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Category: Strategy
Platform: PC

Stronghold Crusader Review

Posted by: Core on 17th of December 2002

Gameplay

Stronghold Crusader (SC) is your typical Age of Empires (AOE) style game on first appearances. It has almost the same styles of play, ranging from story driven campaigns to random skirmishes, to multiplayer battles. "Big deal!" you might say. However where SC differs straight away is in its approach to the genre.

Most AOE clones are essentially the same, build a base, gather resources, build an army, and then charge forth at an enemy base until it dies. None of these aspects are particularly focussed on, and it feels none are done superbly well. This has its benefits of course, as a game appears well rounded and balanced, but for those who prefer certain aspects more than others, say building your base, then it feels awfully constricting.
SC is the other kind of game. It takes two aspects of the AOE style game and concentrates on doing them well, in this case the city/base building and siege warfare.

Customise your castle!
For those who like Pharaoh, SimCity, and building cool looking bases in RTS games then Stronghold Crusader is a godsend on first looks. Building your castle is arguably the most important aspect of SC, as without a good strong fortress you will quickly succumb to the enemy. You see, in SC you lose the game if your main character, the lord, is killed in combat. When you start the game you get a keep, on where your grand leader watches the world below him. Protecting this primary building is of the utmost importance, so building an enclosed wall around the keep becomes a huge priority.
Sounds good so far yes? Well, it is actually. The only problem worth noting at this stage though is that if you don’t build a fully enclosed fortress quickly enough at the start then expect to lose, as the enemy will attack you VERY early in a game. Early raids are extremely common, and if you’re new to the game and just learning the ropes it can become deeply frustrating. How am I meant to learn how to build a castle with the enemy instantly attacking?
The game isn’t kind to the new player, especially with the poor tutorial given to you and no pop-up tool tips explaining what units/buildings do what.

Anyway, after you manage to get the grips of what you’re doing then things become better. Castles can have towers attached to them, moats built around them, catapults placed on top of towers, killer dog cages placed to maul enemies as they storm your castle etc. Defending your castle is a lot of fun. And if defending them is fun, then attacking them becomes even better!
All your AOE favourites are there to attack with, from Catapults to Trebuchets, but also features unique siege concepts like ladder men (for your troops to scale the walls), tunnellers (who weaken ground support for enemy towers by digging), and Arabic assassins who scale walls and open gatehouses for your men. Unique siege concepts are also dealt with, things that AOE developers never thought of. If your enemy is well defended, then why not fire over some rotting animal copses over the walls to incite disease? If their buildings are close to shrubs and trees, then why not chuck some fire onto the houses to start a fire wave? Still resisting? Then simply don’t allow them to build farms outside the castle and stave the population out. The amount of siege tactics available is superb, and certainly breathes fresh air into the lungs of the RTS genre.

Castle weaknesses
So, the two aspects it concentrates on are well done, but what about the other fields? After all, if you focus on one aspect then often you lose quality elsewhere in the exchange. In some ways this is the case, as you don’t get to research or upgrade anything, use of resources is limited, and the units available to you aren’t exactly amazing and do feel a little on the low side. In fact, at the end of the day if you just build two types of warrior then your going to win (crusaders and knights). More types of troops would have been better. Your troops A.I. as well isn’t perfect either, as they have a tendency to avoid conflict rather than face it, just standing there although an enemy is right next to them. Even on the aggressive stance some of my crusaders just stand there while enemy charge at them, killing there comrades. Apart from that occasional hiccup though it is fair to say that hand to hand combat is actually handled pretty well and feels more believable than “unit A attacks unit B, unit A wins” RTS games. More often than not one unit is hacking away at whatever enemy is closest, just like real medieval battles.
Shooting combat isn’t too bad either, although the range of the bows and your standard playing view don’t really complement each other well. Most of the time in standard view you cant even see who you are shooting, nor who’s shooting at you. Whereas having it in high view mode means you can’t concentrate on hand to hand combat as well. A minor problem, but still annoying.

“An army is as only as good as its leader”
A.I. is perhaps SC’s weakest feature. If SC was a castle, then the A.I. would be part of the big bad wall where the workers were too busy scratching their arses and decided to make it out of mud rather than stone, thus providing a real weak spot for the game. The problem ranges from enemy lords making castles that lock themselves into their own keeps, enemy lords making thousands of towers all near each other (thereby looking stupid and highly unrealistic), enemy castle designs being packed full of useless stuff, enemy troops not moving to attack just because your troops aren’t ‘in range’ despite the fact you are mutilating the other side of their own town are a few problems with the A.I. that ruin the experience.
One such glorious example was when I was playing two enemy lords in skirmish mode, which we will call lord A and B. I saw player A didn’t finish one of their walls so I decided to get a fire thrower to quickly rush in and touch the city. It worked wonders and soon the enemy’s entire town was burning. The other enemy lord, B, then kept sending its army into the town to try and attack lord A despite the town being on fire. His troops all burnt with the city. Then another wave, attacking from the same direction charged to the flames like a moth. This kept happening. Why cant the A.I. realise the town is on fire, and simply wait until it is deemed safe to charge in and finish the job I started? Instead lord B lost 3 armies in doing the same thing time and again.

Landscape designing, medieval style
One feature worth mentioning that comes with the game which is a bonus is the scenario editor, where you can design levels for your own use, or against your mates. Sounds good in principle? Shame the editor is pretty hard to use. Designing castles is simple in the editor, whereas designing the landscape and making it actually look as nice as the official levels is an arduous task.
The second thing that’s a problem is the lack of fan based websites that host these unofficial designed levels. Looking on the main site I couldn’t find any links to sites that feature these levels. Hell, even the developers haven’t put any official extra levels on their site!

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