56

Disappointed, barely a step up from SH2

murgo23 | March 3, 2013 | See all murgo23's reviews »

I was Really looking forward to this title since I played both Stronghold 1 and 2. But even after all the patches, the game just flat out isn't very much fun. The economic aspect is the only portion of the game that's decent, but the challenge is nerfed by a market where you can buy items you need and sell ones you don't. This should have been seasonal, or rely on traders that have routes you must protect. Combat is the weak link. Units have poor A.I. and use the "come straight at you" approach. They don't use tactics and basically try to overwhelm you. Have a bigger army and you win. Boring. Trebuchet are overpowered, there is NO skirmish mode, and the game lacks any personality

74

Fun Medieval Simulation: Could Have Been So Much More

Beard_Whisperer | Dec. 8, 2012 | See all Beard_Whisperer's reviews »

I love everything about Medieval history. Give me a generic Medieval game to play, and no matter how flawed or glitched it is I can usually find something to love about it. Give me a polished Medieval game and I will probably be too enthralled to find any problems with it. Give me Stronghold 3, and I will be somewhere in-between.

Stronghold 3 (from now on referred to as Stronghold for simplicity), despite its initial bugs and glitches, is quite polished. It looks beautiful and I haven't personally run into any glitches myself. This alone makes Stronghold worth playing, especially for fellow Medievalists like myself. The graphics are quite good and the game runs very smooth even in large battles (at least on my mid-end laptop). My only complaint in terms of the graphics is I think the people look a little too cartoonish. The way people walk and carry out tasks takes away from the feeling of this game. Other than that though, the details on the buildings and items are wonderful. It is so intriguing to see the inside of the buildings as people are going about their business inside. Feels as if one is peeking back in time to look at Medieval life.

However, where the graphics and concept initially seems great, the gameplay leaves much to be desired. Battles in this game for me have been quite irritating. If you try and select a group of your archers or spearmen to attack a particular group of enemy, they will only attack the SINGLE enemy soldier that you right-clicked on. So rather than see a whole barrage of arrows flying across multiple enemies, you end up seeing a bunch of arrows wasted on a single soldier, wherein perhaps a mere 2 or 3 arrows would suffice. For archers this isn't too annoying, since their reload time is fast, but for spearmen who require a number of seconds before they can throw another spear it is absolutely frustrating.

Moving your troops is also problematic: when trying to move your troops across a greater distance to attack an enemy, they seem to get easily confused. If the enemy moves from their original spot to somewhere else, your troops will not change route, but instead will continue on in the original path. This would make sense realistically in very particular cases, but honestly they even do it when they are in range of the enemy and can see said enemy moving. I can't tell you how many times I had an outbreak of bears attacking the village, then sending a group of my soldiers to take care of them, only to see minutes later that a quarter of my villagers were killed and the soldiers were just standing there dumbfounded.

This doesn't destroy the playability of the game, although it certainly does harm it. The battles just require more vigilance, which honestly can get annoying when trying to simultaneously ensure that your villagers are happy and your food supply is well stocked.

Another complaint I have about the game is the map layouts. When I first played this game I was expecting something akin to Age of Empires, where you can start your village wherever you please and migrate further and further out until you end up quarreling with other Lords. Unfortunately this is far from what I found. Free-build mode is fun, but it is almost fruitless. When I first started I was playing on and on for hours, wondering "Why have I not had to worry about any bears attacking my villagers? Where is the outbreak of disease that ravishes my village?" Eventually I found that these events had to be initiated by the player. This destroyed the value of free-build for me, because I knew that every thing that happened to my village was pre-planned. "Send a pack of wolves to your village." Hmmmm, why not just send a pack of wolves to my village unannounced and make it more thrilling and challenging? Why not have this game simulate the harsh reality of Medieval life where danger can come from nowhere and plagues can completely wipe out villages? Perhaps such a game mode does exist, but I have yet to see it. Oh, and not to mention, the map is very limited... I was expecting wide open lands, but what I got was akin to a chessboard. You're telling me I can't make a huge castle that sprawls out far and wide?! Nonsense!

The story mode leaves quite a bit to be desired. It is very restricting in what it allows you to do. Military campaign virtually consists of starting with nothing to slowly working your way up to getting more and more tools to play with and buildings to build. This game mode does give "random" events at least. But the events are far from random once you end up reloading your game. If a pack of wolves attacks your village after 3 in-game days of building your town, and a fire breaks out a day after that, you can easily reload your game and make sure you are prepared before the third day, because sure enough the same event will happen right around the same time. This destroys the notion of random events happening even in the story mode, which is quite unfortunate.

I must say though, I LOVE the add-on game modes. Especially the historical sieges. It gives a means to educate oneself on the various sieges that have taken place throughout history, as well as turn the tides of those events as they really happened.

I must say too, that even though this game has a few problems that can get really infuriating, the game itself is very addicting. Yes, I end up doing similar things that I have already been doing, but I can't help but love what I am doing. It is fun to create your own village and build up your population. I just wish this was improved even further with the sort of random events and happenings that one can find in Age of Empires or Sid Meier's Civilization. Because if that were the case, the game would have been so much better. It has so many things right, but it has some very fundamental things wrong.

I recommend this game to anyone who has a love for Medieval History and/or Castles and/or Simulation games. I am sure you will have fun, but unfortunately you won't be having as much fun as you could have been having.

80

Now the game is fixed.

DukePaul | Nov. 12, 2012 | See all DukePaul's reviews »

Stronghold 3 had a lot of problems in his release, the game was buggy as hell but now after months of patches the game improvement is great and you can play it without any problem.

The game is like the first Stronghold, with similar interface and with updated 3D graphics to recreate the villages, castles and battles in awesome settings, also the music and voices are great.

The campaign is very hard, you will need various tries sometimes to beat a mission, I think the battles is the hardest part, a good strategy and preparation is necessary.

In Stronghold 3 you have an awesome multiplayer which is the best mode of the game, a friend is more entertainment than playing the game against the AI, 2vs2 matches are incredible.

The game is now fixed and has a great price, I highly recommend it.

70

Decent but could be Great

toolz | Nov. 13, 2011 | See all toolz's reviews »

Good game but a bit buggy and it falls short on some promises. On the bright sight the game is beeing constantly patched and fixed so it gets better with time. Promises as well as ideas and tips from community are beeing brought to the game. With that in mind the game is getting better with time and could potentially become great.

92

Great game to play, if you enjoy stronghold 1(not crusader)

opatjro | Oct. 31, 2011 | See all opatjro's reviews »

The story line is fun, the game is similar to the first stronghold. Although there is no Skirmish AI, however stronghold 1 doesn't have one as well. If you love the campaign, this is a game for you. Multiplayer mode is fun although there are lots of bugs and crashes. MP will be great when crashes issue has been fixed. Also Invasion game mode can be created with map editor, there are some community invasion game mode avaliable. The major different of this game to the first stronghold can be listed in three point. 1. peasant spawn by timer, if your peasant got killed, this will hurt your economy a lot more than stronghold 1. 2. Each building has its own square, this limited the building space, also require lot of planning about where to place each building. 3. The way wall work, the construction of wall in stronghold 3 is complicated, however I enjoy it more than the other stronghold. Personally, this game worth 50 dollars. I would advice to wait for a while until the crash has been fixed.

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