Stronghold is a unique cross between a city builder and a real-time strategy game. The key to the game is designing, managing defending your castle. Each of these elements has it's place in STRONGHOLD and you will need to consider all of them to be an effective player.

The exteriors of a building are cut away allowing you a view of the interior and a glimpse of everyday medieval life. Characters exhibit personalities. They can be bored, excited, disgruntled and with over 70,000 different frames of animation watching your characters is very entertaining. It is your job to balance your kingdom, keeping your peasants happy or slightly in a state of terror that will keep them from leaving the castle. Give away free ale or bribe them with gold, or alternatively place the fear of the king inside their minds so that important popularity rating climbs.

Popularity is a main factor in the effectiveness of your castle. It determines how many peasants are willing to come and work for you. If you manage the community well, your population will swell. Peasants will automatically take up trades such as stoneworkers, blacksmiths, farmers, bakers, water-boys, pole turners, etc. as long as you build the facilities.  Before you know it you are on your way to a productive keep.

SC is much like Stronghold but with over 50 new maps, eight new AI opponents and complete strategy guides on the CD.  In short, build a prosperous city, feed the peasants well and tax them moderately while trying to keep your rating up. If you make your people unhappy they will ultimately leave, bringing your economy to a halt. No workers equals no army. You get the idea.

You can relive four historic campaigns as Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, the Sultan of Syria. You can also conquer the Crusader Trail. There are 50-linked skirmish missions, each one more challenging than the next. You can storm the enemy with many different units. Knights, archers, and swordsman, to name a few, over 25 in all.  Even if combat is really not your style, you can play in a peaceful castle builder mode. Here you can build to your hearts content.

The tutorials are quite nice and even the manual suggests you can skip some parts that you can later find on your own during the game. The way the game progresses is also quite nice. It definitely gets harder, but you learn as you go. What this means is that you do not need to know every aspect of the game to get going. You will do just fine learning as you go. Very nice!

All-in-all SC is a solid game whether you are a castle sim fan, or RTS fan. Taking place in a barren desert is a nice twist and makes the player go for some other strategy that he may not be used to while playing similar games where resources are plentiful. The developers did a nice job of taking some un-needed micro management out of the picture, which make the game even better. Nice job Firefly.

The graphics are pretty well done.  The animations are top notch and when there are literally hundreds of separate animations happening at one time, it just looks plain awesome.  You can zoom in and really see what's going on.  The sound effects and musical score are nicely done as well.  The audio portion of the game really puts you in the medieval mood.  Those who like to delve in map building will be pleased to know that you can design your own custom maps.

If you own Stronghold and Stronghold Crusader, there is no point and going out and picking this up.  Warchest is more of a compilation of both games.  If you have been thinking about either game, definitely pick this up.  Both games are excellent and it is like getting two games for the price of one.

Gameplay: 8
Easy to get going and you do not have to read the entire strategy guide to figure everything out.  The tutorials are quite nice and you more or less learn as you go.  Just learning the key commands is where I spent the majority of the time in the guide, and that was only a few minutes.

Graphics: 8
The animations are very enjoyable.  You can literally sit back and just watch them close up and be amused.  The maps were nothing extravagant, but did not seem to take away from the game.

Sound: 8
Sound effects were nicely done, and in my opinion the musical score was top notch.

Difficulty: Medium
Starts out easy, but progressively gets harder.

Concept: 7
Not exactly anything new in the RTS department.  I did like the option of just peacefully building your castle without having to engage in battles. The desert maps definitely add an element to the game to make it more challenging in SC.

Multiplayer: 8

Easy to set up especially on a LAN.  As in my other reviews, I like sites that host their own games without having to install Gamespy.  Unfortunately, Gamespy is required to play on the Internet.  No offense to Gamespy, just my personal preference.

Overall: 8
Two great games for the price of one!