Absolute piece of garbage.
Rehash of stronghold 2
Rehash crummy graphics (they were outdated when Stronghold 2 came out, now they are just pathetic)
Rehash of sounds
Ridiculous tier of economy
Fantasy element is done horribly
Bugs
etc. etc.
Now lets look at why I myself hate this game:
Mission design
I just couldn't take it anymore, this game is called STRONGHOLD and it is supposed to be about BUILDING CASTLES and SIEGING CASTLES.
But they have finally done it, they have finally desecrated the whole point of this line of games.
NOW, you have vampire wolfs jumping over your walls and coverting archers in huge AOES at about 30 seconds into a mission where barely ANY of your economy is setup, and if enough of it is, the wolfs claw every piece of your woodmaking to the ground and your screwed. Talk about a fun mission!!
Next, they have witches (without advance warning) fly into your castle over your hard built walls and these witches procede to snipe your entire economy and populace into ruin. Oh, and if you manage to survive the first time, then next time a duo 15 witch barrage + Invading army double ass-screws you into oblivion.
Basically at that point I uninstalled this insipid abortion of a game. I shouldn't have to play through a mission 3-5 times so I know exactly what is going to happen so I can counter it to stand any chance.
I am sick of constant small cheapo armies being sent ridiculously early in the game against my unestablished castle instead of one or two large armies being sent later on to siege my complete castle. Which one is more fun firefly? Which freakin' one you complete desolate idiots?
Wasn't that supposed to be the point of the game? Build a big castle and fight a big siege? Then what the hell is this garbage? Witches 3 minutes into the game? Wolfs immune to archers jumping walls 30 seconds into it?
And it is great to be attacked by such versatile units so early in a game where making units to battle them requires me to teir up through about 10 levels of economy.
wood
than food
than stone
than houses
than build armory
than build barracks
make sure I have enough wood so I can build:
archer shop
and poleturner
wait for archer and poleturner to make something in less than 5 minutes
If by chance after the ai already attacked you, you somehow survived, NOW you can build units. Problem. You need gold and for gold you need happiness, now (while you are getting sieged by cheap ass superunits) it is onto this part of the economy:
Forget the churce it costs 500 gold SO
First the hops
then the hops get brewed into keg
then the inn get the keg and now you can finally tax for a good amount of money
Why go through all that? Why not just build a bunch more things of food and hike the rations up? Then again what is the point to all this when I have no time?
What a sad sorry pathetic excuse! Whoever designed these missions should be shot, I shouldn't have to predict a mission and super-rush my economy to have any chance to be able to enjoy building a castle. To have any semblence of enjoyment for that matter because not many people like playing an RTS full of rushing, especially in single player missions, EXTRA ESPECIALLY when it is about building big bastion castles.
What the hell were you thinking firefly? This game sucks.
*edit: Oh and I remember one last thing, it was nice to try and move merlin to kill a ladderman camping out in the middle of nowhere, and then watch as one single witch killed a full health merlin in about 1.5 seconds. Now THAT is great playtesting firefly.