All the bugs have been fixed, the one problem I have is that they made the wall building more like age of empires (the best part of stronghold was making a customizable castle) the maps are kind of tiny, but in most cases that does not matter because you dont need a huge map to do the mission. They tried somthing new with the drawn art work cinematics, respsect them for that. Stronghold has always been a non noob friendly economic castle builder, most the people downrating this game are a console generation that want fast action in everything they play, stronghold will not be a direct hit instant love for most players, but for a small amount of us you will be reminded of the old stronghold (all the bugs got fixed, if they just had better walls this would be at least an 8) But sadly, it is no measure to stronghold 1, but you COULD say that if you just want to play stronghold 1, then play stronghold 1 right? wrong, it took on an age of empires resemblance which is not what its supposed to be, kingdoms took on a starcraft like stance (which is not what it is) stronghold has always been unique and should not try to blend itself with other genre's… Expand

As a stronghold fan, I'm really disappointed. This game is unfinished. It's not a finished game, even it's not a beta release. Nearly nothing works in this game. First, the graphics are nearly the same as in Stronghold 2. Second, there is no skirmish. What the hell? Just remember the good skirmishes of Stronghold Crusader. Where is it now? And the campaigns are wasted. Also, the maps are tiny. Maybe much smaller then the maps in Stronghold 2. There are some "historical" castle sieges (such as in the previous Stronghold sequels), but these are really bad too. Finally, the multiplayer. Ahhh..... you can play only in four maps (2 map is 1v1 and 2 map is 2v2, there is no 3v3 or 4v4). The whole game is unplayable. I think there is no more words to say....don't buy it, it's a complete waste of the sea of p.o.o.… Expand

$50 for this garbage? Black and White 2 was a mediocre game, yet it is far, far better than this game in every respect even though it is 7 years old. Even though city/wall building is not core to B&W2, those aspects of that game are so much better than this game that it is shocking. Why is this game bad? 1. Bad graphics [REALLY outdated] 2. Terrible interface and controls. 3. The patrol and attack-move buttons do not work, and no attack-move is a horrible handicap in combat. 4. Peasants block building placement, including elderly and children. This means that once you have a somewhat populated area, it becomes virtually impossible to place buildings, because peasant traffic will constantly block open areas. 5. The sound and art is terrible, it seriously feels like an indie game that you could play on newgrounds. 6. BUGS, I ran in to numerous problems, including crash to desktops and hangs.… Expand

nerdiest game ever loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool

could have spent more time being developed. come on firefly. u did some fine graphics work but the bugs and glitches are really bad. the patches are nice but i honestly think u shot yourself in foot with the release in such bad shape. next time wait made do a close beta to find more bugs possible re-think your Q&A team and find some better tester would help you out more. i hope to see a stronghold 4 but take your time and show us what u can really do, give us a stronghold with a great release. gives a stronghold it can give us score of 90. i know you can do better then this.… Expand

Such a shame......... Game was talked about such potential an its now Day 2 of release an I have returned the game for my money back. Bug ridden launch of yet another PC title. It feels they release these games for the pure need of sales to get their budget up since they peeked it an had run out of funds, so they sell a unfinished unpolished game to gain revenue so they can fix the issues an implement the rest of the games ideas with the new found source of money they receive from sales. Very poor business ethics from the PC industry the past 2-4 years. It is getting really annoying....It is like they want me to just buy a Console an never look back with the type of lack of respect they show us consumer PC gamers. Game tries to show you the light at the end of the tunnel but merely fails horribly. No skirmish in a RTS game is a complete ruin of the style of game it is, where is the replay ability without skirmish???? No Kingmaker makes even LESS replay ability..... What do they expect us to do buy a game for 50 dollars to play a 10 hour campaign if that an then just notch the game off on are list of what to do next? This title is a slap in the face to PC gamers of the genre this title supports, They talk in their Dev videos how they did so much not to fail like supposedly Stronghold 2 did, Well it had its issues at launch I will be honest, but after some patches an time I rather play that game then this supposed "new" an "better" version. They were so negative towards SH2 that they even made the story take off from the original SH1, that right there tells you they do no have confidence in their ability to make games. I warn anyone who buys this game within its first month of launch, for it will take some time fixing the mass of Bugs this game is experiencing at the moment. Wait a few if months for it to hit the bargain bin or hit the sales rack on steam or at Retailers such as Gamestop store or their Online download system "aka" Impulse that for some reason they now changed it to the name of their stores, which on a side note I thought was stupid... I liked Impulse as the name more then the Current. An stay Clear from Origin unless you just HAVE to have a EA game or you will die. (rumors say it has a spyware in the software to take your information an sell it to other companies for marketing purposes, be careful)
Well I hope this post helps people save some money. I give this game a 3 out of 10 because they attempted to do something at least, even if it was a massive launch PC title failure again. Maybe a few months down the road it will be playable an enjoyable like SH2 became when its issues were fixed an corrected. The only Thing good going for this game is the introduction of a Physics engine making the the destruction of Castle walls an Town buildings look more realistic an the peoples "AI" bodies having a "rag" doll effect to their lifeless corpses. I sure hope some other big titles coming out that I am waiting for do not do this as well, Such as Skyrim from Besthesda.... Especially after how horrible RAGE was an still is after multiply patches to try an fix it, yet still have not. Wish the PC industry would get their **** together... I am really considering going back to Xbox or Playstation, I know they go through their issues now an then but at least with a console I did not spend $2,000.00 plus dollars to make a top end gaming machine just to get crappy game after crappy game released… Expand

I've come online to get this review in early in the hope that I can save other Stronghold fans from making the same mistake I did. This game is an unfinished, buggy mess and I wish I could get my money back. Pre-ordering games just doesn't pay nowadays as developers seem determined to release their unfinished, unpolished, half-implemented rubbish on the paying public. They've had to make this game on a shoestring budget, and it shows from the beginning with the bugs and the use of black and white drawings in place of cinematics. Mission design is poor, the maps are tiny, the animations are rudimentary and the graphics engine is glitchy.

