Stronghold 2

• Windows 98 or later
• Pentium III 1.4 GHz
• 256 MB RAM
• DVD drive

Stronghold 2 is a medieval castle and economic simulation of the British Firefly Studios, which was released on 29 April 2005 for Windows PCs. It is by Stronghold and Stronghold Crusader the third game of the Stronghold series. A supplemented with additional content version of the game appeared in the same year under the title Stronghold 2 Deluxe.

Stronghold 2 is the first title of the series with a freely rotatable 3- D view.

Gameplay

Stronghold 2 basically retains the gameplay of the predecessor, but it expands in many places. So many concepts such as supplemented and expanded the punishment and the church system. Furthermore, new ideas such as banquets were incorporated. Also, there are more goods and new dissatisfaction factors such as rats, criminals or manure frequently committed buildings the player to create a hardship in terms of keeping the popularity points. The greatest innovation in the field of game points is the introduction of "honor". With the help of honor points, for example, neutral provinces "bought" a higher rank, recruited soldiers or the " kingmaker " mode can be achieved. New units, there are mainly, as in Crusader, as mercenaries in mercenary camp for recruiting. For example, fighters can be hired that are equipped with Bastbooten and can attack over water, or highwaymen that remain invisible to the forest for enemy units and throwing spears.

Thus, the player can build a total of 97 buildings.

History of development

Stronghold 2 uses the self-developed by Firefly Dragonfly engine for 3D graphics.

After a demo and the preview mini-game Castle Attack 2 of Firefly Stronghold 2 was officially launched on 29 April 2005. At the time of publication suffered Stronghold 2 under numerous program errors that could be corrected only with subsequently released patches for the most part. Patch 1.3.1 finally resolved most of the problems and completed the game in addition to the functions of Stronghold 2 Deluxe ( see below). The update ended with the patch version 1.4.1 on December 6, 2007.

Reception

Although many praise because of the contemporary for its time graphics performance and the many innovations the game is also criticized the publication of the patches because of the AI and the arisen by the numerous new plagues high degree of difficulty in the business section. ( Metacritic: 63 out of 100). The arisen due to the high number of building immense depth of play came across split reactions.

• PC Games: 78 % (4 May 2005)
• Gamestar: 86 % (28 April 2005)

Stronghold 2 Deluxe

Stronghold 2 Deluxe is an enhanced version of Stronghold 2 includes, among other things, a new game mode in which one imitates various sieges. Also, some bugs were fixed. Purchaser of the standard version received the Deluxe features an advanced version of the patch 1.3.1 provided free of charge.