{"id":13695,"date":"2021-03-13T09:15:59","date_gmt":"2021-03-13T17:15:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/stronghold-warlords-review\/"},"modified":"2024-01-24T17:54:35","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T01:54:35","slug":"stronghold-warlords-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/stronghold-warlords-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Stronghold: Warlords Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Stronghold:<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Stronghold: Warlords
Firefly Studios<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The original Stronghold game was something special. It debuted back in 2001 and there hadn\u2019t ever been anything like it before\u2014you build up a well\u2026stronghold, in Medieval Britain and although there was conquest and expansion through military pursuits, there were also prominent economic and infrastructure development elements. One thing is for sure\u2014the game was just oozing with character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Firefly Studios saw that they had something special on their hands so they developed a whole slew of sequels. Besides the first game\u2019s direct sequel, 2002\u2019s Stronghold: Crusader (which differed from its predecessor in the fact that the game was no longer set in England, instead it was set in the Middle East during the Crusades), all of the Stronghold games pretty much failed to capture that initial magic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Stronghold<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Firefly Studios hasn\u2019t made a Stronghold game in seven years (Stronghold Crusader 2 in 2014), perhaps because of the increasingly lackluster products they were putting out. Well, they\u2019ve totally changed the setting with their latest game, Stronghold: Warlords. Unfortunately, the new Asian setting isn\u2019t enough to save this game from failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stronghold: Warlords isn\u2019t about building up a medieval gauntlet of defenses and warding off increasingly powerful waves of enemies. No, in the game bases are more symmetrically placed, similar to the original Age of Empires games\u2014only here there are no conflicts over resources, scouting, technological advancements, or unique factions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Stronghold:<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In fact, although you have Chinese, Japanese, Mongolian, and Vietnamese warlords to lead your armies, each army is a weird hodgepodge of units from each culture. Oddly, most units, no matter which leader you choose, are Chinese in origin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing that Stronghold: Warlords does that is innovative is place smaller fortresses on each map. These fortresses are held by neutral warlords. Defeat these remotely placed warlords and they\u2019ll join your cause. They\u2019ll even send you resources from time to time, let you use their fortresses as shelters for your troops, and launch assaults on neighboring enemy fortresses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Stronghold:<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, since your main fortress that you spend most of your time carefully building up\u2014with defenses such as ballistae, gunpowder traps, fire arrow launchers, and thick walls and towers\u2014just don\u2019t see a lot of action since they\u2019re so remotely placed. Most combat takes place between smaller skirmishing forces, typically involving one of the NPC fortresses. Large-scale sieges do happen occasionally, but not like they did in previous Warlord games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a diplomacy system present in Stronghold: Warlords but it\u2019s nothing to write home about. While it is too simple when compared to other RTS games I\u2019ve played in the past, it\u2019s also cumbersome to navigate around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To its merit, Stronghold: Warlords features pretty decent combat and siege systems. Although each side\u2019s troops are amalgamations of the aforementioned real-life ethnicities, there are enough different types to see their clashes as interesting. There\u2019s also a wide range of siege equipment to bring to bear, including trebuchets that can fire various forms of ammunition (yes, even diseased animals), explosive rocketry, laddermen, and much more. But all of this still isn\u2019t enough to save this game from being mediocre, overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Stronghold<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the end, Stronghold: Warlords doesn\u2019t really differentiate itself from the increasingly crowded RTS genre. Its warlords seem generic and lack any sort of personality and the odd amalgam of troops from different Asian countries is a real downer, as is this game in an overall sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RATING: 6.3\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stronghold: Warlords has some pretty okay graphics so you’ll need a pretty beefy gaming PC or gaming laptop in order to play it at a decent framerate. Therefore, you may just want to invest in a superior gaming rig:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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TRACER IV R 17 XTREME 200<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Visit CyberpowerPC\u2019s website<\/a> to check out all of the other great deals as well!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stronghold: WarlordsFirefly Studios The original Stronghold game was something special. It debuted back in 2001 and there hadn\u2019t ever been anything like it before\u2014you build up a well\u2026stronghold, in Medieval Britain and although there was conquest and expansion through military pursuits, there were also prominent economic and infrastructure development elements. One thing is for sure\u2014the… Read More »Stronghold: Warlords Review<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":12311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2724],"tags":[2520,741,2488,1225,67,2486,2530],"class_list":["post-13695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-4k-gaming","tag-cyberpower-pc","tag-game-review","tag-gaming-laptop","tag-gaming-pc","tag-ian-kane","tag-rts-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17628,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13695\/revisions\/17628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberpowergaming.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}