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Stronghold 2 Hands-On

Stronghold 2 promises to let you build up and tear down medieval walls once again, but this time in full 3D. Get the details in our exclusive hands-on preview.

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FireFly Studios' Stronghold series is getting a much-needed 3D face-lift later this year with Stronghold 2. Technically the third game in the series (after Stronghold and Stronghold: Crusader), Stronghold 2 should be considered the proper heir to the throne. With a new graphics engine and an expanded economic and honor system, it promises to enhance the series' gameplay. We were excited to get our hands on an early version of the game to see how the castle and economic building is shaping up.

In Stronghold 2, you play as a medieval lord ruling over a fledgling keep and some peasants, and it's your job to build up your keep into a formidable castle. You'll do this by having your peasants gather food and resources and by building the many structures needed to get a complex and interconnected medieval economy off the ground. Do this and you'll have the resources to build your defenses, as well as enlist bowmen, spearmen, and other men-at-arms. This formula is par for the course for the Stronghold games, but one of the new features in Stronghold 2 is the fact that there will be two campaigns, one that follows the path of war and one that follows the path of peace. The path of war will play out very much like the scenarios found in the earlier games in the series. So after you build up your defenses and military, you'll then have to defeat an opponent who's looking to take you down. The path of peace, however, will let you focus less on warfare and more on overcoming economic challenges.

Ah, the Middle Ages...when a man's home truly was a castle.
Ah, the Middle Ages...when a man's home truly was a castle.

We played an extremely early version of the game, so many of the features didn't work or were simply missing. Still, we got a good sense of where the game is heading. Much of the gameplay thus far feels very much like the first Stronghold games, which makes sense if FireFly has taken a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach to the sequel. Your first task at the beginning of a mission is to place your stockpile, which is where your workers deposit resources such as wood and stone. Then you'll place a granary, which is where your farmers and hunters will store food. After that, you're on your own. If you played the first two Stronghold games, then you'll know the best thing to do is place down a couple of saw pits to start harvesting wood, place down a couple of apple farms and hunters' posts to begin gathering food, and so on.

Many of these buildings are updated versions of those found in earlier games, such as the poleturner (who makes spears), the fletcher, the barracks, and the armory. We didn't see other familiar buildings, such as the wheat farm (along with the associated buildings in the bread chain, like the flour mill and the bakery). However, that's not too unusual, as the original games limited certain structures in various scenarios. Aside from returning buildings, there are some notable new additions, the most noteworthy of which is the gong pit, which is basically the medieval version of the latrine. Even the smallest of villages will accumulate piles of waste, which the gong farmer scoops into his cart and dumps into his pit. If you don't have a gong farmer, the waste piles up, creating a noxious cloud that makes your workers unhappy. If left uncontrolled, these clouds become lethal and can cause and spread disease. Plus, the more workers you have, the faster the waste piles up. So you'll need plenty of gong farmers spread around the village to keep up.

Wooden walls will have to do when you don't have stone. But don't expect to keep the bad guys out for long.
Wooden walls will have to do when you don't have stone. But don't expect to keep the bad guys out for long.

Another new addition that we played with is the lord's kitchen, which adds a wing to your existing keep. Stronghold 2 will introduce the concept of honor, which you will accumulate by doing deeds both great and small. If your lord character goes to church regularly and is a good example to the peasants, he'll accumulate honor. If he throws a feast, with food prepared in the lord's kitchen, he'll earn honor. And if he accomplishes a mission, he'll earn honor. Earn enough honor points and you can acquire things, such as a neighboring province, along with the village in it. Then you'll gain the resources gathered there. The lord's kitchen works by preparing royal foods, which include wine and ham (a food that can be raised at the new pig farms).

We also had a chance to play a siege battle as both the defenders and the besiegers. The battle is set up so you have no chance to actually build anything; you either wait for the attackers to come into range, or you charge the walls with ladders, depending on which side you play. The defenders have a few advantages, including archers, a catapult that hurls small boulders, and the ability to drop rocks onto the heads of attackers at the base of the walls. Defending can be quite a challenge, especially when your catapult falls short and takes a chunk out of your own wall. The attackers, meanwhile, have hordes of bowmen to provide covering fire while men with ladders run up and place them against the wall. After that, heavily armored knights can scale the wall and battle their ways past the defenders. To win, they must defeat the defending lord, who's located atop his keep. This is when the fight can get desperate, as its usually becomes a race to see which side runs out of men first.

Judging from what we played with, it's hard to gauge what the final look of it will be. For example, the soldiers and peasants were still rendered in low quality, which is something that will change. (The pathfinding was also crippled, but that will also be fixed before the game ships.) Still, the 3D engine is a huge improvement over the 2D graphics of the earlier two games. Castles actually look like solid, thick objects rather than the flimsy 2D structures of the earlier entries in the series. Meanwhile, you can now zoom in and out with the camera, as well as toggle between a straight top-down view and the normal isometric top-down view. The former is great for when you're placing down castle walls and want to see if there are any gaps in the wall.

It's crime and punishment, the medieval way. Off with his head!
It's crime and punishment, the medieval way. Off with his head!

At this point, it's quite clear that Stronghold 2 will feel and play very much like its predecessors. That's not a bad thing, however, since the first two games in the series were solid, enjoyable games. That said, we'll have to wait a bit longer for a more complete version of the game so we can check out many of the new features that are promised, including new economic chains as well as larger maps with multiple mission objectives. Be sure to check back with us for further developments on Stronghold 2, which is currently scheduled to ship in April.

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