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Stronghold Legends is a RTS (Real time strategy) game based in the age of Arthur and his knights. The generic principle to the game is that you are the lord of your keep, and you must insure its survival, and the survival of your lord. Starting out with just a keep (the heart of your castle, really) you must build your empire so that it becomes a successful, beating the natural (or unnaturall) obstacles thrown in your way. Your game usually starts out with placing a stockpile (for hard goods), and a granary (for finished foods), and then using some stored resources to build your town, and then your army. Now, I'm a good king... no, I'm the best king, and if you don't like it, you'll end up as part of my highly favored look-out towers (the part the gets beat on constantly). So to me, the process of building your empire is a little bit simplistic, there are no levels of civilization, or upgrading of structures. You are able to place buildings that harvest raw goods like wood, stone, iron, or even pitch for defenses if you like. Additionally you can place farms for harvesting foods, and in some cases, a chain of buildings that process great amounts of food more efficiently. With resources coming in, you can start to build consumer buildings, like those that makes various weapons, armors, candles (for a church), and wine (for a bar). My only real complaint about the buildings is for the most part, the lack of endurance. Some buildings made from a lot of materials shatter in seconds, no defenses, while others can take a beating, if an enemy gets inside your walls, you can lose a lot very fast. So, from there you decide how you want to secure your land, and treat your people.

If you give your people what they want, you are able to make them happy. This is where Stronghold Legends differs from many typical RTS games. You need to keep your people reasonably happy if you want them to work for you, and more to come to your castle. Increasing your populations food rations, giving them wine to drink, and holding church services can all do this. Taxing your citizens will counter that, so you must strike a balance between money, happiness, and your supplies. Now being a lord, you don't need happiness, you need honor and glory. Glory points are earned through hand to hand combat, earning enough glory points can net you a few special items, like a statue which you can build to generate honor. Honor, however, is a far more useful commodity, you can attract all sorts of strange beasts, legendary warriors, and gain the privilege to create some special buildings, and units in your barracks.

Like I've already said, I'm one awesome king, noble, and handsome, and all that other stuff really awesome kings are, right? I'm the kinda guy that keeps his people safe. One of my first moves is to often locate pinch points, defensive positions with superior height (huge benefit for archers), and safe guarding my buildings, citizens and other investments. Now you might want to play an aggressive player, that is fine by me, I don't care if you're evil and hateful, whatever... Build your weapon factories, send out your soldiers, artillery, and summon your mystical beings. One aspect of Stronghold Legends I absolutely adore is the diversity of units, and shear strategic goodness. From fast moving long range archers, to cheap expendable artillery and archer fodder units, to durable knights with platemail, your options are not limited in the least. You can create lighting fast macemen as strike troops, pikemen to form walls around your weaker units, armor piercing crossbowmen or the ever noble horsed knights, who can ride swiftly into the heart of battle, and lay waste to their surroundings. Each side has access to siege equipment as well, which can reign terror on castle defenses.

Stronghold Legends has three factions basically. First you can play Arthur, on the side of good, which is me! Yay me! Arthur has the advantage of a mass food producing wheat farm, and his round table calls upon legendary single knights to ride by his side, from Lancelot to Merlin, each with a special ability to smite your foes. He is also able to call upon some unique defensive weapons to aid him. Or you can play on the side of Ice, Dietrich & Siegfried, who are neutral but a little north of neutral, that makes sense, right? Your icy powers allow for the building of traps, and troop freezing weaponry. Your ice tower can call on giants, or lightning fast wolves, to skimpy witches who shoot your enemies from above, plus many more. Unlike Arthur you are not limited by single units, you can create armies. Last there is the evil side is the sorcerer Vlad, from the land of fire they call on beasts with highly destructive powers. From devils leaving flaming trails, to werewolves, and monstrous beings (all who scale castle walls) which can convert large masses of enemy troops to your own if used properly. Vlad is also able to use very lethal fiery defenses, and harness the ultimate evil, special artillery. From burning carts of oil thrown at enemies to burn their army as you listen to their screams of pain, to werewolf launchers used to bypass castle defenses, and destroy your enemies town, it really is just well ......evil. The set back? Evil people don't use churches. And of course, all three sides have access to a pretty awesome dragon, expensive, and lengthy to obtain, this being can reign terror on any castle, and is just amazingly fun to play with!

