Recent reviews by Ringduva

I am strongly in agreement with many of the already presented negative reviews of this DLC.

Keep in mind, this is Firefly Studios rolling out DLC for a "Definitive Edition" version of a game that is by now more than 20 years old. The only things that they need to put effort and work into is to create levels with thoughtful design that cater to the tools already offered by the existing game. The focus should be on creating levels and maps using the existing system and creating results that properly cater to the game mechanics that are already in place.

With that said, the content feels repetitive, lackluster, and like it has not had much deliberate thought put into it. This DLC does not lean into the existing strong points of what makes Stronghold a great game that has been able to remain popular for so many years and instead much focus has been put on "Kill the Enemy Lord" and "Reach the Flag" missions.

The missions that do have a focus on castle building still suffer from the same lack of interesting level design as the last DLC (and subsequently the entire rest of the Jewel campaign). Most if not all levels that have an objective based on defense simply do not require much critical thinking, it's just "create fortifications from point A to point B" and then you're set. If this is your jam then by all means, go ahead and buy the DLC, but personally I think this is an affront to the RTS genre.

I've played the free version ever since I was a teenager, I'm in my late twenties now, so buying it right when it came out was a no-brainer, of course I want to support the project that I've enjoyed for hundreds of hours for several years now. With that said, the game has only gotten better and better with time with more and more cool features being added to it.

This game is GOOD. It's like a city builder/simulation game where you have (maybe a little too much) control and freedom, and the game is almost a little too elaborate and intricate at times, but that's just something that adds to the charm of the game. The only reason that I don't have more hours in this game is because whenever I do I experience a rift in the time-space continuum and suddenly I look out the window and it's suddenly the morning of the next day. Yes, it's that good.

Ah, life in the old castle.

Let me preface this by saying that I've played Stronghold since I was 4~ years old when it came out.

There is so much to say about this game, I'll try to say as much as possible while keeping to the point. I am a massive Stronghold fan, always have been, I think I've bought 5-6 or so copies of the game, be it for different Steam accounts, or gifts for friends, or buying it also on GoG etc. etc. I've always enjoyed and loved this game and it's a game I keep returning to and always will keep returning to.

Finally after 20 or so years Firefly have finally made the sensible choice of returning to their one working games in their IP. The thinking is sound, you iterate on the old product and you offer improvements in order to offer a more attractive product and get sales.

What does this remaster offer this time around?

A new campaign. It's pretty good. The campaign itself does not warrant the price though in my opinion, so wait for a sale if you can. Part of the reason why I think it's not good enough is the fact that I find the level design to be lackluster at times. Stronghold is a game often described as "castle sim," revolving around building castles, but annoyingly enough I feel like most map designs heavily encourage people to just build a wall or set of fortifications between point A and point B to defend against enemy attacks, which to me does not encourage much strategic depth and thinking. It truly is a shame because the maps themselves often look great but the gameplay does not differ much from map to map when the only difference is "build a wall and some towers to block off this cliffside," "build a wall and some towers to block off this peninsula" or "build a wall and some towers to block off this mountain pass." I get that this might come off as nit picky but I can't help but feel like I expect more when we're paying for the development of this remaster.

New remastered graphics. I'm torn on these. This is subjective, but in my opinion the new graphics fail to capture the charm that the old game has. It may very well be due to the nostalgia of having played this game for 20 years, but it just doesn't feel right to me personally. However a point on the graphics that is not subjective is that they have not done a great job with the animations for some units. For whatever reason they chose to replace/slightly change the graphics of the swordsmen and the knights, which is fine (though me personally I thought the old ones were more charming, but again, that is subjective,) but what really stands out with them is that the framerate of these two units is simply way too high, and the movements of them completely lacks any sense of weight. I strongly prefer the look that the old swordsmen had for example, because they felt more powerful simply because they looked like they were heavy. The new swordsmen almost sort of look like they are sliding across the surface. The knights as well look like they are moving way too fluidly and unnaturally, and also they weirdly lean back into their saddles.

This remaster has multiplayer support. That's a big plus. Get it if your friends are nagging you to play with them, if you want I guess. If you can disregard the other points that I've already made.

This remaster also introduces a few new bugs. That is to be expected of course when the game is remade in Unity, but it's just a bit disappointing to see both your melee units ignore battering rams that could have been destroyed before they reach your walls. Same way that it is also disappointing to see a siege tower get destroyed, but still see enemy units use the "destroyed" invisible siege tower to scale your walls in a completely unfair way and kill your lord.

For these reasons I simply can't whole-heartedly recommend getting this game. I still recommend people to get the original when it's on sale, but if someone asked me "should I get Stronghold: Definitive Edition?" I'm probably gonna say no.

For being a castle building sim I find it astonishing how few actual castles there are. I simply do not understand the train of thought when Firefly make maps for their new campaign, there's barely any maps that have actual castles in them or encourage castle building. I get that this is something that is naturally encouraged indirectly because of the nature of the base game itself, but for being a game about building castles there is simply far too many maps and missions overall that just revolve around making a singular wall/fortification between point A and point B.

In my opinion, the level design that goes into these maps is just not enough to justify the content being a paid for DLC. Maybe my standards are too high but I expect more from the team if they are charging a price for the next installments in the campaign I expect more conscious thought and effort put into the map design.

Lovely game if you like RTS games. This game has got the amazing twist that the meta-game is ever changing depending on what designs the players bring into play. The developers are actively improving the game too, so this game is great, especially considering that it's free.