While Stronghold 3 does offer a couple of campaigns (the lengthier one focuses, ostensibly, on combat, the other on gathering a bunch of resources), as well as several "historical" sieges, and many hours of gameplay as a result, much of this is spent playing on tiny maps that are too cramped to do much more than shove together as many apple orchards, houses, and weapons makers as possible to supply your troops. The final arrow in the eye is the fact that controlling your troops, placing structures, and even using the mini-map is a huge pain in the neck: path-finding AI is crappy, and if you want to attack something, the "hit box" for the attack icon is so tiny that you'll likely end up sending your troops walking right past the enemies you want them to kill. Also, the graphics are extremely blocky for a game from this day and age, and the colors are muddy and muted, making it hard to distinguish units from each other, especially in a fracas.
Stronghold 3 series#
But because your troops' AI and that of the enemy is so poor, these hardly mean more than a series of really snazzy background pieces for an utterly chaotic melee. Castle construction is somewhat better handled, with a variety of walls, towers, traps, and crenellations at your disposal. Soldiers only have one or two voice samples, and there's only about a half a dozen different music tracks or so after a while, you'll just mute the game and put your stereo on. What sound and music Stronghold 3 does provide is quite good (although the songs are somewhat anachronistic) in terms of quality, it's just repetitive as hell. Heck, even your Lord, whose death virtually always means failing a given mission, offers no warning when he's being assaulted. Peasants being attacked by wolves? Better hope you happen to be looking at the area of the screen where it's happening, or you'll have no idea. The game utterly lacks sound or visual cues for important events, with a very small number of exceptions.
"The game utterly lacks sound or visual cues for important events, with a very small number of exceptions."But it goes beyond mere tables and charts. Unfortunately, there are about a gazillion other things you need to know about, as well: how many weapons do I have? How much wood have I got stockpiled for construction? There's no way to know unless I either click on a pertinent building (none of which are clearly marked in the minimap) or pause the game to open a big-ass laundry list of stuff. Stronghold 3 will provide you with eye-level information on a few critical resources: food, available workforce, available living space, gold, and honor. First, and by far the most egregious, is the interface – or more accurately, the lack thereof. It does some things right in that sense, by streamlining the economic model to have fewer steps between raw materials and finished goods, for example, but it stumbles in so many other ways, that any improvements quickly go by the wayside. ".it stumbles in so many other ways, that any improvements quickly go by the wayside."Bless its soul, this game tries to improve on Stronghold 2, which, to be fair, came out more than five years ago.
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