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| Three main campaigns await you | Easy to follow tutorial |
A spanner has been thrown in the works for the tranquil life of a castle lord, no longer are siege ladders and battering rams the highlight of nightmares. Now Firefly Studios has unleashed fiendish monsters that can tear whole armies a new one, its not enough to arm up with archers and catapults any longer.
Werewolves, demons, legendary heroes and even dragons come knocking on (or blasting) the castles keep. Before, slamming down the gate gave valuable time to rally troops, now you have to be ever watchful for monsters just hopping up onto the wall and massacring your walls’ defenses.
You’ll be filling the boots of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (naturally), bashing mounting giants as Germanic Siegfried, and what game of legends would be complete without Vlad the Impaler, …Dracula.
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| Peasants interact with most things | Acquire additional towns for extra resources |
The games economy is a simple one, you build a store house where woodcutters, stone masons etc will take their resources and deposit them. Granaries serve to hold the produce from all manner of farms. Providing that you keep these resource buildings supplied with villagers you should have a nicely oiled medieval war machine.
Happiness plays a role, keep your peasants smiling and you’ll get more but tax and starve them to near death and you’ll lose favor. Lowering taxes can help, as well as increasing rations so if you want to get away with higher or even extortionate mortgage rates then stuff their holes with grub.
Stronghold Legends feels more like a real-time strategy now than it would a heavy castle simulator. What with all the monsters and ghouls sprinkled about the place you’ll feel the pressure to build up sizeable forces to repel invaders. Building up big walls and trying to ‘turtle’ is no longer as comfortable a stratagem, which is on the plus side for multiplayer games.
New multiplayer modes wait in the wings, such as King of the Hill, Capture the Flag and Economic War. King of the Hill requires a lord to occupy the central castle for a set period of time. Capture the Flag is similar except you’ll need to take all the flagged estates in the land to win. Economic War involves reaching resource targets such as 1000 gold for example, so sabotage is a good friend. Of course there is always just a good old death match, where the last lord standing wins the day.
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| Commanding troops is very straight forward | There’s no sure way to solid defense anymore |
Only a few of the missions where available from the three campaigns to play, and sadly there was no skirmish for me to sink into but it looks to be a great and is certainly a fresh take on Stronghold. Does the whole mythology angle work though for the fans?
