Stronghold Crusader 2
Stronghold Crusader 2 is the long awaited sequel to the original castle sim. After 12 years Stronghold returns to the desert with a new 3D engine and powerful Havok Physics. Crusader 2 recaptures the original game’s addictive, fast-paced gameplay and authentic castle simulation.
Stronghold Crusader 2 is a strategy, medieval and city builder game
developed and published by FireFly Studios.
Released on September 22nd 2014 is available only on Windows
in 10 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Polish, Russian, Portuguese - Brazil, Japanese and Simplified Chinese.
It has received 16,414 reviews of which 11,807 were positive and 4,607 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.1 out of 10. 😊
The game is currently priced at 2.99€ on Steam and has a 90% discount.
The Steam community has classified Stronghold Crusader 2 into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows 7/8/10/11 with latest service packs
- Processor: Intel Core2 Duo 2Ghz or equivalent
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT 512MB or AMD Radeon HD 2900XT 512MB or better
- DirectX: Version 9.0c
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 4 GB available space
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
The graphics improvement from the previous game of the series is wonderful. Economy system is greatly improved, sieging units are greatly reworked and feel actually more fun and more strategic to use! Multiplayer is greatly improved and feels more engaging, especially when cooperating with an ally. Shame the game is a bit buggy and has some performance issues to this day. But indeed, I really enjoyed this game.
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There is something about the Crusader Trail that just ticks all the boxes in my brain. I’ve always enjoyed turtling in RTSs and for me, at least, the gameplay loop is about managing your economy efficiently enough to successfully turtle, and then using that turtle to develop an attack force and wipeout the CPU opponents from the safety of your base. It’s not a great game in many ways, but that loop, played out in all of the circumstances and scenarios of the various maps combined with the different starting positions, opponents and allies is like computer game crack to me. After finishing all the trails in all the expansions I found myself starting over and realized the only way to stop was to uninstall. A few years later, I started playing again and threw away a few more hours in my life and decided that uninstalling wasn’t a strong enough deterrent so now I’ve hidden the game from my games list and I have no plan to look up how to find it again. I guess I recommend it?
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This game is not without its flaws. Pathfinding issues and occasional AI quirks can frustrate at times, but they're minor blemishes on an otherwise awesome medieval experience. For me, the joy of constructing mighty fortresses, leading armies into battle, and forging my own path through the middle ages far outweighs any technical hiccups. If you like the genre, then this game is a must-play. Its gameplay is a testament to the series' enduring appeal, blending history and strategy into an unforgettable experience. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3256893067 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3256300240
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***Die-hard fans of the Stronghold series, please read this review before making your purchase. You won't regret it.*** As a long time fan of the Stronghold series, this game was such a let down. Yes, it is *technically* a Stronghold game, and it technically is the sequel to Crusader, but overall it is not even close to being on par with the rest of the series. --First, the Good-- At its core, the concept of Stronghold is still the same here. You'll start off building a settlement, gathering resources via a supply chain, ultimately crafting weapons to arm a force of soldiers. There are familiar units: Archers, Macemen, Crossbowmen (Crusader). Horse Archers, Slaves, Assassins(Arabic)..as well as some new ones, including the Healer and many other Arabic mercenaries not previously seen. You can build walls, towers, siege weapons and all sorts of defense mechanisms for keeping the black knight at bay.On top of that, many familiar faces return, such as The Rat, Richard the Lionheart and more. The game is, of course, a 3d Model game, bringing the Crusader series at least one generation ahead. And...that's about it. Honestly. If you were a fan of the original series, it may warm your heart to actually have some new Stronghold content to play with, but there really isn't anything new and exciting here. --Now, the Bad...where do I begin?-- First of all, the game is somewhat broken. There are plenty of times where characters models won't animate, and it's not uncommon for characters to simply float across the map in the standard model "christ pose" without any animation. Even the oxen who carry the stone in the game would freeze when moving on an angle. Stone walls are another mess. Too often, staircases would end up with a wall piece right in the middle of them, creating a strange unrealistic graphical error. These are only some of the visual phenomenen that occur while playing. That brings me to another issue...wall building. Not only do walls cost way too much in this game, but there is pretty much no room for creativity when building your castle. In the original/Crusader 1, you had so much control over every little aspect of your wall design. You could build walls of all different heights, staircase pieces, granulated walls all down to the very last square. This gave us castle builders so much