's really no reason not to buy this outstanding game.

Loved it so much I bought it again on Steam after owning the CD. Has aged very will and the new HD improvement make it very easy to pick up again. Highly recommended!

caaaaaan't place that there milord

This is a long review, so if you just want a summary of why I recommend Stronghold HD then skip to the Results section and reading from there.

Firefly Studios makes a brilliant castle simulator game, Stronghold. Then over ten years later they bring it back in HD, finally you can play this epic on modern machines. For those who never played a Stronghold game and for veterans alike this is a great game to get into.

Story:
This game is based on its campaign; a very interesting story involving you, a young man, bringing down the monstrous villains who murdered your father in cold blood. You embark on this quest with a small band of soldiers still loyal to your father to retake the kingdom. With a few allies along the way you vanquish the foes of the king one by one. In this epic campaign you meet series’ most notorious villains The Rat, The Snake, The Pig, and The Wolf; each one of these criminals crueler than the last.

Gameplay:
This game introduces basic elements of castle simulation, mostly focusing on combat. You construct a castle, manage taxes, harvest resources, and construct weapons. In order to bring about this balance you must maintain popularity and income within your castle. Villagers will move in until your houses are full and you've got to make sure you can support them.

Campaign:
Some of the missions are near impossible even on the easiest difficulty. On the other hand some missions are so mind-numbingly easy even on the hardest difficulty. There are no achievements for this game and cheating is always an option. In order to beat the Pigs Castle the second time I had to use cheats (the gold cheat) so I keep building new catapults with my Engineers. The map took me for ages to beat, but other than that one mission the rest of the game was rather simple.

Hint:
I would recommend shifting the game speed throughout missions. When you start each missions putting it at the lowest speed, 10. Then once you've got all your buildings in place raise the speed up to 30 or 40. When you know you have won the map move the speed up to 90 again in order to speed up the victory process.

Results:
If you like city builders, enjoy real time strategy combat, and prefer macro-managing to micromanaging then this is the game for you. I would recommend this game regardless of whether it is on sale or not, its a great game and you can easily get 12-hours out of the campaign alone. For an older generation game Stronghold is leaps and bounds beyond its competition.

Pros:
+You not only build a castle, but you also manage it politically.
+Military units require villagers as well as weapons/armor in your armory.
+The campaign offers a very riveting story that takes you across the Great Britain.
+The combat is rather intense and can require the usage of multiple siege tools.
+The market allows you to buy and sell goods in order to meet tough deadlines.

Cons:
-Sieging a castle can be near impossible unless you outnumber your enemy 100:1
-Some missions basically require you to cheat in order to win.
-Building an army quickly can be ridiculously hard because of the prerequisites (most missions I built a market and bought weapons rather than building them myself).
-No skirmish mode
-Poor unit mapping, many times units will spread out rather than clump causing enemy archers to shoot them (units hit by arrows will stand in position until they die rather than move themselves to avoid being hit).