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Stronghold: Crusader (PC) Status: Stopped playing - Got Bored I started playing this game on Friday 29 October, 2004 // I stopped playing this game on: Sunday 30 January, 2005
Current opinion of this game
Innovative gameplay mechanics for an RTS, but not that great a game. Campaign is REALLY long.
January 31, 2005 12:07:10 PM
Last night I played a "farewell" level of this game. It was level 17 in a campaign of 50. Curiously enough, it was harder. The AI opponents put up a much better fight than usual and even fielded siege weapons against me (gasp!) It took me a lot longer than usual to clear it. Sigh. Too long actually. I've been thinking some more of why I've been having a hard time uninstalling this game and moving on to something else despite being bored with it. The honest truth is that it does have some really cool ideas for RTS. It advances the genre in many ways, though it failed to convince me in the end.
January 26, 2005 12:14:28 PM
I had an epiphany the other day. Ok, maybe not an epiphany, but at least a reality check. I'm currently on level 15, or something like that. The campaign has 50 levels. I'm bored already. What the hell am I thinking by continuing to play? Sheesh. I really should just uninstall the game and forget about it. After all, it's not like I don't have 10 other PC games sitting there waiting to get played. What is wrong with me? Why do I prolong the pain... or is it that I don't want to admit that I'm actually having fun? Is my jaded "games studies" hat getting in the way?
January 21, 2005 05:44:54 PM
Oof. I lost a lot of GameLogs for this one... Anyways, I played another two missions last night and I feel that they are really getting easy now. I look at the little campaign map thing and it shocks me to see that I'm not even half-way through the campaign and I've (probably) already seen what this game has to offer. No new units, mechanics, geography, etc. Just endless levels that constrain one resource or another. It still is kind of fun, but it just isn't that cool to play a castle building game and win without actually having to build castle walls and stuff. You know what I mean?
November 8, 2004 03:52:25 PM
I played (and won) the next mission. This time I had to step it up a little since archers were useless. This time around, crossbows made all the difference. As usual, I didn't bother to build a castle, walls, or anything like that. Instead I realied on my...well, on my opponents stupidity. I actually don't like the castle building part a lot. I mean, it is cool and everything but it is really hard to get it right. For example, I tried to make some neat walls that never "joined". Thus, my opponents waltzed in anyways. Then, I built a wall and placed a tower right in the middle (the wall going through the tower. I couldn't get my soldiers up on the tower. Anyways, the castle building is definitely a lot of trouble and I hope it doesn't become essential later on in the game. Finally, something else that has cooled me off this game is that the missions are soooo long. It's standard RTS-fare...(at least one hour) but I don't think I can always set aside that time to give one mission a shot. It's like too much time for not much payback.

Stronghold: Crusader (PC)