Stronghold Legends
Preview
This may be one of the most fun strategy titles you'll play this year
by Sergio Brinkhuis
previewed on PC
Fantasy (cntd.)
Not every unit will be available in every campaign but I will give you an idea of what you will be up against. Imps, Witches, Vampires, Knights of the Round table, Valkyrie and Werewolves will all make an appearance in the game. The total amount of different units will almost double compared to Stronghold 2, but none are as powerful as the Dragons. These extremely powerful animals will be expensive to recruit but will be able to tip the balance when you're on the loosing end of a battle. There's a catch though: Dragons take some time to hatch and will fight for you for a limited time only. After a while they will simply dispel so you have to use them wisely.
Scenery
As mentioned before, the game will switch scenery on you completely and will do so three times. But what about the rest of the graphics? Well, it should come as no surprise that, with the original engine powering the new Legends game, things don't change very much. Stronghold 2's graphics were okay but not exactly mouth-watering. This means that Legends' graphics will look dated so be prepared for that when it hits the shelves.
On the plus side however, you get three very different and unique settings that get filled up with all sorts of fantastic creatures. What the game will lack in graphical quality, it will more than make up for in variety and ambiance. The only noteable exception to that are the spell effects, they are new simply because there was no magic in the original.
Less sim, more RTS
With Strongholds Legends, Firefly moves away somewhat from the castle building sim that Stronghold 2 was. The focus has shifted away a little from being a simulator, in favour of being a fast(er) paced RTS. Firefly has done this before with their release of Stronghold Crusader. That game too was more a RTS than a sim so there's no doubt in my mind that Firefly can pull off such a switch. That does leave the question of whether a year and a half is enough time to fix some of the issues that the engine had when it was used for the last game. Technically, it should be more than enough time but after last year's mild disappointment, I must admit to having some reservations about the game. This is a real shame because from everything that I have seen so far, the game looks like it could be one of the more appealing strategy titles this fall.
