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blek

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: July 23, 2005
Author: Amazon User

wow, i just bought this game from best buy on a whim. i loved the first stronghold, and strong hold crusader. i just dont know how they went so wrong on this one. it is completely user-unfriendly. the game itself takes somewhere between 5-10 minuits just to load, and the game play itself, not so great. gone is the custom game plays where you can just play a random map with enemies. build your own city, etc. the game-play is slow, and hard to follow. the units are frail, and easily killed. and the fortress's just arent as fun to create. in other words, save your fourty bucks, and buy the cheaper, more fun first versions. STRONG HOLD 2 BLOWS THE BIG ONE!

Great Simulation

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

In a few words absolutely fantastic game. Runs smoothly on my pc no problems whatsoever.
It auto updated itself but beware if your pc is from that century (20th) this app may suck dry
your machine. It takes lots of resources though and beautifull graphics would demande ge forceof
7 series card but it pays off. You will dive in the medieval atmosphere with beautiful
music, detailed lush graphics, educational research tree, pigs noises around, birds singing like
in countryside. Bought it used works like new.Disregard negative reviews. If you like
ultimate castle sim look no further. 2k and Firefly did very nice job as with all their titles.

Outstandingly accurate

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: November 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Having been a competative swordfighter for years (medieval fencing- full contact martial art), I'd been exposed to and done a great deal of research on the intricacies of medieval life and warfare. I was astounded to see the level of detail in this game... combat AI is absolutely enjoyable and the enemy lords are relentless. I love the strategies and tactics they use because they really do paralell those of the medieval age. And just wait until they decide to put a seige on your castle! You'll have your hands full! Game speed is fully adjustable, and the enemy has to go through the same build-up that you do, so it's not like thgey're going to rush you with unbeatable troops in the first 5 minutes of the game. The Map-maker is great though the trigger/event module does require a learning curve. In the end, sights, sounds, and action is brilliant. (And you don't have to fight... there's a peace mode where you can concentrate on civil matters.)

All in all, a fun real time strategy game!

Stronghold 2

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: May 21, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I liked this title. Simulated siege warfare is always exciting, especially when the graphics are tuned enough to communicate the particular brand of chaos and action inherent in medieval conflict. And I've always enjoyed the idea of building a massive fortress.

In Stronghold 2, the object of the game is to build up a castle and, in some modes, to build an army and overwhelm your enemies' castles. The focus in the game on both of those things, really, and not one over the other. You have to pay attention to your settlement's economy. Is there enough food in the granary? Enough variety? How do the peasants feel about you? Are they happy or sad? Should you lower your taxes, or just build an inn and a brewery to make the peasants not care?

These considerations are not unimportant, because if you manage your castle badly enough, peasants will start to leave. This means no one will be working your orchards, and there will be no one to recruit into your military. In other words, your development halts completely.

Once you've built a semi-stable economy, you can concentrate on your military. You'll want to build walls early for protection. These can be anything from simple wooden palisades to triple-thick stone behemoths. Once you have the walls of your castle built, you can fortify them with several different tower designs. Don't forget to send archers up the towers. They can achieve incredible range if placed correctly, and will devastate enemy troops who aren't wearing metal armor. For metal-clad foes, stick a ballista or two on your towers as well, then watch the fun when someone comes too close as a three-foot spike is launched at them your tower-mounted Barry Bonds-like crossbows.

In this game, the best offense really is a good defense. Make your castle an impregnable fortress, and you can take your time preparing sorties against the enemy.

There is a wide range of unit selection, and each has a situation in which they excel. Thieves infiltrate the enemy castle and steal gold for you from their treasury. Assassins (incredibly useful) use grappling hooks to scale castle walls and open gates for your troops. Swordsmen and Knights are tough to bring down thanks to their armor, and make excellent front-line troops. And if you manage to run a unit of Crossbowmen up an enemy tower, they will dominate the entire courtyard below with their bolts.

Fighting a large-scale siege is a singularly thrilling experience. Watching several hundred individual units charge a wall, set up ladders, and climb up to do battle with defenders all under a withering hail of arrow-fire and ballista bolts is incredibly fun. You feel sort of like a warlord from ages past when you give your swordsmen the order to charge and hear them roar a battle cry as they run.

Set up a few trebuchets for some real action. Imagine those swordsmen charging while boulders fly over their heads, smashing into walls, spraying chunks of stone in every direction and sending wailing archers head-over-heels through the air.