of a blank canvas that virtually anything was possible if we knew how to use those pieces the right way. In Crusader 2, 90% of the wall building is done for you when clicking. A wall piece is pre-built for you to include parapits on one side, a wall space, and parapits on the opposite side. You can no longer just build a simple piece of stone wall, the basic building block (almost literally) of the original series' castle building element. Sure, you can add towers and all kinds of siege weaponry, but the fun and joy of really creative a keep down to the last detail is completely lost here. The cost of walls adds to another huge gripe with this game...balance. It's my understanding that a patch has re-balanced some of the economy issues, but the game is still WAY too unbalanced when trying to get your city up and running. Too often I find myself running out of resources right at the beginning of a match, even when set to give myself a huge advantage over my AI counterparts. For example, a windmill in this game costs 200 wood. In the original? 20. So it costs literally 10 times as much here. That would be fine, except woodcutters don't harvest 10 times as much wood here. They harvest roughly the same amount as before. This leads to a TON of waiting around to gather resources right from the git-go of any match. Sure, there was always that element in the original (as with any RTS), but there is a considerable difference here. I feel like I'm not getting anywhere, even though I have what would otherwise be the basics of a civilization in place. Ah, civilization...a thriving, breathing melting pot of people going about their daily lives, each contributing to their society in their own way, all while maintaining their own unique personality...yeah, Stronghold Crusader 1 was a fantastic game. Say goodbye to that here. I mean, sure...you get to see the workers doing what they do in 3D, but it's not the same. Peasants say NOTHING when you click on them. No Monty Python-esque man impersonating a woman "morning your lordship!" or "no taxes is good taxes, that's my motto!", just silence. No adding flowers, maypoles, dancing bears, gauntlets, guillotines, stretching racks...good/bad popularity control is just gone. Speaking of voices (ha), this might be one of the most dissapointing aspects of Crusader 2, and I honestly didn't see it coming. The voice acting in this game is TERRIBLE. I mean that in every sense of the word. I have friends who can do cooky voices that would have been better candidates. A great example is the men-at-arms. Remember the way they sounded in Stronghold 2? They were dopey lummixes, and rightfully so given their rank. Or how about their original counterpart, the spearmen? They were rough, working class fighters ready to stick a spear in whatever you tell them to. Here's what I want you to do: We're gonna do a test. I want you to read the next sentence I say in quotes out loud. Don't use any exciting voice, or cooky impersonation, or anything. Use your normal speaking voice. Ready? Okay, say this out loud: "Man at arms, ready. Close ranks." Congratulations! You've just landed a gig providing voice over work for a video game! The level of enthusiasm in these vocal takes can only be described as the bare minimum. Without trying to be funny, I've found myself honestly wondering if they simply had one of the programmers provide voices. As annoying as he was, we all have to admit that at least The Rat had a memorable personality. His voice has now been replaced with some Joe Everyguy off the street. You'll forget him as soon as you end the game. To be fair, I need to point something else out, though, about the voice over work, and that's that there are a lot of recycled vocal takes from previous games. Archers still sound like archers, crossbowmen like crossbowmen, etc. However, it's about 50/50 as far as which characters use the classic voices, and which use Joe Everyguy. It might sound petty to be so bitter about this, but as (I'm assuming, since you've read this far) you are a die-hard Stronghold fan, then you KNOW how important the voices are to this series. They are the character, the personality and the life of the game! They're what make you feel like you are controlling living, breathing people of all different sorts, whose lives hang at your fingertips! The original games did all of that in spades, and they weren't even 3D rendered! --The Bottom Line-- I haven't played much of this game, but I'm fairly confident that won't change. I could go on forever about the other issues that are impossible to ignore (such as the buildings and terrain feeling like they're from two different games), but I feel I've beaten my own horse to death here. From what I gather, a team of less than 10 people programmed this game. I don't mean this review as offense to them specifically. They created a game, like they said they would. They accomplished something that I, of course, haven't...but it's almost like giving credit to Nickelback. I may hate their music, but at the end of the day they're creating albums and I'm sitting behind my keyboard judging people. That being said, it doesn't mean that I have to LIKE Nickelback. That was a bad way to end this review. Sorry to take a punch at an easy target. Judge me all you want for that, just please don't buy this game. It's something you can't take back.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 21 November 2024 06:11 |
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| SteamSpy data | 18 December 2024 12:07 |
| Steam price | 23 December 2024 20:44 |
| Steam reviews | 22 December 2024 21:59 |
Online players
252
Developer
FireFly Studios
Publisher
FireFly Studios
Release
22 Sep 2014
Platforms
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