Stronghold Legends

You can make the argument that the Stronghold series peaked with its first release back in October of 2001. The idea was new, the setting was familiar and easy to get into, and it reminded gamers of classic medieval building games such as Castles. Through the Stronghold Crusader sequel and the terribly buggy Stronghold 2, the series never quite took things to the next level. Now we have attempt number four: Stronghold Legends, a rather bland real-time strategy game that shifts the focus away from "realistic" medieval castle building and purely historical units to a full-blown fantasy theme with Merlin, dragons, and huge, castle-destroying giants.

Stronghold Legends is a weird game in that it focuses purely on what the Stronghold series never quite got right: combat. It's a very odd design decision -- not that focusing on medieval combat with fantasy units is a bad idea by itself, but the fact that the developers failed to improve the combat is a bit baffling. Groups still huddle so close to each other that they appear to stand on top of one another, forming great big globs of indistinguishable units, and the AI is so brain dead that you need to constantly babysit your units. In today's real-time strategy climate, it's flat out inexcusable to force a player to manually tell a knight to attack a unit that is literally standing next to him shooting arrows at helpless villagers.


The AI (or lack thereof) really shows its face in the game's three scripted campaigns, which place you in the role of King Arthur, Vlad the Impaler, and Siegfried. The missions are all preset with defined victory conditions, which is fine, but the missions play out more as puzzles rather than forcing you to use any real strategy. And the AI behaves in what is clearly a predetermined way. For example, early in the King Arthur campaign a group of men-at-arms crosses a heavily defended bridge, taking out all of the defenders but losing every man in the process -- all but one: Merlin the Magician. Merlin proceeds to cross the bridge and pelt Saxon infantry with his lightning bolt attack. The four Saxons, who were patrolling a small predefined area, take the lightning on the chin, and one by one die a slow and painful death. Way to go, Merlin.

Adding to the frustration, there are several balancing issues that need to be resolved. Dragons, for example, are amazingly expensive and can bankrupt a fledging empire, and yet these fearsome beasts are felled by a dozen archers shooting pesky arrows at them. It's a tricky thing to resolve, though; on the one hand, you don't want one unit to have the ability to run roughshod over an entire empire, but on the other hand, you should get more bang for your buck with such a powerful unit.