Sxynix Posted March 17, 2021 Posted March 17, 2021 Platforms : PC Developers : FireFly Studios Publishers : FireFly Studios Features : Online Co-Op Multiplayer Release Date : March 9, 2021 For 20 years now, the Stronghold series has fortified itself in an interesting place somewhere between a city builder and a more traditional real-time strategy. Stronghold Warlords continues this tradition with a new flavor as it takes us, for the first time in the series, to the battlefields of ancient and medieval East Asia. But as an RTS, it feels like it's still living in the mists of the past. And the city building, while it can be an interesting and almost zen little puzzle, often feels at odds with the goal of straightforwardly conquering your enemies. The biggest, often refreshing difference between a Stronghold game and, say, Warcraft or StarCraft, is in how it pushes you to think about space. You're going to be turning an open plot of land into an impressive, thriving walled city... assuming no one razes it to the ground first. And it's not just the availability of natural resources you need to worry about. Decisions like placing your main stockpile close to resource collection areas can have a big effect on the efficiency of your economy, and keeping your people happy later on will partly depend on how many of your buildings are in the radius of temples. You really have to try and picture how everything is going to fit together, on top of building out your defenses to maximize your home field advantage. It does a good job of scratching that Tetris-y itch and making long-term planning pay off. That’s been true of the series as a whole, but Warlords has added a new wrinkle in that you can choose whether to keep your people in line through love or fear. One building chain will let you construct torture racks and other unsubtle symbols of oppression, which make your workers work faster but demoralize your armies and reduce your po[CENSORED]rity. The other offers creature comforts that will inspire the troops and endear you in the hearts of the commoners, but also lowers their resource output since they're spending too much time playing lawn darts or whatever. I enjoyed the tension this created because I could see how much productivity I could squeeze out of my people and also keep each new stronghold from feeling like a repeat of the last. Keeping happiness at least somewhat positive is important because it's the only way your po[CENSORED]tion will grow, and raising taxes to afford higher-tier units is only possible if you're giving something back in return, like more rice rations or fancy new silk duds. This helps your cities feel like a bit more than just a collection of peasants dumping gold in a pile to fund your armies like in a traditional RTS. But once those armies get on the move, that's sort of all it boils down to. Share Autoplay setting: On Combat in Stronghold Warlords is at its best during sieges, whether you're on the attacking or the defending side. All the modular pieces you can construct your walls and towers from allow for some interesting and clever set-ups to maximize your advantages against a larger force, especially if you know a thing or two about how real castles were designed in these eras. And figuring out how to take on an enemy fortress, probing for weak spots and choosing your opportunities carefully, can be exciting as well. Field battles just aren't as interesting, though. Fights are very old-school Age of Empires in their pacing and scale. There is a huge gap in movement speed between lower-tier skirmishers and the tanky imperial troops you can get later in the tech tree, which does allow a savvy commander to outmaneuver a more potent army and win the day. But overall, these fights are very old-school Age of Empires in their pacing and scale. It's not terrible, it just feels very behind the times compared to more recent RTSes like Northgard or Total War. And the art doesn't help. While the grand keeps and shining pagodas are detailed and attractive, these low polygon, flat-looking unit models could be outshone by something like the original Company of Heroes, which came out almost 15 years ago. Each of the six single-player campaigns, which are around six to 10 hours long, take you to a different time and place in history, they only seem like distinct factions because most missions limit what you can build. In multiplayer and skirmish vs AI, on the other hand, that distinction is lost: not only are the unit rosters identical for each army, your Imperial Swordsmen will always speak Chinese even if you're playing as the Vietnamese. Genghis Khan can hire Ninja and Samurai units just as easily as his rival, the shogun, can get Mongol horse archers. There's a little bit of visual variation in architecture, but overall, it's all a weirdly homogenous abstraction of a setting that spans an entire continent and over a thousand years of history. Genghis Khan can hire Ninja and Samurai units just as easily as his rival, the shogun, can get Mongol horse archers. “ Some of the voice acting is definitely pretty iffy, too. The main advisor character in the campaign, especially, sounds like a really cartoonish, potentially offensive stereotype of a fussy Chinese bureaucrat. It's similar in tone to the somewhat over-the-top and playful depictions