Mahou Shoujo の最近のレビュー

Disclaimer: I've only played single player campaign and intend to keep it that way

Doesn't deserve "Mixed" review rating.

I've been playing Stronghold since the original release and still consider Stronghold/Stronghold Crusader games the best of the series. With the 3d graphics introduced the subsequent games lost most of their charm, got fairly ugly and muddy graphics, myriads of bugs never fixed, objectively worse UX/UI.

This one however seems to actually have fixed most of the problems of the previous parts. The pathfinding oddities seem rare, units do not get stuck in buildings like they constantly do in Crusader 2. There are lots of UI improvements both respecting the original games where you were able to see lots of important castle state by actually looking at your buildings (in Stronghold 2 you can't even see your granary/stockpile contents unless you zoom in or there is a unit inside!) and adding on the previously introduced features.

The graphics is actually fine (compared to Crusader 2, which actually looks terrible with all the muddy textures and shoddy animations) and look okay, maybe a bit dated. The style is consistent, the units and buildings are detailed. Granted, I don't personally like the theme.

There are cons, the most major one I feel like the building space being usually too cramped. It does introduce challenge in castle planning, but many of the times it doesn't actually feel good. I don't think the pretty-much-free build mechanics of the first games were problematic and needed that much limiting (spacious castles are by itself already less efficient production-wise). The music is forgettable, even though first games had some legendary soundtrack which subsequent games often reused. The warlords system introduces some interesting back-and-forth gameplay sometimes and presents some challenges in the campaign (i.e. in missions where you can only get a certain resource from the warlords) but in general feels fairly tacked on and partly unnecessary.

Overall, it's still a fun game I recommend Stronghold fans playing, even though it lacks much of the soul of the first two installments. The trend has finally gone positive and I feel like developers have finally started to realize their potential. The next game could be a real gem if it manages to come out better than this one.

Nice game, starts up quickly, has quick matches, perfect for playing during breaks/before work etc.
Decently high skillcap since 90% of abilities are skillshots.
Polished graphics and visual effects.
Not a whole lot of people playing so some queues can be fairly long depending on the game mode/time/region, hopefully fixed with the F2P release.
Overall a great early access survivor.