The game simply isn't worth playing in it's current state, and it's merely a throwback to Stronghold 2 and not the original and best Stronghold 1. You have to be worried when a castle building game doesn't give your troops any defensive bonus at all for being behind walls - none whatsoever. Many aspects of the gameplay are quite simply broken, and there is no skirmish mode, just a horrible lackluster campaign. The dreadful reviews will start pouring in soon - hold off on that purchase, wait till you find it in the bargain bin, which won't be very long. A sad waste of time and money.… Expand

I refused to write a review in order to give firefly a chance to fix the game, after so many patches and the release of today's patch (last patch in 2011) I decided to review the game, cause I lost hope in this game, the developers cant fix much really, instead they keep adding useless stuff like new maps & modes for multiplayer (multiplayer itself is still not working well), siege maps (boring to hell)... After you finish the military and economic campaigns there are no much to do, so you will go for free build, where you will build one time and set and invasion (then you wont play it again for sure) so after that you will jump into multiplayer, you will struggle and waste time in order to start the game, and if you succeed you will lag and maybe crash, thats it the game itself has a great potential but it seems a lot of things are broken and will be hard to fix. Stronghold series is unique and I love it, but SH3 is just so buggy with missing features that were avalable in previous game (skirmish for example)... This will be thier last game for sure, untill some developers will come and make us a nice castle RTS/ Sim..… Expand

I'm a huge Stronghold Crusader and Stronghold 1 fan but unfortunately, I am very disappointed with this game. I expected so much more from Stronghold 3. The graphics are quite bad, there's no skirmish mode and the game have in overall a lot of bugs.

Bottomline:Stronghold 3 is a colossal disappointment for the die hard fans who have been waiting for this game for almost 7 years.Instead of improving and building on what made the original so successful they take many steps backward.First of all let me be very specific Firefly did release their game imcomplete(tat was obvious)with a price tag of 1 would imagine of high profile titles like call of duty or Bethesda "Elder scrolls" series(i regret each single penny that i lost).The game is broken full of Bugs,unplayable,extremely tiny map and CAN U BELIEVE IT THE SKIRMISH MODE IS GONE..SIGH! I seriously thinkwhat Firefly was thinking while omitting those features in the game...GRAPHICS are the worst part...extremely dated graphics(of one you'd imagine back in 2002)...An imcomplete and incompetant product for 50$(seriousy guys i threw my money off)........STROGHOLD 3 IS A COMPLETE FIASCO… Expand

In my humble opinion, Firefly should sell the Stronghold license to a developer that knows what to do with it, and shut down. This game is a disaster.

Needs a few patches, & Firefly had the first one out before the game was out 2 days in US. Overall Id say they've done a good job in listening to their fans feedback during the games production. Most of us were asking for a revival of the original Stronhold/Crusader formula, & this was indeed done but perhaps even to a fault. The game is damn-near a 3 dimentional current gen version of sh1, personally I am loving it! I've always wanted to play the 1st game again but for the 1st time again well... this is that. The difficulty is hard with no alt settings & I think this is a problem for some, for me though it seems like playing the first all over again. Hearing even some of the original music in game put a smile on my face. The start to this series was one I approched with little expectations & after Stronghold 2 etc I wasnt gonna hold my breath, thankfully I was pleasantly surprized. As with every other release now the game launched with some people experiencing bugs & then of course, out come the knives & pitchforks. Everyone rushes to the forums & meta to vent their rage for being "duped" into buying an incomplete game, cry foul, boycott, warn everyone else not to buy, then do it all over again next time.… Expand

Every Troll here cannot wait to tell you how bad this game is, having spent all of 10 minutes playing it on their out-dated computers. It seems everyone would like to be the first to post a poorly written diatribe about how "buggy" or "disappointing" Stronghold 3 is. Don't believe the anti-hype! The game probably needs a patch or two to be perfect, but I can only marvel at the beauty and complexity of the gameplay. I'm running a machine with Win 7 and 12 GB of RAM with an ATI Radeon HD 5700 card and the game runs beautifully. Unlike some games on the market today which are little more than click-through-movies, Stronghold 3 is VERY challenging! It has taken me several tries to complete each mission and I cannot wait to start playing with the map editor and making my own multiplayer maps and missions! If you're the type who is prone to uncontrollable fits of "nerd-rage", you may want to spare your poor abused keyboard some banging and just wait a week or two until the patches to fix a few lingering issues come out.… Expand

After playing this for a good few hours I can point out that most of the other reviewers are trolls, the game is fine and I have yet to run into either a bug or a bad gameplay decision, the graphics are nice but the character models could be better, the music is excellent and the gameplay is fine, for those wanting Stronghold 1 go and play Stronghold 1.

This wouldn't have been a brilliant game if it had come out five years ago, let alone now. Looks dated and dodgy, plays very poorly with slow, unresponsive units and a primitive interface. Even though it's a niche game and offers the reasonably rare selling point of letting you build and run a castle it does it so badly that even if I was jonesing for a castle building game I'd still give it a miss. Really disappointed.… Expand

All the hype built around this game was of no use as the developers of this game have delivered nothing but an unfinished,rushed and an uninteresting game. I advise you not to waste your money on this game.

This game is not even worth pirating. It is so poorly designed and full of bugs. This game is not even worth pirating. It is so poorly designed and full of bugs. This game is not even worth pirating. It is so poorly designed and full of bugs. This game is not even worth pirating. It is so poorly designed and full of bugs.

They could do better. As the concept of play is not bad, but failed to create a beautiful game. It is boring, lacks consistency and incomplete, because even in the building free once built the main structures, the game stops. We find ourselves saying: "ok I built everything, now I turn off". A real shame, because the concept is really nice. Fail!

This game is just terrible. absolutely terrible. the gameplay is boring on tedious; Stronghold 3 really failed in micromanaging. and i can't believe they haven't fixed the horrible combat yet... battles still consist of 2 clusters of guys swinging at each other. I don't necessarily want my 50 dollars back because im cheap, i want my 50 dollars back because firefly doesn't deserve money for this terrible excuse for a game.… Expand

Really dissapointing sequel. Is it even a sequel. Nothing seems to have changed. Maybe the graphics are a little better. Bland picturecard story telling. Poor line of sight mechanics. Poor troop control.