But wait. If warfare isn't your thing, would this game hold any allure for you? Sure!

There's a whole campaign dedicated to castle life rather than siege warfare. And while combat still has a role, it's rather limited. In this campaign you'll be more concerned with keeping rats out of the settlement or providing enough food to keep a neighboring ally's peasants alive, or reducing the local wolf population.

I found this campaign to be just as fun as the combat-oriented one. The peasants are funny, and their working animations are interesting. Curious onlooker-type gamers will find themselves following around individual peasants to see what they do, and what they say while doing it. For example, vintners make a subtle Kids in the Hall reference while stomping grapes: "I hate grapes. Hate 'em. I'm crushing you, grape. Crushing your head. Die, die, die." And since all those who share the same profession look alike and have the same voice, it's only natural every now then for them to break the fourth wall and comment "Do you ever get that feeling of deja vu?" Tax them too highly, and they'll complain when you click on them. Feed them double rations, and they'll laud your generosity.

If you like siege warfare, or castles in general, or realtime strategy games, or simulations--you'll probably enjoy this game. The only quibbles I had with it were a paper-thin story and a rather un-customizable multiplayer experience.

Somebody really dropped the ball

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 11
Date: May 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This had the potential to be such a great game. As it is, I'm just feeling ripped off.

It feels like the development team was too rushed. Clipping errors are endemicýon my computer most of the buildings just look like random piles of triangles, and often you get a mysterious object floating across the screen (that's probably a piece of some object you shouldn't see). I've honestly seen students' graphics projects that looked better. This is even the case when I turned the graphics quality all the way up. I'd guess that they just didn't test it enough, with enough different hardware.

Lag is also rampant. Much of the time it doesn't respond to your clicks, being busy (I assume) rendering the scene. The need for this is questionableýthe graphics are comparable to those of games a couple of years old. (I think specifically of Warcraft 3.)

If they could just fix these two things, it would be a much better game. But even with the latest patch (1.3.1), it just fails to be seriously playable.

It seems to have worked fine for other people, but my system isn't very unusual (Win2K with an nVidia card). It's probably a [...]shoot as to if it'll work on your computer. I'm very disappointed, and will think twice before purchasing anything from these guys again.

Don't waste the time/money.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 6
Date: May 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The game is laggy, buggy, and not really worth your money/time. Even a fast machine will lag in multiplayer, and that's with only 2 players. The company behind the game, firefly, are so pathetic that they actually ask people to come to these sites and tell you guys how awesome the game is now. Well it's a lie. A patch has been available for days now but on their website it's still listed as "delayed". Just one example of their gross incompetence. Poorly made. Poorly supported. Money better spent elsewhere.

Great fun!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: May 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This is the best strategy game I have played for a very very long time. After the latest patches (version 1.2, which can be downloaded manually from http://www.take2games.com/index.php?p=support_patches) everything runs smoothly - and multiplayer is GREAT fun!
Build your own castle, and manage everything in it - defend your castle, while the enemy lays down a siege on you. The game has my best recommendations.

Great first version, poor second version

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: July 15, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Thsi game is all over the place. All they had to do is add more castles and characters to the first version. Instead they changed the whole outlook. This is nothing like the first version which was great. WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT!

Incredibly Disappointed

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 8
Date: July 19, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I loved Stronghold Crusader, it was great fun to play. I was looking forward to Stronghold 2 and read the negative reviews but I told myself that this can't be bad, its gotta be good. Wrong. Its buggy, loading takes forever, and is the enemy even playing. They either sit back and never attack or attack right away with 500 men. Normally though they just sit there, one of the funnest things about crusader was building up your castle and watching 500 enemy troops try to take it from you and fail.

I heard they are making Stronghold: Legends. Hopefully it will be like the first two in the series, but I wouldn't know until the price drops to $20. Oh, by the way the 3d sucks and does nothing for this series. My advice, keep playing the first two and pray it gets better with Legends.

Really Bad! Don't waste your $ on this!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 19
Date: April 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Come on! This game is bad! Don't waist your time with it. Heck, Medieval Total War is ten times better than this and it is about 4-5 years old now!

There are much better RTS/Tactical games out now. My advise, try Rome: TW a great game no castle sieges but ancient cities are there! Or wait until Empire Earth 2 comes out today. These titles will not disapoint as this title did. Now if you will excuse me I gotta see if I can return this lemon to the store for my refund!

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