of historical figures the series has dabbled with previously, but when it's applied to a non-European character, it's hard not to wince any time he opens his mouth. The leaders themselves, while exaggerated, at least don't sound like caricatures. At least the mission objectives have good variety and nod to some interesting historical battles. They definitely play fast and loose with history, but keep it interesting by alternating between more traditional base building, a few that have you trying to take down a castle with a fixed army and no ability to replenish troops, and some that are purely focused on building up your economy while defending a castle. Those last ones are the most fun, especially when combined with the system of militarily or diplomatically vassalizing AI warlords on each map to grant you various bonuses. It made me wish there was some kind of horde mode for skirmish or multiplayer, which could have taken the strongest part of Warlords and made it endlessly replayable. Verdict When I'm laying out a city or defending it from invaders, Stronghold Warlords is satisfying and almost chill. But it's a better castle builder than it is an RTS, and aside from a kind of aimless free build mode, there's not much of a way to ignore those lackluster elements. The dated unit models just aren't at all nice to look at, and make me wonder if a game of this budget wouldn't have gotten more bang for their buck going with a more stylized art direction. The historically-based campaigns have some cool missions, but the fact that every faction boils down to a weird amalgamation of such a broad swathe of history and geography in skirmish and multiplayer feels like a missed opportunity. I don't regret the time spent with Stronghold Warlords, but I wouldn't be devastated to have missed it either. The original Stronghold holds a special place in my heart. You build a medieval barony, surround it with a labyrinth of impassable walls, and stave off waves of attackers while keeping the serfs living within happy, well fed and well taxed. It had real character too, with a lovely soundtrack, snappy unit soundbites and memorable villains. I tend to think that the series’ decades-long endurance despite often lukewarm player and critical reception speaks to an enduring hope that it one day goes back to that simple principle of building and protecting your castle against relentless waves of attackers—that maybe the next Stronghold will finally be the one to both take us back and move us forward. Stronghold: Warlords isn’t that game. In fact, it’s the most sprawling entry in the series yet—largely abandoning the principle of building a feudal gauntlet for waves of enemies in favour of a more traditional RTS setup featuring larger maps and symmetrically placed enemy bases. In other words, it’s more Age of Empires than Stronghold, but without the technological progression, or scouting, or distinct factions, or scuffles over resources. It’s also set in the far east, where you pick from four historical real-life leaders of China, Japan, Vietnam and Mongolia. Stronghold: Warlords (Image credit: Firefly Studios) The titular Warlords system is the twist here. Between your base and the enemy’s, there are several smaller estates on the map held by neutral warlords. Defeat these warlords, and they’ll join your side, sending you resources, letting your troops shelter in their mini-forts, and even launching attacks on your enemies. It’s a decent idea in principle but falters on a couple of levels. Firstly, it means that your main keep which you so meticulously bolster with walls, ballistas, towers, hidden gunpowder traps and fire arrow launchers doesn’t see a ton of action. Most of your time in a skirmish will be spent scuffling over these warlord forts that you don’t have any hand in building or designing except for preset upgrades that you buy with diplomacy points. The climactic sieges do happen eventually, but they’re not at the heart of the game like they used to be. You can use diplomacy points to sweet-talk warlords to your side instead of fighting them. I found that once I was deep into a game, with each remaining team having piled up these points, I’d get embroiled in an endless tug of war on the diplomacy screen with the warlords endlessly flip-flopping between my team and an enemy’s. The diplomacy is both simplistic and fiddly, and the last thing I want to be doing while defending on one front and besieging on another is clicking a big button on a menu to make a number go up. The combat itself feels good for the most part. Siege equipment is varied, ranging from trebuchets that can fire not only rocks, but fire and diseased animals into enemy forts, to laddermen and mantlets that protect your incoming troops from the inevitable arrow barrages. Seeing a city burn and crumble before funnelling troops into it is still a joy, and I had a few highlight reel moments with the gunpowder-loaded oxen that I’d send on kamikaze death-runs into poorly guarded siege equipment. Regular melee, cavalry and ranged troops are joined by far eastern classics like samurai, warrior monks, horse archers and ninjas—who can scale walls without ladders. Fire lancers meanwhile, can burn entire regiments with their medieval flamethrowers. These pyromaniacs shriek maniacally when you select them, making