Immense disappointment. As a long-time fan of the series I am nothing but let down by this unfinished, unpolished, incomplete travesty. Seriously, how hard is it to code Stronghold 1 in 3D with graphics from this decade? Too hard apparently. It's rough, crude and lacks any sophistication or substance. There isn't even a skirmish mode to justify playing it after the pathetically threadbare campaign. Do not give your money to these losers. Not even worth picking up from a bargain bin. WOLVES CLIMBING LADDERS.… Expand

I'm going to receive a lot of hate for this but i liked the game. sure it had its fare share of bugs and it was a bit slow i enjoyed it and the game is being patched every week and its getting better all the time.now the reason i didn't give it higher marks is it is not excusable to send out a buggy and unfinished game to the consumers sure its getting better every patch but firefly should have checked the game for bugs i wouldn't of minded this game being delayed to finish it. Collapse… Expand

This game is broken.

I desperately wanted to love this game, but after half a dozen attempts that all ended with swearing a blue streak at the game, I know that, barring a complete overhaul, this game should be considered Dead on Arrival and avoided like the plague.

Many other reviewers have listed the numerous problems, including an insane difficulty, an utter lack of explanation, a lack of queues for attack, combat that borders on torture for the player, and castle-building that is incomprehensible (both in the building's relationships and in a seemingly random refusal to allow for building).

I love castle games, but I wouldn't play this game if it was FREE, and they'd have to pay me a fair bit to put up with it. It has potential, but unless they pull out a complete overhaul similar to the Enhanced Edition of The Witcher, this game should be avoided by all.… Expand

An insult to Stronghold Crusader.
Let's not even talk about this game, let's talk about a good Stronghold - Crusader, a classic 2D RTS with excellent gameplay mechanics and serviceable graphics, 3 is terrible in every aspect, it doesn't have as much content to be terrible at.

The Stronghold series has a deep hole in my heart. I have always loved the series. Stronghold 1, Crusader are far the best, SH2 was buggy and ugly too, but still a new fun way to play. Now, Stronghold 3 tries to be original, from its former releases. It failed. Stronghold 3 fell in the same trap as Command and Conquer 4. A big failure. The game is too slow. Multiplayer fails. And no Skirmish or Trail. This was the most important factors in the earlier games, why throw them out? And granary and taxes interfaces, is now narrowed down to an action bar. The MUSIC! ooh the music does not fit the Stronghold series at all. So unorthodox, and wrong. It's not Stronghold anymore, and it has not been succeeding. Still, i give it a 5, because it still has the old Stronghold peasant voices. GG… Expand

I guess the glorious days of the Stronghold Franchise are over. Stronghold 3 has HUGE bugs, currently no speed regulation, graphics looks like came out of 2002 - to shortcut this - for my taste... a Nr1 lame game. Stronghold 3 earned a place in my personal FAIL BUY's list.

My biggest gripe with this game is that it bears a full price tag and there is no demo. That is really a problem, because you can't get refunds on Steam and the game is utter crap. It runs well, but looks bad on GTX470 and is missing a lot of features. Feels like a beta version. They just wanted to cash in on the Stronghold name.

What the reviews say is sad but true -- this game is buggy, and just plain unpolished. It doesn't have the fun of the first one, nor the skirmish mode of the second one. It's also unbalanced -- for example, a single wolf can kill several soldiers. So it's hard to recommend it at this time, maybe in the future when it's heavily patched.

There is absolutally nothing wrong with this game. Shame on all the people giving it a horrible rating. Multiplayer worked perfectly right after I finished downloading off steam, the graphics are great, some people most not understand the slightly complicated gameplay. The campaign is interesting and placing your castle in the real life world map is definatly a unique aspect. And by the way, the multiplayer is also very fun. As soon as I opened a 2v2 lobby it was full within 30 seconds. This game is great, beleive me.… Expand

Just three words: NO SKIRMISH MODE.......................................................................................................................................

There is really no need for another negative review, except to help offset the few false positive reviews in which the negative reviewers are called trolls. The game is awful, after patches. It is unstable, buggy, units defy any form of logic, walls mysteriously have invisible gaps, terrain textures vanish, and even the map editor itself is unstable and buggy. This game is a truly a big, steaming pile.… Expand

FireFly = RIPOFF ARTISTS !! FF must run by criminally incompetent marketing hacks. They are ACTIVELY SELLING a product that THEY KNOW IS NOT FINISHED. Buy it only if you like blue screen of death.

Beyond unpolished, unfinished. Not only the combat system is buggy and full of oversights, it is faulted by design. No care has been put at all in this game. The economics mechanics are not the best of the series, but at least are better than Stronghold 2's.

Only the music and the sound effects are acceptable. Voice acting is OK. Graphics are all right if you don't care too much, but unit animations are sub-par.

Some reviews say it needs "a few patches". But it needs to be redone.… Expand

My only saving grace was that i purchased this (with a trade in ) at greenmangaming for only $18.96, had I purchased at full $50.00 price I'd be right ticked off at the quality that the game was released in, giving it a score of 1 is being generous, it is lack luster at best, is missing many features that were in the SH games before it (i.e. skirmish, kingmaker, etc) and is just not worth the money.

It honestly feels with the lack of content (i.e. maps) that Firefly is depending on their customers to put out the content for it, with the editor, even as such they will not be able to add skirmishes to the game.

I'd have to say at this point that you hold off on your purchase until FF (if they do so) puts out an amazing patch as in it's current state it's barely worth $18.96 let alone $49.99 that steam sells it for currently.

Also take a look at the screenshots and videos of it on places like youtube to see if these 'old school' graphics are something you want to play with in the year our Lord 2011. It might as well be the year that StrongHold 2 came out with regards to these 'retro' graphics. Personally, I find it attrocious that FireFly would put out a game in 2011 with these graphics, they are just terrible. It makes it quite difficult to get into playing the game with graphics this outdated and poor.

