Stronghold Crusader 2 Hands-On
Who remembers the original Stronghold Crusader? If you don’t, that’s probably because the game is 12 years old and was the sequel to a 13 year old game. The series since then has seen several ups and downs; the fourth installment, Stronghold Legends, introduced fantasy elements that the fans despised, but in 2012 the developers (Firefly Studios) released Stronghold Kingdoms, a free-to-play MMO which was met with mostly positive reception. Regardless, Stronghold Crusader remains a fan favorite of the series, and still has a strong and dedicated community playing the game to this day.
Finally, Firefly Studios decided to give fans the sequel they have been waiting for with Stronghold Crusader 2. We went hands on with the game at EGX Rezzed, here is what we thought.
The demo pitted two players against each other in a small map; the objective, in classic Stronghold fashion, is to slay the enemy Lord. In order to save time, both players had a castle pre-built with all the necessary buildings to get started, as well as a decently sized army to play around with. Fans of the series will be glad to hear that the game plays exactly like its predecessor. More than anything, Stronghold Crusader 2 is more of a visual upgrade and modernization to the classic Stronghold Crusader; the majority of the buildings and units are the same as they have always been with only a couple of additions to not disrupt the original formula.
This is definitely a good thing, as the series really hit a sweet spot with Crusader and every time they tried to deviate from that, the results were mixed. If you played the original Crusader, you will feel right at home with this sequel.
For those of you who haven’t played a Stronghold game before, the game is simple: it plays like your standard RTS from the late 90s and early 2000s, featuring a lot of emphasis on city building and building large armies to take down your enemy. Unlike most RTS games, however, Stronghold had a specific emphasis on the castle simulation aspect; managing your castle town was a big part of the gameplay and besieging a castle requires a lot of preparation and even more troops.
As I started my match, the first thing I did was use my horse archers to destroy my opponents siege units so I could make sure he wouldn’t attack my castle for a while. Next, I started playing around with the different buildings in my town, figuring out what did what and hiring more troops for my cause. Feeling a little too overconfident, I decided to start attacking my opponent’s stronghold with the majority of my forces, a decision I would regret almost immediately. Like I said, sieges in Stronghold are more on the realistic side and thus very hard to pull off. Archers on the walls have a lot of range and do a lot of damage, meaning I was already taking heavy losses just so I could get in range of his walls. I managed to do quite a bit of damage to them, knocking over a few, but my forces had taken way too many losses in doing so and I had no chance in the fight that followed. Only a few units survived what turned out to be this suicide mission, and I was left licking my wounds.
This is when my opponent decided he would retaliate. Suddenly, I see his whole forces coming my way. I decided to send my few remaining units out to fight, while frantically trying to spawn as many archers as I could to defend. To my surprise, the archers did the trick and I managed to repel the attack without losing many units and without taking a lot of damage. Maybe archers are a little too strong at the moment - the developers said there are still some balance issues, and archers definitely seemed like an impassable obstacle with no clear counter when it came to besieging. As a result, it seemed like both me and my opponent threw our entire armies to their death against the enemy archers, and now we were both low on units.
What followed was quite a long time of non-aggression as we rebuilt our forces and figured out how to approach this. Suddenly, I had an idea: I would bait him to fight one my armies on one side, whilst quietly chipping away at his walls on the other. Luckily, my opponent took the bait. As soon as he saw that his walls were being attacked on the right hand side by a large catapult with a massive army behind it, he immediately mobilized his entire forces to contest me. This was my signal; on the left hand side I hid a catapult and a small squad of knights. The catapult started chipping away at the wall, while the fight raged on on the other side of the map. As soon as I cleared a path big enough to get my units through, I sent my cavalry charging. Ignoring all the arrow fires coming their way now that my opponent realized my ruse, my knights headed straight for the enemy lord, sitting comfortably on the top of a building. Having already taken a lot of damage making their way there, this fight came down to the wire, but with just a few hit points left on my last few knights, the Lord fell to their blades.
The game abruptly ended and I was shown a simple victory screen. I kind of expected a bit more, but the game is still in Alpha!
Overall, I had a lot of fun with the demo I go to play. There were a few bugs here and there, and the game can definitely use some more balancing as some units feel way too strong in every situation. Never the less, I am excited to see more of Stronghold Crusader 2 in the near future; a beta is likely to take place this summer with the release following shortly afterwards, probably late summer.
It’s gonna be one of those “it’s ready when it’s ready” situations, and I am perfectly fine with waiting some more in order to have the best possible experience.