I'm a bit late for the party but here goes.

I absolutely love Stronghold. In fact, it was the franshise that made me love strategy games.
I have countless hours played in all the Strongholds, except for the third, for obvious reasons... That is why it pains me to play this game and not feel any satisfaction whatsoever.

I think that every sequel tries to live up to the expectations of its predecessor, and being a sequel to Stronghold Crusader sure is a challenge to surpass. However, despite Firefly trying to give a new spin to Crusader, you can tell that the game tries too much to mimic the first one and the game just makes you want to play the first one instead.
The game feels lackluster, first of all, you can see that in terms of game modes available you get to play the same ones, with nothing new to add.

Campaigns:
There isn't a main campaign to the game, instead you get a very basic and boring set of tutorial campaigns that are too easy and almost impossible to fail, yet unlike the first game, these campaigns aren't based on historical events, instead you get to fight "A crusader lord" or an "Enemy lord"... very generic in comparison to the first one storylines;

Trails:
You get a decent number of them, however, it pales in comparison to the number of missions available on the first one. Even with the DLC you feel you didn't get much in return;

Missions:
You get nothing here... unlike previous titles like Stronghold 1 & 2 and Legends, you don't get missions in this game. This title is mainly focused on Skirmish. This made sense in the first title because it was a novelty at the time, because Stronghold 1 didn't have skirmish, but now... it just feels lazy.
In order for you to enjoy missions, you have to depend on the community. Currently you have a lot of missions to choose on the workshop, but when it came out, it made me feel I got duped (AND I WAS GIVEN THIS FOR FREE!). It's dissapointing because they made some Sandbox maps where they show some bandit camps and lion dens, which are tools they could've used to make some professional mission maps that the players could've enjoyed until the community worked around some;

Skirmish:
The main game mode! The "campaigns" and trials are all focused on this point. This is the game mode you paid for and... it's boring. Well... it feels very limited. When the game got out you had very few different AI's to choose to fight, and most of them are too easy to beat. I tried doing a handicaped scenario with 2 Wolf's and I still managed to beat them very easily. Just spam macemen and cavalry archers and the job is done. The AI's "armies" are a joke and can be easily dispatched.
They bring back beloved characters, but they just feel as less engaging as before. I understand that in crusader one you had very limited AI builds, but nowadays you have a lot of RTS's with very challenging AI and that force you to actually think and strategise, but theses ones are just dull and not fun to play. I actually felt relieved when I finished my last match, because I was actually pretty bored;

Gameplay:
It's too conservative and doesn't try to innovate. You get a few new units with some powerups, but honestly, I haven't felt them being of much use. I don't even feel the need to recruit healers because you very easily overpower your opponents.
Because of this, I never explored much of the roster of units, just once to see them all and their functionality. I never felt the need to use siege equipment nor knights. I was really excited when Firefly showcased the first images of the game and I saw a huge ship, really thought they would add naval combat in some sort, but no... they are just stiff animationless idle props in the game.

A pain in the behind is food. Since Stronghold 3 that Firefly made food consumption feel like the peasants have black holes in their stomachs. God, not even making around 30 bakeries was I able to feed a small population... My castle looked like an entire bread factory... and an inefficient one at best! Unlike the first one where your castle was always looking like a bustling metropolis with so many different buildings.

Also castle building is broken... Seriously what have they done? In this game I can't be creative with my castles, I feel very limited to just making squares or rectangles... And you can make your walls clip into the terrain! I had an entire section of the wall underneath the sand because of the different leve of elevation from the gate to that section. In all previous titles I had so much fun just customizing my castle, and in every match I created something different. It's not that it's impossible to make good and interesting castles in this game, but you sure feel as if the mechanics limit and hinder you in the process.

Graphics:
I never cared much for this aspect, however... I was highly dissapointed with the animations... How did they get to the conclusion that The Rat looked ok? And the characters movements are stiff and weird. I seriously don't know if it's a type of artstyle, but I really wished they just used Stronghold 1 and Crusader 1 character animations again...

Multiplayer:
Didn't find any matches to try it out...

BUGS:
A few, but nothing game breaking, but it just adds to this pile of dissapointment:
- If you group units of different kinds, the slower ones will sometimes do the "T POSE" or just cease to do any animation and float around until they keep up with the faster units;
- I recruited a lot of units on max speed and some just never appear;
- Rallying points sometimes never work;
- Some pathfinding issues inside the castle walls.

Verdict:
Despite all of my negative points I do have to say that I still recommend buying this game, but ON SALE! Despite it being a very dull and unoriginal game, you get a decent, yet flawed, strategy game with some bright colours set in the Crusades. If you buy it for a modest price on Sale, you get what you paid for, a generic medieval RTS.

I give it a 6/10