Stronghold Legends

• Windows 98 or later
• Pentium III 1.6 GHz
• 512 MB ​​RAM
• 3D graphics card with 64 MB RAM
• 2.5 GB free hard disk space
• DVD drive

Stronghold Legends is a published in 2006, medieval castles and economic simulation of the British game developer Firefly Studios. Legends is regarded as the fourth installment of the series and is the offshoot of Stronghold 2 dar.

Based on the graphic engine of Stronghold 2, the theme this time is more on fantasy - mainly myths and legends - shifted. One has the choice whether to play King Arthur, Dietrich von Bern or Vlad the Pfäler ( Dracula ), each which also dominate another nation. Thus Stronghold Legends offers a total of three different types and groups of special forces.

Campaigns

In Legends, there are three so-called legends campaigns that are each dedicated to a different legend, and thus another people. Each of them has its associated relative difficulty, the difficulty of the course of a game of which can be independently adjusted manually.

King Arthur (easy)

This campaign is about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, with particularly Merlin plays a significant role. The environment in this story is lushly vegetated and has numerous green trees. In order to proceed with another campaign, one must have completed at least two missions of this.

Ice ( medium)

This section deals with Dietrich of Bern and his conquest of the north. It is much more difficult than its predecessor, as it re- introduces many difficulties in military and economy. Also, the environmental changes: The area is now in a snowy Eisthema, which in particular the colors white and light blue in the foreground.

Evil ( difficult )

In the third and last campaign played Vlad the Pfäler. It is designed as the heaviest of all. This can be seen especially in the many very strong enemy units and high requirements for the next relevant level is reached. This time, the environment is characterized by the distinctive red soil and dead trees.

Gameplay

Compared to the previous Stronghold 2, which is generally overloaded as something that the developers tried to go back one step in Stronghold Legends. For example, there are rats plagues, intrusions into the granary and other plagues in the form of randomly occurring events continue, but they take significantly less impact on the game and it should therefore make less complicated again. Every legend has its own architectural style and a different Bauverfügbarkeit. In addition, each Legend are other special or hero units available. For example, while Siegfried and Vlad the Impaler military favored because of fable characters are like giants, fairies, gnomes, or demons, the player must at King Arthur put more on the size of his army. But this comes has in this in defense of the castle an advantage because he has wall mounted Mangen and its units are comparatively cheap.

Also the multiplayer mode has been reworked: It additionally comes with an economy mode that is known as " Private Battle " not playable in single player mode.

Like the predecessor, also Stronghold Legends offers a scenario editor, in which your own levels and campaigns can be built. This allows the player comparatively many options: In addition to the opportunities to divide the map into different lands, the opportunity is offered, sound effects (eg wind in the trees, snow storm, animal sounds, city sounds, etc.) in different parts of the map distribute. It is also possible to incorporate several missions in a scenario.

History of development

Following the announcement in February 2006 and a demo, Legends was officially published on 12 October 2006 and thus almost one and a half years after the previous Stronghold 2. As the game contained some bugs, until February 2007, two patches which added some new features, published. Thus Legends is now on version 1.2.

Reception

Despite mixed to good reviews for the fresh concept of the game was criticized for still not resolved AI shortcomings of Stronghold 2 and brought in with the new mythical creatures partially "unfair " difficulty. ( Metacritic: 57 out of 100). In many reviews, the particular come from fandom, however, is that Legends have very little in common with the original series concept and is therefore more likely to belong to one of the less good title of the series.

• PC Games: 63% ( 23 October 2006)
• Gamestar: 65% ( 13 October 2006)