Stronghold 3 feels to me to be a very unpolished and incomplete game, especially for the price they are asking for it. Stay away from it for now until a huge patch comes out, or it's in the $5.00 economy bin.… Expand

Worst of all the Stronghold games out there. Ive played since Stronghold 1 and did all the campaigns and spend a lot of time on its games. But after the first impressions and first militairy campaign mission I quit already. The camera is always on top, everything feels so..small. I did not really look at the graphics at this point, but I think they are a bit worse than SH: 2 graphics. Many small annoying things from SH: 2 have gone, but I think Firefly studios made a bit to much gone; Skirmish mode. The once so marvelous mode were you could pick your own enemies and place to start, on a certain difficult mode just for you. Its a shame that that mode has gone, leaving you to Free build without any enemies, militairy campaign with no freedom; its always following the objectives. And also Economic campaign. I only think Firefly left the units, the buildings, the silly but funny fighting scenes were units collapse into each other, and the name into the Stronghold franchise. This is not Stronghold 3, it feels more like Farmholdville 3. A waste of time and money if you are well known to the Stronghold series.
Also, I think it might be time to change unit voices. It might be not such a bad game for the non-hardcore Stronghold/strategy fans(after all the bug fixes). But for the real fans out there: Stay Away from this game.… Expand

Why? Just why? I feel like i have paid for stronghold 2 all over again with parts cut out!! The graphics are shocking for current gen games and it crashes so much. BAD southpeak games BAD!

Well I gotta say thank you to Steam, Metacritic and you reviewers. For making it possible to many of those who've never played the game before to see what buyers are saying and not allowing companies to hide their Bull***t. See I'm an avid gamer and built my custom performance computer solely for it! I must say Firefly that I've honestly never played your games but from what I'm seeing from reading these owners reviews of this lousy game (so I'm hearing). It doesnt look like you'll be getting my money anytime soon for this game, nor will I waste the time installing it let alone play it. Its obviously a bad game when people from third world countries who cant even speak hardly a word of English are saying that this game is terrible, and then you have those who have pirated the game dont even give it so much as one point for even just getting the game for free for God's sake! (You know the game is really crap at that point and I've never even played the game yet!) Its obvious that you knowingly released a bad game and knowing (or should I say hoping) that you were going to make money of a lousy effort game. I gotta agree with the rest of these folks, you really should be ashamed of yourselves, give the money back to these people and dont release games until they are done and done RIGHT!! You guys know what today's gaming standards are! Live up to it or don't bother making the game and expect people to pay $50 or more for a lousy game when they can get a $20 game that is by ten fold better!! (Once again thanks to Steam, Metacritic and the reviewers for saving my bacon or wallet this time should I say. And lastly, I'm sorry Firefly, but when it comes to people who are leaving 10 for a Metascore....... O_o .......(C'mon! Really guys?)........ITS CLEARLY YOU when 70-80% of people are leaving no higher than a 2 if you're lucky. The only 2 conclusions that I could come to for people leaving a 10 in a situation like this is ........ #1 You either work for the company, or #2 You are seriously easy to please and obviously never played a video game a day in your life and/or are seriously simple minded. Sorry guys, I'm afraid you're probably gonna sink on this one fellas no matter how much you try to avoid it. Too many people already now know this game isn't worth the time to even install it! I hope it was worth it, cause you sure aren't getting my cash for this one. Not with scores like this. Terribly Sorry. :-(… Expand

Game originally was not all that good. unbalanced food system, wall bugs, and a ai that kick your ass. this is no longer the case though i say you should check this game out now with the last three updates they have fixed many of the bugs and glitches that made this game bad. strongholds allways done this and any good stronghold fan knows this.

The game is currently unplayable and obviously incomplete. There is almost no documentation for any of the mechanics,mechanics that exist generally do not work as they should. Game is a disaster and a last moment cash grab. Stick a fork in this franchise it is done...

Stronghold 3 can be described as full of bugs, stupid developer decisions, and it AI (if it can be called like that at all) robs you blind. There are problems everywhere, archers who can't shoot from towers, when attacking you will need lot of patience to find a place around enemy where cursor changed to attack icon, sometimes you have to click on enemy and most of times you have to hunt pixel around enemy where it will let you to attack. As for robbing AI, if you have 8 spearmen and you attack 1 enemy spearman, he will kill 5 of yours before falls. Also wolves, at campaign start you can't build walls, wolfs enter settlement they will kill all peasants, farmers, woodcutters, as they cant defend for themselves. You will need to run around with lord hunting wolves around town to keep as much people alive as you can, also one wolf can kill 3-4 spearmen. Game can be unstable, so you will need to save a lot, as there is no auto-save. List of problems goes on and on. And all of this is just about campaign, as there is no skirmish, no kingmaker mode. There is no AI, game just spawns units that are same as yours but AI archers do more damage than players, same goes for men at arms, spearmen, etc. Total garbage.… Expand

I loved Stronghold 1 and Crusader - not so big on 2 and Legends, but this... this is by far the worst RTS I have ever played in my life. NOTHING works as it should, nothing is thought through. It's like they've taken all the worst parts from previous Stronghold games and none of the good, and then added a million bugs.

Graphics are broken and ugly. 1920x1080 isn't an option, but if I pick 1600x900 it stretches the image for some reason, so I have to play in a 16:10 resolution on my 16:9 monitor with black borders, just to be able to see an unstretched image. Game speed is ridiculously slow. Walls don't protect units behind them, animals can climb ladders, no audio cues when your men are being attacked. No explanation of what anything does and no tooltips for most buttons. Economic system is atrocious and resource management is hell with no HUD indication of resources. Fighting is atrocious and no fun at all. Etc.

This game is horrible in every way, completely unfinished and certain areas, like the cutscenes, clearly showcase how little this game has cost to make, in terms of both money and labour. Releasing a game in this state at full price (or at any price, really) is no different from picking someone's pocket, and Firefly are nothing more than petty thieves.… Expand

Enjoying it so far. Just finished the second mission in the economy campaign and it was challenging and really enjoyable. By the end of it I was enjoying the layout of my town and got the hang of how to build it up. Have had no big issues with performance, a couple of crashes while loading but really no problem. Graphics are simple but effective. When your stronghold gets going it does look like there is a lot going on, which I like. The graphics look better the larger your cities get. it all could go pear shaped I guess... but so far so good.… Expand

Outdated 3d graphics, numerous bugs and no skirmish mode. The first Stronghold is now 10 years old and it's still far more enjoyable than any other game of the franchise (with Crusader being the exception).

