Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition Review

There’s something magical about the mediaeval period of history, from towering castles to knights jousting for the hand of the princess. However, we rarely spare a thought for how it must have been trying to organise and run this kind of society. This is the kind of task Firefly Studio's remastered title, Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition, wants to set you. The question is whether this is a journey that you want to take or if it is time to end the monarchy. 

Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition is the latest in a long line of remasters since the game was first released back in 2002. Now, in the interest of fairness, I will admit that I never played the original title (or any of the subsequent ones) as I was always firmly in the Total War: Rome II camp. So I’m going to be looking at this from a relatively new perspective. 

This new version of Stronghold Crusader includes a host of new units, campaigns, and an all-new co-op trail to play through. However, I would recommend that you start with the campaign, which charts the historical First Crusade to the Middle East. Each mission task has you collect a set amount of resources while defending your gains, which helps to slowly teach you how the game works. They’re interesting enough to play, and a little bit of history is always fun to learn. 

However, the meat of the game is the skirmish mode that sets you up versus an opponent (or several) while you slowly expand your fortress and armies. Now, if you’ve ever played an Age of Empires II HD, then you’ll have a good idea of what to expect, but with about a hundred extra things added on. 

You’ll start with a town centre along with a group of villagers, but from there, it’s really up to you to get going. Firstly, you’ll want to focus on building up your supplies with farms and mines, although these can only be built in certain places. One thing to note is that there’s no build time, so long as you have the villagers to man the buildings, they will instantly get to work. You also won’t be creating villagers individually; instead, they spawn on their own so long as you have the houses to keep them. From there, it’s really up to you how you want to proceed.

For the most part, the UI does a great job of explaining what each building does and the materials you need to gather to build it. I honestly never felt like I was out of my depth, but it did take some time to figure everything out. An issue I do have is that the cursor is always a sword, which can get confusing, as you would expect that to only be the case when pointing at an enemy that you want to fight. Instead, if you’re going to fight someone, it puts a tiny red icon under them. 

It should also be noted that the main focus of Stronghold Crusader is sieges, rather than moving a horde of troops to a camp and killing everyone. While you can do a fair amount of damage on a random attack, once your opponent has walls up, you’re going to have to get a bit more tactical. The same goes for your castle: if you don’t have any walls or defences, then you will lose very quickly as the game goes on. Thankfully, actually building the walls is pretty easy, plus you can position troops on top of them to help fight off enemy attacks. 

The battles can get pretty epic, but it can be hard to focus on all the little details as you go, which adds to the feeling of running your castle. However, the actual maps can be a little small, and you’re limited in the areas you can build in. Not only that, the gameplay takes a long time to get going, but you can increase the game speed in the menu, which I would certainly recommend.

Honestly, I had a lot of fun with Stronghold Crusader, but I have one major complaint: there isn’t much you can do once you start to lose. For instance, the minute you lose villagers is the point where you may as well restart, as soldiers can only be spawned from your surviving population.

For instance, the early missions have you collecting a set of resources, while also having you focus on building up an army of bowmen and spearmen. That means you need to make sure you have enough villagers to run the farms, collect the wood, build the bows and spears, take on the role of the soldiers, run the mills and bake the bread. If you don’t do it just right, you’ll lose all your soldiers then there’s really nothing you can do. Sure, it’s great when you get it right, but it can also be a real pain for new players. 

I do have one important warning for any real-time strategy fans: the pathfinding in Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition is still not great. From what I understand, this has been an issue for a while in the series, and while it isn’t the worst I’ve ever seen, there is a lot of room for improvement. 

Now, it wouldn’t be fair to talk about a remaster without mentioning if the game looks any better. The graphics, while improved, aren’t anything to write home about, with the character models still looking pretty basic from a distance. However, the number of animations showing the characters working is certainly nice to see. I looked over some footage of the older title, and it certainly looks better, but Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition isn’t going to win any awards for immersion, and the actual in-game UI is a bit bland.

Overall, Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition is a pretty major upgrade from the older entries in the series. There is a lot of content for a player to engage with, which all adds to some impressive longevity. While there are some teething issues for newer players, fans will find a lot to love about this new update.