Stronghold Crusader 2 - Special Edition

Ah, the humble real-time strategy soldier. Alone, he or she is nothing but a tiny dot on a vast map. But a mass of soldiers forms a blob of incisive power that can cut a swath of blood and destruction across the countryside in whatever direction you see fit. Stronghold Crusader 2 embraces this blob warfare, offering a plethora of different units you can choose from to form your attacking force while your personal castle--the Stronghold series' signature element--hopefully stays safe from harm. But though its parts come together to form a solid strategy game, the uninteresting options at your disposal never raise the game above being one where opposing blobs crash into each other until one splatters. Stronghold Crusader 2 puts you in the shoes of either King Richard's or Saladin's forces during the Crusades, as you square off against the other in self-contained battles raging across the desert landscape. The goal is the simplest one in strategy game history: defeat the enemy Lord and take his castle. But lest you think you're merely expected to churn out soldiers and crash them into the opposition, the game requires you to establish an intricate economy so you can actually afford these soldiers and build structures that will let you make different kinds of units. So far, so familiar. Where the game gets a bit more interesting is when it asks you to attract people to your castle to live and work. You start out with a set population that increases as you become more popular with your subjects. You can make them happier by decreasing taxes (even going so far as outright bribing them), increasing their rations, or building them inns and places of worship so that they can drink and pray. Likewise, you can adjust consumption in the other direction to conserve resources and gain more gold, but you'll be less popular as a result. These concerns are controlled with a convenient panel that lets you change values and tells you the popularity bonuses or penalties you get from each adjustment. Tying popularity and population growth to troop production gives the game a simulation element, and lends the flow of your economy extra texture. At the same time, the fact that you only need to keep track of one statistic ensures that the sim portions don't bloat and consume the rest of the game.

This game is fun though not the best for LONG periods of gaming. For a game I can just hop on and have fun, it's great, it's decently balanced though the difficulty does spike pretty fast and if you're not ready you will be stuck. It runs smoothly though, the setting is good, the levels are fun, and the free rounds work very well. Definitely the BEST of the Stronghold series.