This is a big disappointment. BIG disappointment. I seriously wish I could get a refund to be honest. No skirmish mode against the AI? No editor? The game is glitchy, the units often wont do as told and get stuck. Building is way more limited than before, peasants block placement. In a busy town, when is there not a peasant underfoot?
AI is sad, often men just stand next to eachother and ignore everything.

This game is nothing like past versions, and not in a good way...
DONT buy this, I seriously wish I hadnt.… Expand

The Good
The sword progress bar is a nice idea.
The Bad
No skirmish mode. Sub par graphics and poor animations. A multitude of bugs that make doing simple things like placing stairs painful. Small maps that feel cramped, this isn't helped by the huge space each building takes up. Awful UI that gives almost no info on what's going on, even the little mini map shows nothing but some coloured blocks that indicate exactly nothing. Dumb stuff such as virtually indestructible wolves that climb ladders while still animated like their running on the ground, and why is this a central element in the economic campaign anyway? The overwhelming feeling is of a lack of care, a lack of attention to detail and a total lack of testing. Seriously, who approved the crude b&w sketches for the cut scenes? Awful.
The Ugly
The game was advertised on Steam as having CO-OP play, post release this was pulled from the Steam page. This is really a bad alpha build game that is frankly unlawfully advertised and promoted.… Expand

this game failed. the graphics and sound are crap. the original eradicates this game. i hate this game. after 5 minutes i knew it was all over for me.

No working multiplayer, single player, map, wall, AI, saved games... No single map. Nothing works properly with 50dollars price tag.

ashes of a legend

ran the program took one look at the 1996 graphics and said what a absolute waste of 50 dollars......
please dont waste the time or effort to even install this game what an absolute mess

First this game alots of bugs, problems 2 play, this is terrible, was a fan of this game....real pitty.
The game is very slow, b4 u build something, it take hours. It looks like this game have be made with trainees. The only PLUS in this game, is how they present the game at the beginning, good sounds and music. For the price this is 2 expensive. Money back please.

this game is definitely a zero. From the first underdeveloped slew of garbage that entered my computer, it was a nightmare. My primary reason for being so annoyed was that there was no skirmish mode. You could "re-enact historical sieges", but you couldn't generate a skirmish mode? With that aside, I created an account here to complain about the dlc, and how you couldn't just buy it- you had to purchase the game again. So, at 31.99 with 20% off they are trying to re-sell their underdeveloped game, with one addition campaign that nobody will ever play. I have nothing against dlc, but to charge for a whole game that still doesn't contain the basic components of a castle building sim is just ridiculous.… Collapse

A nasty surprise for Stronghold fans. This game is very buggy and has an unfinished feel to it. Let me rephrase that: This game has been released in a state it shouldn't be. It's like a fetus gets pulled out of a womb months before its time. This should have never been released in this state.
Furthermore, there is a lack of skirmish mode, which means you have to deal with the current campaigns as they are. They are impossibly difficult, not as much to say the game is challenging, but you have the feeling you're not fighting the virtual enemies, rather the bugs you come across. There is no bonus for standing on walls, and your men at arms get stuck when they can't hit their enemies. What is that all about?
A lot of people say they don't like the graphics, but I think they're the only pro to this game as far as I'm concerned. I think this game is salvageable with a lot of patching, but for now I'd suggest you all wait till it's in the bargain bin.… Expand

Despite what others are saying, this game runs pretty smoothly on my system. Despite that, it's pretty boring. I'm a newcomer to the stronghold series, and I was rather looking forward to this game. Sadly, I was left disappointed. No skirmish is kind of silly, and the campaign is rather droll. The game over-all is VERY simple -- to the point that strategy is really not needed. I don't typically play multi-player, so I can't vouch for any of that, but single player is snooze city.… Expand

I literally created this metacritic account to warn people away from Stronghold 3. This game is full of bugs and I want my money back! I reloaded a saved game, it wouldn't recognize I had stuff in my stockpile. I reloaded again. My wall was glitched up so that it wasn't connected. The multiplayer is not working and no skirmish mode... which leaves this game devoid of life. What the heck are they thinking to release a game in such a shoddy state, it should be illegal. If I had any member of firefly studios in the room with me right now I swear I would throttle them with no remorse.… Expand

this is the worst piece of **** game that i've ever seen in my entire life! i just don't understand why firefly does this to its fans

and @ all the firefly-members here: would you PLEASE stop creating accounts here just to give this game a (undeserved) 10 and to tell people how great it is? you know very well that this game is CRAP! it's just ridiculous what you're doing, nobody will buy this game just because you're writing fake reviews here -_-… Expand

Sadly imho all the negative review here are true! missing coop / skirmish mode..pathfinding is horrible! wall building is horrible! and the game is definetly unfinished...

This game's graphics are uninspiring. The interface is clunky. The economics are difficult to balance (how many apple farms do I need for 10 workers?). This game was a waste of cash. Overall it feels like a 5-8 year old game. I got into this to build kick-arse castles - so why am I running an economic sim I have to micromanage while, oh yeah, the CASTLE BITS aren't available for construction. This game is a disgrace, the worst "finished product" I've purchased in recent memory.

DON'T BUY IT, IF SOMEONE GIVES YOU A COPY DON'T PLAY IT… Expand

What a disgrace. They still have the nerve to sell this piece of filth for the price of a normal game. No one should spend any kind of currency on this miserable excuse of a sequel. Just buy Stronghold 1.

i enjoy this game its very fun just like the other strongholds its addicting and fun.and if like other players the main reason this is bad is because this is a very hard strategy for hardcore strategy players if u cant play the game right dont write a bad review because its too hard for u you just suck its not fair for the makers so just shut up and play the game.get better at it and it will be fun turn the difficutly down if u have to and use the glitches 2 ur advantage… Expand

"People are coming to your castle," the scribe would say now that Firefly has released patch v1.10. There have been alot of positive reviews with this patch. Its been a successful comeback and it is quite relieving for those who couldn't play the game in the beginning due to those ghastly bugs. Though there are some superflous reviews of the same comments stating that the game is too pallid without a kingmaker, this won't bother the true Stronghold fan because with this latest patch, the game won't feel like a beta version. It is now stable and playable with it's full performance.

