Stronghold 3

Stronghold 3 has the potential to be a brilliant PC game were it not for the small issue that it feels very broken.

In terms of artwork and appearance, Stronghold 3 has its bases covered, especially with the beautifully drawn motion comic cut scenes. When this animation style is combined with the brilliant voice acting that the game employs you really begin to feel for the character’s plight. Further, the voice acting that appears throughout tis well crafted, though your smarmy advisor’s voice does make you want to punch him in the face talking to me as if I am a novice.
The biggest let down in the sound department was the complete lack of in game background music. This was quite a big flaw. I know that a lot of people tend to turn the sound off and play their own music after the first hour or so, but on my laptop Stronghold 3 had a tendency to freeze if I did this. As such, the lack of background music did tend to lead to a degree of disinterest in the game after a while. This is not to say that I wasn’t still enjoying it, but without inspirational music, I felt a great deal less attached to the game.

In terms of plot, two campaigns are available to allow you to play two sides of the conflict.
The first campaign deals with the war itself. It begins with you sneaking through your own castle trying to avoid enemy troops before eventually escaping on horses down river. The story is intriguing but it does, as in every RTS, feel disconnected from the actual gameplay. There are links in the narrative, like having to find soldiers scattered across the map after your initial defeat, but the story often feels like it is merely providing an excuse for the mission objectives. For instance, when you are told that you have no resources, your mission is naturally to build some up in order to survive. However, this seems pointless when the game has to provide you with some initial resources at the start of the mission in order for you to play anyway. OK, this is really just nit-picking but I had to say it! On the whole, the story is expansive, clever and well written in the style of old English legends, incorporating aspects like naming different nationalities after the animals that most represent them.

The second campaign deals with what happens when war is over. I enjoyed this as a concept as it provides a completely juxtaposed set of objectives to those provided by the battling campaign. It provides an engaging experience for gamers who aren’t just into killing and conquering, letting the player have a chance to enjoy RTS from a completely different perspective. This too has a fully-fledged plot line supplemented with a its own set of motion comics. I preferred this campaign as it seemed to be a lot more challenging than the typical stock up, build troops, attack style of playing.

The actual gameplay does have its good points; the historical sieges, the campaigns, the custom maps that should provide a wealth of player driven content, are all good in theory. The aim of each match is to build up your resources (both in food and material) in order to build structures that provide you with second tier resources such as arms or troops. While this is all going on, you have to ensure that you keep living standards high enough so that enough peasants come to castle and don’t desert. Each peasant can be used either to produce workers (who are automatically assigned to buildings that require them) or to produce soldiers. Both male and female peasants can be trained up as soldiers, male ones tend to be stronger and female faster. A combination of all this should combine to produce a strategically deep gameplay.
Again, in theory.

The whole experience is ruined by a lack of certain features and a huge number of bugs. Often when you click on a location, the units you have selected won’t go there. This is if you can even select your units in the first place. Sometimes, the game will not let you do so if you are zoomed out too far or looking at them from the wrong angle. Worse, the game sometimes won’t even let you select a single unit by clicking on it. This often results in you being unable to bring units into your main force if they get separated from the group. The units’ AI is additionally awful. Despite units being in an aggressive stance, more often than not if they are attacked by an enemy unit they won’t fight back, even if you tell them to. I lost many units to wolves, the weakest units in the game, simply because they refused to fight back.

I want to love Stronghold 3. By all rights it should be one of the best real time strategies I’ve played since Starcraft II and the best medieval RTS I have ever encountered. Unfortunately it’s not. The bugs let it down and render it almost unplayable. Sadly, I have no choice to but to say that this game is a disappointment. I expected so much more, but in the end, it fails to deliver.