Stronghold Crusader Extreme Old and almost impossible, Stronghold Crusader Extreme is hard to recommend even to diehard fans of this RTS series.
You
can't go home again. That's the lesson of Stronghold Crusader Extreme, a
revamping of Firefly Studios' classic 2002 real-time strategy game Stronghold
Crusader. This minor reimagining of an oldie but goodie is several
years late for the party, a real-time relic based on antiquated game mechanics
and production values. It doesn't even add much in the way of new
old-fashioned game content; it simply goes after hardcore fans of the
original game with a new Extreme Trail mode of play that takes you up a
ladder of impossibly murderous medieval skirmishes.
This
is essentially a straight rehashing of the first Stronghold Crusader.
Gameplay shows every bit of its age, so what you've got here is an
old-school RTS game in which you build bases, gather resources, and
grind out soldiers for endless combat. You take on the role of a
medieval lord commanding a settlement in the dusty lands of the
Crusades-era Middle East, and must build it up by constructing the usual
barracks, farms, armories, and mines. Of course, the ultimate purpose
is to use this economic backbone to fund an army of knights, spearmen,
bowmen, and the like, and proceed to wipe your enemies off the map.
As
with most RTS games from earlier in the decade, the skirmish maps in
the 20-mission Extreme Trail campaign are all about speed, not strategy.
The winner is always the one who can click the quickest, which makes
matches play out more like fast-forwarded street brawls than real
military engagements. This is actually one of the zippiest RTS games of
all time, and spectacularly tough when compared to the nonextreme trail
campaign in the original Stronghold Crusader. The pace has been so amped
up and the maps so packed with enemies that the combat is frenzied and
chaotic.
Expect
to be toast early and often if you don't have some heavy playtime with
the first game under your belt. Even with this experience (which you can
gain here because you get the complete original game along with the
supposedly new one), it's amazingly tough to emerge victorious from even
a single one of the scenarios. Multiple enemies target you in all but
the very first campaign mission, and this array of foes kicks off every match by immediately hurling columns of troops at your puny little village.
Maps cram all of the factions into such close quarters that it's impossible to get started on a reasonable army before the onslaught begins. Enemy armies are typically coming over the hill
within no more than a minute or two from the start of a game. It's hard
to figure out what you're supposed to do to stop these assaults, given
that you're always stuck battling these massive forces with just the
handful of knights and archers that you start with. You have the option
of dropping in companies of spearmen and macemen on the fly at timed
intervals, and can erect walls to somewhat stem the tide, but this seems
to only delay the inevitable as steams of enemy columns constantly rush
toward your keep. All you're ever doing is keeping your head above
water, not building enough strength to take the fight to the enemy.
Other aspects of the game don't fit with 2008. There is an online matching
service, but it's hosted through the rather clunky GameSpy Arcade
system, and some sort of conflict or bug with our initial install left
us without the icon needed to activate this option on the multiplayer
screen. The isometric visuals of the six-year-old original haven't been
enhanced at all, so you're stuck with pixelated units and a maximum
resolution of 1024x768 that stretches the display to the point of
blurriness on a widescreen monitor.
Not that there's much detail here to blur. Units look like scrambling
insects that convulse their way across the bland, blocky landscape.
Audio is just as dated. The music is a repetitive martial loop, battles
are loaded with tinny metal clashes, and order acknowledgements are
repetitive exclamations as bombastic and dumb as something you might
hear during the dinner show at Medieval Times.
Only
someone who has just stepped out of a time machine will have much
patience for Stronghold Crusader Extreme. Aged, formulaic, and
spectacularly difficult, the game isn't remotely appealing to a modern
RTS audience.
Processor= 933MHz
RAM= 128MB
Graphics= 32MB
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