Stronghold Crusader 2 Free Download

Stronghold Crusader 2 Free Download Unfitgirl

Stronghold Crusader 2 Free Download Unfitgirl Ah, the holy land. That sacred place where people of all faiths have convened to massacre each other in the name of the same god since the year dot. A particularly fine example of said internecine monotheism was the long period of the Crusades, when a load of nobles wearing steel onesies were pressure-cooked in the sun whilst hundreds of servants died killing the distressed locals in spectacular sieges. It’s a great period for the Stronghold series to return to. The original isometric Stronghold Crusader was released way back in 2002, a year after Stronghold, and both were very well-received. This sequel follows that first title slavishly, moving the conflict from SC3’s medieval Europe to the sandpit of the Middle East, and reintroducing many of the features that made the first game such a success – a load of fun new units as mercenaries, skirmish-based campaigns against AI enemies with personalities, and a whole lot of sand. The difference is that it’s inherited the troubled and plain-looking 3D engine from 2011’s Stronghold 3. The worry is that it’s also inherited that game’s bugs and tedium. A simple tutorial and two short campaigns introduce the game mechanics, after which the great majority of your time is spent in skirmishes or following set-piece battle campaigns. These mostly take the same path – build your economy, then build your castles, then send out troops to attack your enemy, devastate their defences and kill their lord(s). Unfitgirl.COM SEXY GAMES

All RTSes are, to some degree, resource-juggling games. Learning the optimal SC2 resource build takes a few tries, but crucially there is an optimal tree – literally, as without wood everything grinds to a halt. Other resources can be fudged, as you can feed your peasants less or lower taxes or even buy rare goods in, but your economy runs on wood. It’s a pity then that the rudimentary UI hardly tells you anything about what goods you have or when they’re under attack. The map is similarly useless, just showing big castle icons. Castle-building is the great pleasure of the game. Heaping up great mounds of stone into towers gives your archers additional range and protection, and you can make some truly spectacular castles. Sieges can be fun too, as you carefully position your siege engines to whittle down opponents’ walls, and watch them collapse satisfyingly. It’s odd that you can only build castles in arbitrary squares on the map, however. The actual combat is classic scissors-paper-stone stuff. Neither your troops nor the enemy’s are particularly smart, so battles require a lot of micromanagement. The variety of new units is welcome, from dervishes to slave-drivers, though archers trump everything else, due to how cheap they are and their massive range. Firefly has resolved a couple of PCG’s problems with Stronghold 3. Defenders now benefit from castle defenves.

Simple but effective

Archers will now attack enemies on the walls. Yet many other bugs are still there. Too many times, the troops who should have been peppering my enemies with shots were hidden in walls by crappy pathfinding. Too many times, I had to delete those walls and lose literal tons of stone. And oddly, I could insta-repair those walls whilst they were under catapult fire, because enemy units have to be closer than their range to interfere with repairs. Additionally, the final section of every battle, where you kill the enemy lord stood atop his keep, is horribly protracted. For some reason, his keep is indestructible, siege weapons pass right through him and it, and arrows mostly bounce off. Other units don’t seem to work at all; for example, every time I tried to use a flame cart, it would just explode on the spot. Like castles, great games needs strong foundations. The core problem with the new Stronghold games appears to be that the engine isn’t fit for purpose. These castle blocks don’t want to sit in or on the smooth terrain and bugs are regular. The position detection is still poor – it often takes multiple clicks to repair a castle wall, and targeting the right castle section with a catapult can be tricky. Sometimes I suspect there’s no collision-detection at all, meaning troops just pile up in a spot. And the poor UI compounds the problem. Need for Speed Heat

The Stronghold series isn’t like Total War, doing a hundred different things; it just needs to get the castles and combat right. On the evidence of Stronghold Crusader 2, Firefly is moving in the right direction, but it still has a way to go. The first thing that you’ll notice when making your initial tentative steps into STRONGHOLD CRUSADER II is the level of detail that’s been invested into making its world as joyous to behold for the player as possible. RTS games aren’t typically graphically intensive, and CRUSADER II is no exception but its art style has such warmth and its animations are so meticulously detailed that it’s impossible to not be charmed by it. I enjoyed simply watching the game do its thing and go about its business, though a lack of different graphics options for textures, lighting etc. was a little off-putting, as I’m a man who enjoys tinkering in the menus of my PC games. CRUSADER II will place you against a myriad of different enemies in its single-player Skirmish mode and the key to victory is to essentially build a stronger, more well-equipped castle than them (putting your thumb on your nose and chanting “my castle is bigger than yours!” is optional). My first few attempts at this were futile, as focusing upon one specific area of leadership—be it military, food/material production or general governance—led to my settlement becoming unbalanced and my people unable to adequately defend themselves against my foe’s constant barrage of attacks.