ECONOMIC

The economic campaign might prove very difficult to those who are new to the series. Collect 600 bread, 6000 Honor with very limited space, you can hear the wolves howling nearby and your armory is empty. What to do now??!
Some aspects of the Economic can appear simple and dull when in fact it is very difficult. Building placement can be daft since the borders take ample space for a small building. Especially since House size is still dependant on the distance to your keep. The Economic region of the game has an incredible plot but...repetitive gameplay. If you enjoy collecting the same resources every mission this might be for you. There is minimal combat with a few wolves and bandits in every other mission but it is still fun to play. There are new useful features in this particular patch that includes Auto-sell. Lets not forget to mention that you don't need to spend wood in the beginning just to place a market at the start to save yourself from any economic troubles. Market is no longer needed so place a wood shop or two and some farms and start your game!
There have been alot of praises in the forums that things in the game run smoother now that peasants walk faster and produce more food! One of the things you'll notice among your first mission with this patch is as soon as you place a wood shop, the peasants are not walking like turtles anymore. They're so much faster that you no longer have to put those extra 10 farms just to speed things up when you only need about 5. Noticable and helpful tweaks from the patch are how fast bread production is. I nearly had to place 10 bakeries just to speed up the process. Well FEAR NOT!! This problem has been resolved along with Honor meter out of sync.

COMBAT:

I was just simply fascinated when I completed the story 10 years later. Firefly managed to keep the story true and even the release date of the game similar to the original. If you havn't played Stronghold 1 I advise you to stop reading and play Stronghold 1 first before you step into Stronghold 3. You'll just be blank and thoughtless not knowing what happened when the past is mentioned.
The combat missions are fresh each one after another. There will always be new tasks and stronger foes in every mission. Night time seiges are rare. There will only be about 3 of them. If you enjoy night time seiges as much as I do you can try out the freebuild! Stronghold 3 players might notice that there will be alot left in their stockpile since the peasants are faster. Every mission I play I always have weapons left that I never got to use and more resources than what I need. Sell it all with Auto-trade!
I would always have to put about 6-8 weapon production buildings when now all you need is 2-4 (depending how far weapon production buildings are to your stockpile and how far the armory is.) It is good to see some extra materials every now and then...and a little extra gold. Unlike stronghold 2 that you can pretty much build an army without a church or entertainment, its partially mandatory in Stronghold 3. There won't be one building you havn't used after you finish the game. You need almost everything at your disposal to survive 30-60 minute waves of armies.
Knights are coming to your walls and you don't have pitch. You need peasants but there's 10 more seconds for another to spawn. Its time to lower your taxes and boost church services in order to balance out your peasant spawn time. Spawn time might not be a problem in the economic campaign since you have church, entertainment and decorations. Its a differen't story in military campaign. There will be buildings to help but it might be more demanding if you place military buildings since you see platoons of men-at-arms on the mountains marching to your walls.
If the offputting reviews are deterring you from purchasing another Stronghold game well you can pretty much ignore them. Those reviews are outdated. The same people who bashed the game are the same people now praising the game with this new patch. They're now playing the campaigns and whispering to one another what happens in the story. I conclude this review with a recommendation of the game and to say its worth a try.… Expand

In my opinion its is nothing like Stronhold 2 which many people feel in love with. It has instead carried on with the same interface gameplay etc. as Stronhold Legends.....which i also thought was rubbish.

I love the stronghold series but i freaking hated StrongHold 3. It was a complete bugged mess that was so hard to beat it was virtually UN-enjoyable. I hear there is a new patch out that i will try and if it helps the game i will give a better review.

It pains me to say this because of how much I loved the first game. But everything magical about stronghold was ruined when they went 3-D. Firefly mastered 2-D settings... but.... I can't even play this game without it crashing in the first ten minutes. Besides that.. there is hardly anything resembling an online community..... and they scraped half of the settings that made us all fall in love with SH1… Expand

This game is awful. The tutorial is far too brief. The gameplay is sluggish and antiquated. The controls feel unfinished. The graphics are very poor and glitchy. After 20 minutes of play I feel totally robbed of the premium price that I pre-paid for this game. Shameful.

I first came to the stronghold series with stronghold 2. I thought, despite the shoddy graphics that it was a great idea and alot of fun. I even enjoyed stronghold legends. I played though the campaign once on each then moved to offline skirmishes or kingmaker which is the mode I always play with RTS's. So think of my surprise when loading up stronghold 3 for the first time and couldnt find the skirmish/kingmaker option! I hav essentially bought a game full price of which I cannot play. I paid £30.00 for a shoddy little campaign on tiny maps, with poor framerate. What was firefly doing for all these years? Has anyone even tested this game before release? and where the hell is skirmish?! Rule number 1 about making a RTS game. INCLUDE SKIRMISH!!!

Whats wrong with this game? - No Skirmish/Kingmaker
- No AI
- Tiny Maps
- Crappy Framerate even on high end pc's
- Camera is restricted in free build? whats the point in doing that?
- Tiny selection of maps (2!)
- No cinematic cutscenes just black and white drawings with a crappy voice over.
- Unresponsive units (hard to select and when they are selected they dont always do as you say)
- Cant see the sky (no different views like sh2)

Stronghold was my second favourite series of games (behind total war). I can-not express my disapointment enough. Please save yourself the horror and dont buy it.… Expand

I can't even describe how disappointed I am in this game. My two biggest gripes are the popularity system change and no skirmish mode. WHY on earth they changed the popularity system that was simple and WORKED to something that needs to be continually micromanaged I'll never know. Heaven forbid you don't devote a third or more of your population to food, lest you run out of it, people leave from the negative happiness hit for no food, and you have no farmers to fix the problem. It's a constant juggling act of negative and positive happiness with a score of peasants coming and going at a time because as SOON as you get into negative happiness at all, peasants start leaving immediately, unlike the old popularity system where you could support a negative rating for awhile if your popularity was beefed up to 100. Oh yeah, did I mention no skirmishes? In THAT regard, they have gone back to stronghold 1. If you are a stronghold fan like I am, unless this game gets a heavy overhaul, AVOID it.… Expand

Don't do it.
I am a rare partial-blind gamer, Unfamiliar with this series. bought this on steam pre-order, and I concur with the rest of the abysmal reviews. Played this for about an hour before turning it off in frustration. The most striking elements are near non-existent KB controls (important to some folks), lackluster storyline (the opening anyway), small / poorly designed maps, and its just TOO similar to SH 1. All the typical ailments of a low-budget game. No skirmish mode. The Settlers series is similar to this and those beat this with a stick. These type of games fail to keep my interest. I was expecting something like Sim-Medieval Kingdom, but its like Castle-Craft gone bad.… Expand

What the hell is with the negetive reviews? Have they only seen the crappy trailer and not played the actaul game? I have not experianced 1 bug yet! on Win 7 64 bit! The graphics are good, and multiplayer is great! Easy to find a game! And there was a patch released a few ours ago. There is plenty of game modes, including economic and military campaign. This game is actually very good, its just the trailer is crappy and this seems to be full of trolls that havent played the game.

