----------------------------
Stronghold 3 hits the market hoping to accomplish the success it achieved in the first series. The developers have boasted that they've taken out the things people didn't like in the failed SH2 and reimplemented our favorite aspects of SH1, but does it succeed?
Fans of this series will immeditely notice the similarity of the graphics of this game with that of SH2. The 'new' realistic graphics are debatable and seem to be bland making the world colourless and dull with buildings looking very alike due to their thatch roofing. Some buildings seem to lack decoration at all such as the barracks which looks like a rectangular block with a few crenulations.
The units seem more of a cross between SH1 and SH2, whilst the terrain favours for a SH2 appearance.
The developers of SH3 have sure enough reverted some gameplay back to SH1. Most noticably are the buildings and how they work. The veterans will feel familiar with the apple orchards, cows, various weapon workshops, barracks, armoury etc... all which resemble their SH1 counterparts. Some buildings like the woodcutters and ox tehters have been changed for the better and sure enough there have been new additions to the game as well. Workers still deliver to the stockpile/armoury/granary from their workplaces in the same fashion as SH1.
The popularity system has been reworked in that dynamic rather than static. In SH1, when you became unpopular your popularity dropped slowly until it reaches below 50 where you start to lose peasants. SH3 has not 'static' overall popularity, rather just how you're people feel at the very moment. So if they don't like you, you instantly start losing peasants. An example of this would be you have +20 because everyone is happy, suddenly your granary is empty and your popularity will change to -30 within the second and immediately you start losing peasants. This translates to popularity affecting growth very rapidly and you are able to influence it immediately. This does have its downfalls: scripted event that hit your popularity hard into the negative region can be deadly as you have no 'buffer' time to react to the dropping popularity as you did in SH1. Secondly the spawn timer has changed dramtically.
Back in SH1 holding a popularity of 100 was easy and gave you around 3 second peasant spawn times. Here in SH3 the fastest spawn times I got on average were around 13 seconds/peasant AT BEST. Sometimes this could fall to 20+. This is a flaw in the game design in my opinion. I found myself sitting around for a long time waiting for peasants to spawn just so I can make an army and finish the campaign (I had tons of resources and weapons but the limiting factor is spawn time).
It also takes a while for your economy to start as you can wait for a seemily long time to populate all your jobs. The game in this aspect has slowed down a lot and it would seem that the slower gameplay makes it boring to say the least.
Despite the slow gameplay, I was not put off the game. What did really annoy me was the amount of bugs that were scattered throughout. Lets take a look at some:
It honestly feels like SH3 was released as an unfinished product, such that they rushed to meet the deadline and fell horribly short of completing. Either that or they didn't beta test it at all.
While the game did include a tutorial it was about 5 mins long max. It taught the VERY basics and really not enough to play properly. Even a seasoned SH player like myself struggled to understand some of the newer buildings. The HELP book in the game does not describe adequately what each building does and for a new player - they would definitely get lost.
Campaigns also do not have a difficulty setting at all. Even for me I failed some of the earlier missions on first playthroughs as they were quite challenging and I could imagine for someone new to the game it would be very hard.
Instead of the 4 directional game-plan that SH1 used for buildings, SH3 allows 360 degree rotation of all buildings and walls. While this does look more aesthetically pleasing and allows for more diverse castles it falls short in allowing players to distinguish what can and can be built on. At times you will be left wondering if the 'location is blocked' was referring to that tiny dent in the hill, or the low shrub of the miss-coloured dirt which all of these points sometimes you can and sometimes you can't build on it seem. Stone quarries in particular are hard to make out how the building works in terms of placements.
It can also get a bit tedious where you have to align your mouse precisely on the pixel to get buildings to line up nicely. This is needed since the new housing system requires you to build adjacent to your keep to get maximum effect.
SH1 music can be remenisced to while playing the game while new music is also implemented to give the medieval feel. The music is one aspect that I don't have any gripes about although I found it weird how it is turned off by default in options.
So far the story seems ok, however it seems like a lack of effort in that all the pre and post mission scenes are all drawn in black and white comic style.
In this day and age where computer animation is near and plenty you would expect them to put some effort into actually animating something.
I haven't seen the later tier units but the new early game men-at-arms unit is definitely interesting as it gives micro-intensive players something to do as they specialise in hit and run. However since it is one of the only units you have access to early and that they such at melee combat it would make sense for them to automatically stand their ground and use their ranged attacks. But no, the default stance is 'aggresive' for these guys which makes then run in and fight with their little daggers. Imagine your archers shooting 1 arrow and then running in to engage in melee. That is exactly what it feels like.
The damage to health ratio works against the game mechanics in that it takes 2 or 3 arrows or throwing-spears to kill an equivalent unit. While realistic this draws from the game play in that when you have a group of units selected they will all throw their spears (20) at the one target wasting 18 spears and with their HUGE reload time it is a giant waste of firepower. Essentially you would need to form 10 control groups of 2 men each and target each enemy seperately, however apart from korean starcraft 2 players, no one has that sort of micromanagement.
It also seems they forgot to implement an attack move command which would be immensely useful instead of guessing when to order that attack command as your units are marching under enemy fire. Speaking of which, when attacking enemy walls there are times where I am certainly in range but my men refuse to attack the enemies on the walls while I eat arrows left right and center. Leaving the only option as chipping away at the wall with tiny daggers?!?
All in all the gameplay feels very slow and it seems like I have purchased an incomplete product and if there isn't a patch very soon to rectify the huge amount of bugs I will be writing to the publishers to request a refund. I am not paying $60 for half a game, nor did I ask to be a beta tester as that is what it feels like. Right now I'd give the game a
----------------------------------------------------
[This message has been edited by Skasian20 (edited 10-25-2011 @ 12:28 PM).]