you question whether the least mentally stable soldiers should be wielding the only weapons also capable of damaging your own troops. It’s a solid lineup, offering more tactical variety than past iterations while retaining some of the whimsy that the series at its best had. Back on the homefront, you’ll need to keep the people happy with food, clothing, tea and temples if you want to crank up those taxes. It’s strange that you can only gather resources from within the rather limited building boundaries of your solitary keep, as it means that you need to procure most of your resources through warlords under your command or the market, where you can buy and sell all goods in the game. That means no fighting over resources on the map, which makes games that bit less strategic. Despite the teething awkwardness, I did get into a groove with this economic system, setting surplus resources to auto-sell once they hit a certain point while auto-buying those I lacked so that they always stayed at a minimum threshold. The campaigns fall for that RTS trap of serving as expanded and often mundane tutorials You can choose whether you’re a po[CENSORED]r ruler or a feared one through buildings—a theatre on the one hand; public torture equipment on the other. Each approach grants its own bonuses, and rounds off a pretty satisfying city-builder element that’s a pleasure to watch when working efficiently. Oxen carry iron from mine to stockpile, farmers work the fields, and little people scurry between shacks and pagodas illuminated by ambery hanging lanterns, offering soundbites on the state of things when you click them (so usually whining about taxes, in my case). Managing and designing your fiefdom was always a strongpoint of the series, and Warlords upholds that tradition. It’s taken a while to get round to talking about the campaigns, which no doubt will be on the minds of those who remember the original game’s run of medieval vaudeville villains (medievaudevillains, if you will) and kooky cutscenes. But really there’s not much to tell here, with the campaigns falling for that RTS trap of serving as expanded and often mundane tutorials for the main events: skirmish mode and multiplayer. There are five reasonably lengthy campaigns set across east Asia, each casting you as a real-life historical ruler of the respective region. Each one has a slightly different angle—from galloping around the plains of Mongolia as Genghis Khan to Thuc Phan’s quest to become king of the Au Lac kingdom in the jungles of modern-day Vietnam. There’s plenty of hours here but not much substance—no cutscenes, no big personalities to pit yourself against, and no mid-mission twists. The faction leaders and their rivals are avatars more than characters, only rarely popping up in the corner of the screen to grimace and scowl at you. The campaign missions often restrict the units and buildings you can use, forcing you to really try and make the most of limited resources. These restrictions also give the impression that the factions somehow play differently from one another, but once you start playing skirmish mode—the meat and rice of the game—you find that each one is much the same: identical units and identical buildings except for the bright neon colour banding around them. Even if it was the case that somehow the architecture across several asian nations thousands of miles (and thousands of years, based on the rulers) apart was identical, it doesn’t feel satisfying in a genre that’s most interesting when there’s some asymmetry and distinctions between the combatants. Advertisement Stronghold: Warlords By leaving behind the safety of its castle walls, Stronghold has ventured out into a field where Age of Empires still reigns supreme. It’s a tough ask, especially when at the time of writing it seems that autosave isn’t working and performance unstable and prone to crashes. It doesn’t feel quite ready for the kind of game it wants to be. Stronghold: Warlords still shines during sieges, when piles of enemies collapse beneath swarms of arrows, ladders and ninjas cling to walls, and soldiers fly out of towers toppled by catapult fire. There’s enough customisation in the skirmish mode that you can manufacture these gruelling attritional standoffs, but much of the game between these feels too thin. I’m still waiting for the day when this series reels things in and builds on its sturdy siegecraft foundations, instead of diluting them with generic RTS trappings and other systems that don’t quite click. ----------------------------------------------- Game System Requirments ---------------------------------------------- Minimum : CPU: Intel i5-3330 3.0Ghz or AMD equivalent RAM: 8 GB OS: Windows 7/8/10 VIDEO CARD: nVidia GeForce GTX 680 or AMD Radeon HD7970 (2 GB VRAM) PIXEL SHADER: 5.0 VERTEX SHADER: 5.0 FREE DISK SPACE: 6 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 2048 MB ----------------------------------------------- Recommended : CPU: Intel Core i7-3770 3.4GHz or AMD equivalent RAM: 16 GB OS: Windows 7/8/10 64-bit VIDEO CARD: nVidia GeForce GTX 970 or AMD Radeon R9 290 PIXEL SHADER: 5.1 VERTEX SHADER: 5.1 FREE DISK SPACE: 6 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 4096 MB ---------------------------------------- Video Trailer :
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