Stronghold 2

First of all this is a great RTS castle building game. Second, unlike a previous review, the game does not take 5 minutes to load and will not crash with only 40 troops. In order to play this game,you need a computer that has the recommended hardware. A pentium 3.2 gig, with a Nvidia or ATI video card with 256 megs of RAM, 1 gig of computer RAM is also recommended. Then make sure you defrag your computer. Next make sure you have ALL the latest patches and upgrades for your computer and the game. Video card drivers must be updated to the latest available. The game also has a 1.3.1 patch that is needed to be downloaded and installed.

Now, after you have a decent computer that is up maintained and up to standards, you will have a good play with Stronghold 2. The graphics are excellent and the RTS castle building is good. The skirmish "Kingmaker" maps can be played by yourself or online in Multiplayer. You can also create your own maps with full land terraforming and creativity. You can also download hundreds of user made maps of many varieties and types. The other reviewer who said you can only have 40 troops (or a crash) is mistaken. I have had hundreds of troops of all kinds in a map and it plays well.

For the price of $19-20 dollars for this game, it is a steal. Great value for the price with total replayability. Some have been playing this game for years! Adjust the settings and Foes and select from 100's of available maps and you can have a new game. Or, create your own custom maps. Stronghold 2 is a great RTS and game. I recommend this game with full confidence to anyone who enjoys this kind of RTS castle building, resource gathering, fighting RTS. Great value at a great price!

This is an AWSOME game!the palaces,fortes and kingdoms you can make are really fun to build and to play around with!Personally I think warcraft3 is better...BUT the fortes and bases are WAY
cooler in this game(much more realistic).I mean in warcraft3 you
have a gold mine in the middle of a clearing or a castle's just a
bit bigger than a tree I mean come on!Anyway the games amazing,
(the battles are really intense).So if you're a sucker for stategy games BUY THIS ONE NOW!

If you like waiting 5 minutes for the actual game to load, then you will love this game. If you like having to restart your computer every 10-15 minutes, then you will love this game. If you enjoy observing the gameplay at an intense, astounding frame rate of 4 frames per minute, then this game is for you, my amigo. If you like arguing with technical support, or just beging customer service for a refund, buy this game, and you will fulfill your dreams. Simply put, this game is a premature fetus in all its soaking glory. Released from its womb too early, it has a wide selection of problems to scratch you head over. The autorun function simply doesn't work, the actual game literary takes 5 minutes to load, the amount of lag is hilarious, and to top it all of, we have a nice random crash sequence. The graphics are amazing, and so is the sound negglecting the fact that the villagers sound like a demented hippo. But if you enjoyed playing the first Stronghold, then you will hate this game. Stronghold 2 has everything Stronghold 1 did and more, more units, more buildings, more options, more bugs, more lag, more crashes. The storyline is simply challenging due to the fact that the bigger your town, the slower the game runs, and higher chance of a crash. It is pretty challenging trying to beat the campaing, and keeping you town population under 40 or else it's a crash. Even freebuild is challenging, with all the lag. Seige maps? Forget about it, huge map, huge army, huge castle to defend or attack, the game crashes as soon as you try to scroll down the map. Another advantage this game has over the original Stronghold is that you don't have to save, because everytime you load a saved game, guess what? CRASH. And NO I am NOT trying to run this game on a Pentium Pioneer 0.004HZ, with Windows 45 Victory Edition, I have a top of the line machine. After such an amazing display from FireFly studios, I don't think anyone will purchase the upcoming Stronghold Legends. How can that game be any better? It runs on the same game engine as this one. It does have the potential to be a great game, but until they fix the crash and lag (which I doubt they will ever achieve, after 3 patches, no improvement at all), it belongs in the trash.