Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4277 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Take 2
• Released on: 2006-10-13
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platform: Windows XP

Amazon.co.uk Review:
In a nutshell:
Become king of your very own castle with the latest in the popular series of castle building sims, now with added vampires and in full 3D!

The lowdown:
The thought of building your very own castle is one of the key pleasures of a young man’s life, whether it’s made out of sand, tree branches or LEGO bricks. The Stronghold series has been all about channelling those childhood dreams into structured gameplay, but this latest version has just as much emphasis on real-time combat as it does castle building. This is a bit of a shame as it’s the castle construction that was the unique and interesting element and that, along with resource management, has now been very much downgraded. The combat which is the new focus is shallow, but still enjoyable, and there are enough unusual units and features to keep strategy fans interested.

Most exciting moment:
This is the first time the Stronghold series has ever used real 3D graphics and although some of the human characters seem a bit blocky the actual castles look great and the camera view allows you to zoom in on a surprising amount of detail on all the buildings and walls.

Since you ask:
The word Legends refers to the fact that you get to control mythical figures such as King Arthur and Vlad the Impaler through their own story campaigns. There are also a lot more magical units to employ in battle, including dragons, dwarves, giants and werewolves.

The bottom line:
It doesn’t play to its strengths, but it’s still the best castle builder on the block. -HARRISON DENT

Manufacturer's Description
Stronghold Legends is a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game that builds on the fantastic Stronghold heritage, combining beautifully crafted visuals and well balanced gameplay with the epic legends of the middle ages. Currently anticipated to be available in fall 2006, Stronghold Legends is being developed by the award-winning Firefly Studios.

Stronghold Legends is a dramatic addition to the series, combing a range of new gameplay innovations including a new strategic conquest style of play and exciting new multiplayer modes. Gamers can play as King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, Count Vlad Dracul or relive the heroic sagas of the mighty Siegfried of Germany in twenty-four missions that span across three unique campaigns.

Customer Reviews

Pleasantly suprised!
First of all I really enjoyed all of the previous Stronghold games, and thus was looking forward to Legends. However, upon first playing was a bit confused as to why I could not torture rack my peasants and where were all the new buildings. Turns out this game strayed a bit away from the whole castle building strategy/sim I had grown quite fond of. What I received instead was a very entertaining RTS game. Most of the new rts games have strayed from the buildings aspect of the genre, (and are more unit based). Such as WarcraftIII and Battle for Middle Earth for example, and rely heavily on your Hero units. Stonghold Legends however not only has hero type units such as King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table with the help of Merlin, ( each with their own unique superpower) Sir Percival's Holy Blast is fantastic for taking out the oppostions advancing troops, it also has a deep economic system when compared to other RTS games. The good faction should be a perfect fit
for those RTS fans that enjoy using such Hero units against human opponents in online scrimages. Also, every faction can summon their own unique Dragon to wreak havoc on their enemies castle. The Ice Dragon is most enjoyable. But, FireFly has also left their deep castle building and economic system mostly intact. From gathering resources for building, planting crops for food, gaining honor and glory from battles and brewing ale, to taxing your peasants for gold. So there is virtually something for everyone who is a fan of RTS games as well as Castle building sim fans. With 3 dif factions to choose from, Including: Evil with werewolves and vampires to the Ice faction complete with frost Giants and an Ice Queen, to the Good faction with King Arthur and his knights. So, if you like castle/city type sims as well as traditional mass army RTS games I highly recomend this gem of a game. The only downfall of this game is its limit of 4 player online multiplayer and 2 map sizes, large or small (although the handy map editor can help). With all of the other established Rts franchises out just being the same thing as the last with better graphics and sound this was a refreshing game.

Awesome game!
This is everything that I expected from the latest of the stronghold series, it really is great.

- The graphics are irrelevant cos you're so zoomed out to control the action you can't appreciate them unless you want to. The overhead view is helpful for planning, but then you can't appreciate the graphics at all.

- The campaign is very good, each mission usually starts off fine then things go wrong, and you really have to use your coping skills and you're brain to keep things ticking over. You do find a rhythm, and then the game sets about destroying it! It's really challenging and fun.

- The skirmish trail is a really great idea, for challenging you without the necessary storyline to produce difficult and very difficult scenarios.

- I'm not convinced that the races are balanced properly, with King Arthur having many major advantages over the over two races, while the other two rely on disruption techniques to combat this effect.

- The only slight shortcoming from a strategy perpective is a lack of approriate shortcut keys.

A lot of effort obviously went into planning each of the missions in this game to make them all do-able, but not easy.

I think this is one of the best strategy games I've played and the resource/city-management is the best I've ever seen, within a pre-dominantly war-type game.

It's Not Stronghold 2
I'm going to try and make this quick. If you play this game expecting Stronghold 2 you may be disappointed, but otherwise it's not a bad game.

Pros -
Pretty good graphics that run well.

Although the castle building is minimized, there's still enough there to make things interesting, it's a pretty good mix.

New units add something new to the typical historical units usually found in Stronghold games.

Haven't encountered any serious bugs as of yet, and performance is better than I expected after playing SH2.

Voice acting is cheesy, but in a good way that suites the game well.

Cons -
Not enough new units. The 3 factions are basically identical except a few fantasy creatures unique to each one.

Missions are a bit linear.

Not enough castle building. If you weren't a big fan of that this would probably be an improvement, but it was the castle building simulation aspect of stronghold that I liked, and what really set it apart from other games in the genre.

Overall the game has it's flaws, but it still pretty fun to play. If you like Stronghold, but want a bit faster, more action oriented game you'll probably like this. If you're like me and love the economic missions and castle building stuff, you might wanna avoid this one.