Stronghold Crusader Extreme Free Download PC Game Full Version
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Stronghold Crusader Extreme Old and almost impossible, Stronghold Crusader Extreme is hard to recommend even to diehard fans of this RTS series.
You can't go home again. That's the lesson of Stronghold Crusader Extreme, a revamping of Firefly Studios' classic 2002 real-time strategy game Stronghold Crusader. This minor reimagining of an oldie but goodie
is several years late for the party, a real-time relic based on
antiquated game mechanics and production values. It doesn't even add
much in the way of new old-fashioned game content; it simply goes after
hardcore fans of the original game with a new Extreme Trail mode of play
that takes you up a ladder of impossibly murderous medieval skirmishes.
This is essentially a straight rehashing of the first Stronghold Crusader. Gameplay shows
every bit of its age, so what you've got here is an old-school RTS game
in which you build bases, gather resources, and grind out soldiers for
endless combat. You take on the role of a medieval lord commanding a
settlement in the dusty lands of the Crusades-era Middle East, and must
build it up by constructing the usual barracks, farms, armories, and
mines. Of course, the ultimate purpose is to use this economic backbone
to fund an army of knights, spearmen, bowmen, and the like, and proceed
to wipe your enemies off the map.
As
with most RTS games from earlier in the decade, the skirmish maps in
the 20-mission Extreme Trail campaign are all about speed, not strategy.
The winner is always the one who can click the quickest, which makes
matches play out more like fast-forwarded street brawls than real
military engagements. This is actually one of the zippiest RTS games of
all time, and spectacularly tough when compared to the nonextreme trail
campaign in the original Stronghold Crusader. The pace has been so amped up and the maps so packed with enemies that the combat is frenzied and chaotic.
Expect
to be toast early and often if you don't have some heavy playtime with
the first game under your belt. Even with this experience (which you can
gain here because you get the complete original game along with the
supposedly new one), it's amazingly tough to emerge victorious from even
a single one of the scenarios. Multiple enemies target you in all but
the very first campaign mission, and this array of foes kicks off every
match by immediately hurling columns of troops at your puny little
village.
Maps
cram all of the factions into such close quarters that it's impossible
to get started on a reasonable army before the onslaught begins. Enemy
armies are typically coming over the hill within no more than a minute
or two from the start of a game.
It's hard to figure out what you're supposed to do to stop these
assaults, given that you're always stuck battling these massive forces
with just the handful of knights and archers that you start with. You
have the option of dropping in companies of spearmen and macemen on the
fly at timed intervals, and can erect walls to somewhat stem the tide,
but this seems to only delay the inevitable as steams of enemy columns
constantly rush toward your keep. All you're ever doing is keeping your
head above water, not building enough strength to take the fight to the
enemy.
Other
aspects of the game don't fit with 2008. There is an online matching
service, but it's hosted through the rather clunky GameSpy Arcade
system, and some sort of conflict or bug with our initial install
left us without the icon needed to activate this option on the
multiplayer screen. The isometric visuals of the six-year-old original
haven't been enhanced at all, so you're stuck with pixelated units and a
maximum resolution of 1024x768 that stretches the display to the point
of blurriness on a widescreen monitor. Not that there's much detail here
to blur. Units look like scrambling insects that convulse their way
across the bland, blocky landscape. Audio is just as dated. The music is
a repetitive martial loop, battles are loaded with tinny metal clashes,
and order acknowledgements are repetitive exclamations as bombastic and
dumb as something you might hear during the dinner show at Medieval Times.
Only someone who has just stepped out of a time machine will have much patience for Stronghold Crusader Extreme. Aged, formulaic, and spectacularly difficult, the game isn't remotely appealing to a modern RTS audienceSystem Requirements
Processor= 933MHz
RAM= 128MB
Graphics= 32MB
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