And btw it supports 1920x1080 these people must just have bad computers.… Expand

OMG so many bugs needs lots of patching, dang and I just got crushed by how bad RAGE was then I start this unfinished "steamer" thinking to myself I was in for a long and wonderful night of building my castle and crushing my enemies not worth $50. UGH I'm just going to wait for the patches and hope they finish the game and maybe i'll come back and raise the score but a 2 is the best I can give for now.… Expand

After playing stronghold 2 before buying stronghold 3, I genuially like stronghold 3. I enjoyed stronghold 2 and stronghold 3 has teh core gameplay but better graphics, sound and multiplayer. The only thing stopping me from giving this a 10 is that there needs to be more maps for multiplayers.

I have been a fan of the stronghold series for a while now, and have played all of them. Stronghold 3 is the 2nd best one next to Stronghold 1. The gfx are great, look at the screenshots they have on facebook stronghold 3 page. The music is nice and campaign is pretty good once you reach latter levels. Cant say much negetive about it, the core gameplay is here and i havent had any bugs or crashes. multiplayer works well as well. good game, great if you like a next gen RTS.… Expand

Lets get this straight - I am a Stronghold fan - and would (normally) defend it until the diseased cows come home - however, with SH3 Firefly have released a product that scrapes the bottom of a buggy and featureless barrel. The new graphics engine wouldn't look out of place in 2004 - the numerous bugs render the game virtually unplayable. The stony silence from the development team merely mocks us fans. I purchased this game from Steam - those guys are notorious for not giving refunds on any titles for any reason.... They refunded me for this travesty. If you have fond memories of the original then avoid this like the plague. The one good thing going for this game is that is makes Stronghold 2 look great! Firefly may well of killed off the series with this installment of the franchise.… Expand

Where is the Skirmish mode? I never play the Campaign mode!!! Without Skirmish this game is a trash!!! And to worse the begin at the Campaign you don't has a realm, you just have slow persons to control! This game give me sleep!

Do you want to know the difference between stronghold 1 and 3? the PRICE,stronghold 3 has the same price that STARCRAFT 2,but with 1992 graphics and full of bugs,POOR game interface,poor sound,poor voices,just like DOS games from 1992. SUCKS SO HARD bro,go buy it or throw your money to the river its the same

Well first of all! I like this game! I just buyed it and played true the campaign and 1-2 online matches and loved it! Itâ

This game ruined stronghold for me. The only improvement, comparing to stronghold 2, is the graphics - and they're not good at all. The game is buggy as f'''k. It's takes an effort to even control your units and get them to move at all.. Just a really. bad. comeback. I don't even want to go into details, because if not the basics are in order, you really can't enjoy the game at all. Not worth a penny.… Expand

This is a very good game. They got it right after the failure of stronghold 2. Its pretty much like the first stronghold. The voice acting is awesome, the new features really nice (while still keeping the old ones from the first game). They also kept the interface more similar to 1 (2 was very bad), and the music is also good.

The bad side is that there is no hard/easy mode, and the game is far too easy. There are also some minor things which could have been improved such as have scenes instead of just images on story, but overrall, the game is very nice. People rating it low have no idea what they are talking about or never played the first stronghold/don't really like this kind of game (which, along with 3, are the best ones).… Expand

I've been playing stronghold for over ten years now, and Stronghold 3 is still not as good as the first. That said, it improves a lot on stronghold 2 and as the game continues to get patched and updated it improves. For anyone who, upon reading older reviews, decided not to get this game perhaps you may consider it again. They've improved it a lot, I actually enjoy playing the game now. Sure there's no skirmish mode, but they have random events in free build (controllable random events at that) and they have a good campaign to play. If you let yourself get into the game it's really quite nice, the sound and graphics pull you into the castle mood. I played this game for the first time in months this past weekend and it sucked me in for hours. I was quite pleased with the work Firefly has done to improve it.… Expand

Alright, the game is fun, and it has all the right mechanics. But it's broken beyond belief. The graphics are glitchy, the animations are retarded and then enemy attacking is just as bad.'

I had a group of spearman spawn behind me while I was attacking their lord. What the hell.

Such a disappointment, so much potential wasted :( Weak graphics, full of bugs, boring campaign, tiny maps and a generally very unfinished feel to it. Basic mechanics are of course very similar to stronghold 1 and 2 and that's about the only thing done right.

this game is just a big bug...... no words!!
never played a unfished game like this **** -.-
......................................................................................................

The most anticipated flop of our generation. Crashes left right and centre, poor AI and poorly designed non-immersive maps are only a few things that cast out Stronghold 3 from it's predecessors.

Remember when stronghold 2 came out? It's more buggy then that ever was.. Graphic errors, no skirmish mode, terrible campaign and lots more to list.. Don't buy this until it's on a 5$ sale or 3 years from now when they fix all the glitches.. Why can't they just remake stronghold 1 or crusader to how we all want it to be..

The only reason for me creating an account here: To warn you all not to buy this ... "game". Its pathetic lol, no skirmish, **** graphics and overall an unfinished feeling. This is far from playable, and even further away from being a good game. Sad to see the money go down the drain.. again.. Don't make the mistake of buying this game. This is not worth the 5 bucks when it ends up in the discount bin even!… Expand

No skirmish mode. No kingmaker.
No AI (i.e. computer opponents to play against in any mode, save for what's scripted in the campaign).
Multiplayer is broken. You literally cannot play multiplayer. Even if you could, there are four very small maps from which to choose.
Limited free build mode comprising two maps, both of which are very tiny. To give you some reference, if you took thirty wheat farms and lined them up, the first and last would be at the edges of the map.