The joy of architects

CRUSADER II doesn’t provide you with a great deal of breathing room. After your enemy (or, in later skirmishes, enemies) fortifies their castle, they will then proceed to repeatedly attempt to overthrow your leader, the most valuable unit in your populace, by storming your castle, breaching its walls and mercilessly killing everyone. In order to prevent them from doing this you’re going to want to build sturdy walls around your castle, therefore meaning you’re going to need stone, which in turn needs a quarry to be built, which will need workers in order to gather supplies, who need food to eat and hovels to keep sheltered. Maintaining all of your responsibilities is a difficult task, though it rarely becomes stressful. The game maintains a light tone, with it balancing its gameplay between combat and the minutiae of city management adeptly and only occasionally veering into frustration as your progress become undone by enemy sieges. The most difficulty I had was in building structures in “neutral” areas of the battlefield, as far too often would the enemy send his archers out and lay to rest my workers at my quarries, spoiling the foundations of my economy and forcing me to think on my toes in regards to how I was going to keep my settlement ticking along. Unlike games such as the Civilization series, STRONGHOLD CRUSADER II doesn’t grant you a large period of time to develop your society and build upon your fledgling society. Need For Speed 2 Shift Unleashed 

As soon as you’re placed into a skirmish you must be ready to fight, and while I prefer the Civ style of methodical, slow-paced gameplay to the non-stop action of the likes of COMPANY OF HEROES 2, CRUASADER II proficiently sits in the middle ground between the two. On more close-quarters terrain you’ll find yourself with less time to manage your people and resources, but where the game really shines is in its larger environments, as you create an impressive castle and city whilst your men turn the neutral zones into battlefields in the distance. The key to CRUSADER II’s success in these PvE battles is in its attention to detail, whether it be the cumbersome walking movement of the heavily armored knights, the foot soldiers getting out pickaxes in order to bring down your castles’ walls (which fall with impressive realism) or the catapults of fire, it’s the little things that really make it stand out. Outside of the single-player skirmishes there’s plenty to sink your teeth into. There are the “learning campaigns which are perfectly suited to getting to grips with the game, custom skirmishes in which you can wage war against up to eight CPU players and a sandbox mode, where you can build your castle without the constant, looming threat of an enemy attack and tinker around in one of the game’s many maps.

Commandos times a hundred

While this is a nice addition, STRONGHOLD CRUSADER II isn’t a game that is designed to be played in such a manner, given that there’s no option to fast-forward the action, therefore meaning that sandbox mode largely consists of waiting for your workers to push and pull supplies around. Suffice to say, it’s not that much fun. It was during this mode that I also began to notice a few issues with the game that I wouldn’t have otherwise spotted when being pressured into action by enemy armies. Firstly, the lack of in-game descriptions of the various structures, weaponry and artillery units is more than a little frustrating. While this obviously becomes less of a pertinent issue over time, having stats for each soldier unit would’ve been a small addition that would have also been a huge benefit to the gameplay, making this omission an odd one. I also found that materials in my stock pile would drain seemingly of their own accord, with supplies such as wood and stone not being used yet still dropping. This became an issue when I attempted to build structures that required these materials, with me eventually being forced to pay for them rather than taking them out of my pile and quickly place buildings before the stock dropped below the required amount once again. Ultimately, though, these issues fail to leave a negative impact upon an otherwise engrossing experience and while its single-player skirmishes are satisfying and rewarding Need For Speed: Payback Deluxe Edition

There’s the typical array of PvP options on offer in CRUSADER II, but the most unique addition is a co-op skirmish mode, in which two players can control one army in order to take on AI opponents. This mixes up the dynamics of the game considerably, and will offer players the most long-term enjoyment and value. Stronghold Crusader 2 is very similar in look and feel to Age of Empires. Different nations are assigned a place on the map; From that moment on, the battle immediately starts and you have to gather resources such as wood, stone, iron, food and money as quickly as possible. To make it a little easier for you, you will already receive five hundred gold pieces as a gift. These are needed to purchase more important buildings or troops. Although each mission requires a different approach, the goal remains to slaughter the opponent. The combat system that Stronghold Crusader 2 uses is quite simple. The focus is on choosing which troops to send into the battlefield; the range therein is huge. Once you have made a selection, the question is who will attack first. In it it is still possible to choose the formation and attitude of your army. For example, should you immediately retaliate when a number of opposing soldiers approach you or does your army opt for a more reserved approach? Coming up with a tactic is a requirement, because blindly sending all your men towards the opponent will inevitably end in loss.

Every opponent is different and needs a different approach. Where other real-time strategy games sometimes want to go further in the complexity, Still, something doesn’t seem quite right after the first games of Stronghold Crusader 2. It starts right away with the tutorial that (for a tutorial) takes a very long time and does little to enthuse the player for the only real work. The challenges are boring and there is not much to learn. As soon as you know which building provides a certain action, the tutorials are almost superfluous; especially after the same information has actually already been passed in a pre-tutorial level. Fortunately, there is soon the option to switch to the Skirmish mode, which includes missions for novice and advanced Stronghold Crusader players. There is also the option to put together your own challenge and choose an AI character, a completely new feature. In practice this means that you choose how the opponent plays the game. If you do battle with The Rat, you can count on the opponent staying in his hole. If you choose Richard the Lionheart, you are guaranteed to face heavy resistance. In total there are ten different AI characters that all differ from each other in terms of playstyle and difficulty, an interesting addition. It is clear to see that Stronghold Crusader 2 was created with the best intentions by studio FireFly. However, not everything goes as it should.

Add-ons (DLC):Stronghold Crusader 2