I’m a naturally suspicious man. I can’t help it, let alone explain it, but I have a deep wariness surrounding free things that are given to me, be they clothing, chocolate or cups of tea. The same applies to the games we receive here at Gamecell – our task is to offer our criticism and thoughts on a particular title, and to maintain a healthy level of scepticism while doing so. What really sets an alarm ringing (for me at least) is when a publisher supplies the game with a gimmick – themed packaging, one-off manuals or another interesting titbit that has no bearing on the game’s performance, yet that they somehow hope will be an influence upon us who review it. They must do, surely, else why go to the trouble just for us and not the paying public? Introversion did it with the Defcon preview, but any tremors that gesture generated were soothed by the electronic goodness on the disc. 2K and Firefly tried it here, and while it was (relatively) cool and suitably themed I, frankly, just don’t care once I stick the disc in the tray - I’d rather they put that effort in attention to detail into the game.
I was introduced to a strange concept the other day by a member of the PC Gamer forums, what he called the “make game good” button. He (Solidarity Reg) described the situation of playing a game that had been hailed as a masterpiece, only to find it played like a dog and being unable to understand what all the brew ha-ha was about. Hence, he’d find himself looking for the “make game good” button, so he could experience what everyone else was talking about. I found I went through the same process trying to play and review Stronghold Legends. I have spoken to friends who have played it and read several reviews and they all seem to claim that (while hardly new, innovative or otherwise spectacular) it is a solid game worth playing, not without its flaws but worthy of consideration none the less.
To which I say: bollocks.
Stronghold has a proud history in real-time strategy, being a rare thing with its focus primarily on castles and the construction and destruction of same. Legends does little towards maintaining that standard, nor does it make any attempt to push the series in a new direction. It’s all so… well, the same as Stronghold 2 to be honest. Strip out the new mythological units and campaigns and what you are left with bears a striking resemblance to its predecessor. This doesn’t feel like a new game at all, rather a curious kind of expansion pack smuggled onto shelves under the guise of a full-priced title. Compare the screens that accompany this review with those on the Stronghold 2 website and you’ll see what I mean. Aside from some new, squint inducing graphical effects not an awful lot has changed, indeed it seems that Legends actually packs in less detail into the castle-building experience than its predecessor.
I found myself groping about for the “make game good” button after about a half-hour of play, right about the time when I tried to order my archers to attack an enemy formation. They refused to respond, and continued to sit on their arses in the grass. I tried clicking again on the target, but to no avail. It turns out that while my happy-go-lucky men at arms will merrily slog their way across the battlefield to hurl spears at an unseen foe my archers need to be led by the hand into range of the enemy (facing the right direction!) before they’ll even consider talking a pot shot. If the enemy moves out of range they won’t follow to continue engaging, while if I have a large group of archers where some have range and some don’t the ones that don’t will simply sit back down again while their comrades next to them do all the work. This applies to every missile unit in the game. Units seem to lack a proper guard mode too, and will rarely react to an enemy unless it’s attacking them directly. It all necessitates a level of babysitting I’d thought we’d left behind in strategy games like this, and to find its painful presence here is terribly frustrating and it slowly saps the fun from extended game play sessions.
I thought I’d found the magic button as I experimented in the campaign modes a little, offering as they do three paths themed around three varied ancient mythologies. Playing as King Arthur affords you access to the Round Table and its associated heroes, while as Vlad Dracul you can command hosts of werewolves and kamikaze flying bats. There’s dragons too, impressive beasts capable of hosing down entire battlements with their own brand of spicy napalm. Legends actually becomes very enjoyable once you manage to get a sizeable battle force together and start smashing it against enemy bastions. It takes time though, as first you have to look to your economy to fund your war machine while keeping your peasant workforce happy. Become too tyrannical a lord and they will flee your manse, but as your popularity rises your civilian population will swell, providing fresh troops for your army and more workers for your estate.
Castle construction (the meat of the Stronghold series) is still, well, castle construction. You can build walls, towers, moats, man-traps and all kinds of defences to keep your keep (see what I did there?) safe, and it’s quite easy to become distracted over the placing of a particular tower or vat of boiling oil. Taking down an enemy fortress is mildly pleasing too, the larger battles being rather impressive, but it’s let down badly by a few things. Wall sections simply disappear (in a strange, staggered effect) when hit by your siege weapons, and there’s never a sense you’re doing any proper damage to a structure until it’s gone. There’s no oomph to any of the bigger guns in your siege camp, and rarely is it necessary to employ them, while getting up close and personal with the defenders is finicky thanks to your troops aforementioned I.Q. deficiencies and a few other bugs in clipping and pathfinding. Combat is neither visceral nor kinetic enough to be truly engaging, and the sheer jolliness my men continued to display under fire became a little grating too.
But enough dancing about with the elegant wordplay that is my prose - I never found the magic “make game good” button. What I did find was a game that kept reminding me of how much fun I could be having, while simultaneously mocking such aspirations with what I was actually presented. A game that has the likes of a werewolf launcher should be more enjoyable than this but for me the experience (while a temporarily pleasing distraction) is one I would ultimately deem forgettable. It’s a shame. I have fond memories of the original Stronghold (and a disc lurking on a shelf somewhere) but Legends ends up feeling (I say again) like an expansion pack to a better title.
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