See, I have talked about conquering your enemy, and keeping your empire safe, but how do you do that? If a match has no special conditions to win, then you either have to capture your enemy's keep by occupying it uncontested for a certain length of time, or you need to kill the lord of that empire. You really are playing as a character in Stronghold, you are the king, or lord. If you die, your land will fall around you, and you lose, so you best keep safe! Well, not if you're me, since I'm so honorable, that ain't me at all, no way. Grab my knights from the round table, and gallop off to the enemy's front lines. Throw a bunch of archers up on some siege equipment and let them rain arrows down in front of us, and then storm their castle! I'm so heroic oh yes I am! And why? Well, again, storming a castle in Stronghold Legends is not always an easy feat. From towers of defensive archers with a long range, to tower mounted defenses, moats, traps and of course.. well, enemies. There can be several layers of defenses. A well designed castle can be deadly to your enemy, using height to its advantage, and a poorly made one can be deadly to yourself.

When I play an RTS, I am really not all that excited to play multi-player, so I first check out the missions, tutorials, and what ever other options are available. Stronghold Legends has a fairly lengthy campaign, actually, it is three campaigns, one for each side. And while the voice acting is just... utterly, horrifically terrible, the campaigns are very fun. And even though at times, the story seemed a bit sketchy, the new and unique challenges of rushing assaults, holding position until help arrives, building a castle (Camelot), and fighting through enemies territory completely out numbered, there is just a lot of diversity and some awesome ways to put life into a simple RTS game. Besides the campaigns, there are skirmish maps, and something they call Trials. Trials are a series of challenges designed, but without the horrible voice acting that haunts me in my dreams nightly, you follow a map, or a trial of missions and set out to beat the tasks before you. And of course there are skirmish modes for quick and dirty play.

Making a custom map in Stronghold Legends is not a overly difficult thing, in fact it is very easy, and fun. You can easily change your landscape, set estate lands to battle for, customize your sounds, graphics, and other effects all on the map. It is possible to do a quick and dirty scenario in minutes, or spend hours upon hours on the details that you can insert. Making these maps will definitely help multi-player play extend far beyond what you normally could, making scenarios that just won't get old as fast. The multi-player system works on a rank system, when you first start off you have access to certain buildings and units, and general perks from your faction. As you gain glory from battles against other players your rank will increase so you can use more and more, it does appear designed that even a new player could beat the highest rank, but here is where your maps come in! You can always give a lower player the more favorable area on a map, and even make the map to favor someone, if you wish.

For the more technical parts. The graphics in the game are pretty decent, and while the units are mostly small, when you zoom right up (and you can get very close) they do look pretty good. You have access to many different views to watch your placement, defenses, and troops, and likewise, watch where you are going to attack. One aspect I really enjoy is the UI (User Interface) of the game, each faction your UI, buildings, and units all change and are themed according to how you are playing. The music also changes with your faction, and is suiting, but not overbearing to the game. The game client performs very well, and the game runs very smoothly even on older hardware, and never did it crash once, no matter how much I abused it! I'm VERY impressed with that.

So, if you want to be as good as I am, you might want to play Stronghold Legends and become King Arthur. Or you might think I'm an ass and try and kill me, either way. I really can't say anything bad about Stronghold, it is a great game, and it is hard for me to say this, being such a negative jerk. It does what it does very well, and provides you with an excellent playing field for strategic encounters, no matter what your play style. There are some minor balance issues, but they are not major, and of course happens from every point of view. Every method you employ, from setting up your keep, and stockpile, to making defenses, production, and launching attacks is heavily strategically influenced. Stronghold Legends does the genre of RTS very well it really puts the S back into RTS. From creating castles and static defenses lined with archers and crossbowmen, to hitting enemy supplies, and defenses with shock troops, or full frontal assaults with machinery and all, there is little limit to what you can, and how you can battle. I'll keep on marching through the country side for months to come!