I won't comment as to how I like the graphics, because to an extent it is personal preference, but I will tell you there are numerous graphical errors, and castle walls use low resolution, blotchy textures.

I do enjoy the audio. Music is nice. It's not enough to overcome the game's other faults by a longshot, however.

The game is very buggy. Some people cannot start the game. Others it crashes for, and still others for some odd reason can only play the game in a foreign language (really). For those of us lucky not to experience these major issues, there still is a whole slew of pesky annoyances and gameplay imbalances with which to contend, to the extent that we're wondering if 7sixty and Firefly Studios accidentally released an early beta version instead of the completed game.

There are some remedies to Stronghold 2's mechanics that are positive, such as not having to deal with sanitation or criminals, and a better camera UI.
Your building choices are also more refined, which does mean less indeed, but I think it's for the better. For instance, there's only a church, and no chapel or cathedral. The church has a support structure, the chandler, a producer of candles, which the church requires to perform services.
The honour system is interesting, I think, but there's no sense in going into it here.
Housing is nifty in that it changes size and capacity based on distance from the keep.
Weather and day and night cycles are kind of glitched, but in theory they are pretty cool.

The game is in major need of some serious patches.
Even with patches, you'd very likely never see a skirmish mode, as AI is something that takes a very long time to develop, and typically requires coding in the early stages of development.
There may be a technical reason the maps are as small as they are. If this is true, it's extremely disappointing.

The short answer is stay away from Stronghold 3.
Maybe reconsider if it goes on sale for ten bucks, but only after extensive patching.… Expand

This game is nowhere near finished, graphics are atrocious and the game doesn't even support 1080p, almost no info throughout the game as to what each building does or how much or whatever it is producing, no display info telling you how much stock you have in a given item other than having to constantly re-check the stockpile. It is a complete mess and such a shame as the gaming landscape could have done with a new game of this type.… Expand

I was really looking forward to this game. Preordered it. SO disappointed. Laggy (even on my very high spec nearly new laptop), still lags when graphics set lower and lights turned off. Crashes out.... oh I can't even begin to list all the problems.

I wish I'd never wasted my money :(

Incredibly disappointed! The game is not finished, should not have been release in my opinion. Multi player does not work at all at the moment! Huge bugs in game! This game needs a patch to even be playable. Anyone rating the game 10 works for production coz game don't work!!!

Is it a new game ? Is it a beta test? I am really confused brothers.. Don´t buy this game! ............................................................

To those who may be reading this: You may be inclined to think that this game can't possibly be as bad as the user reviews say. But this is quite possibly the worst game from the past 7 years, stay away from this title even if you find it in the budget bin. That the developers had the audacity to charge full price is so bizarre it simply HAS to be a joke.

Buggy, over-simplistic and but a shadow of it's former incarnates. There is so much to hate in this game, and forums everywhere are overflowing with it all. All in all, avoid.

Oops, I gave this a 10 accidentally.

My bad, please forgive me.

I probably wouldn't have been disappointed had I paid $10 for it.

Still not at 150 characters.

Are we there yet?

Nope not quite.

Check out my review below.

I have to be pretty close now.

Is this really worth adding a new score?

Any day now...

Don't buy this unfinished, buggy game actual...
There is no skirmish mode, no ai support for MP - not even a working MP.
Your peasants eat 3x food as normal - and your maps are tiny - so you will build food buildins only - no space for a castle.
You cannot build wall on wall and your walls become broken by food units...
This is just a part of negative things on the current Stronghold 3 release. But the badest things are response like this:

"Stronghold 3 was designed as a throwback to the original Stronghold. Itâ… Expand

I was incredibly disappointed with this game. Even without the multiplayer and AI issues, simple game play is awkward. Resolution is surprisingly bad. Wooden walls won't connect, and leave gaps that can't be closed. There is no good way to see why or what's wrong. When you delete walls, little visual slivers are left which can't be deleted, but can be selected and keep other functions from working correctly. Placing any sort of property gives little indication of why it can't be placed, it would be nice to see a highlight or flash of the offending piece of ground/property. Installation took me two hours, due to numerous download/delay/crash/uninstall/reinstall errors. They were all solvable on Steam support site, but seriously? Two hours. There is not as much notice in popularity, granary, etc. changes. I got caught a few times. When you play some of the economics campaigns you don't have limited time but if you take longer than 100 days you get no points. Seriously? This is only with 5 hours of play on Economics. I haven't even started the combat stuff yet. And seriously, who wants to play in the rain? If you ask me, the new 'look' is hard to see, way too granular and really takes away from the game. I liked a lot of the complexity of the SH2, and am sad to see it gone, at least in economics mode. The small map screen is way too big for the overall screen, it would be nice to be able to minimize/resize it to smaller for those of us without 46" monitors. Overall, I'm just really disappointed that I waited this long, paid this up front, lived through the ridiculous delays and then got this. I guess if you want to make cool looking physics trailers and blow dudes off a wall, this is awesome, but if you want a castle-building good time, go back and play SH1.… Expand

Don't like this at all. I'm sorry I pre-ordered through Steam. Now I can't get my money back. Just uninstalled and I'm pretty bummed out about this.

It was advertised as having coop. There is no coop. Therefore, they are dirty, dirty, liars. It's full of bugs and quality of life issues. Avoid this game!

And to the apologists claiming we should take it easy on them because all new games are buggy...no thanks. The gaming industry consistently rakes consumers over the coals on everything from release dates, missing features and buggy/broken gameplay. I say this is unacceptable. Name one other product you would pay full price for that was missing parts or broke down 30 seconds after you used it. Why should developers get a free pass? Their mistreatment of us will continue so long as we (the consumer) allow it. Stand up for yourselves. Speak with your wallets. And stop giving money to designers who are half-assing it.

Demand quality.… Expand

Worst Game Ever. 10 years since the original and this is the best they can manage? Buggy, crappy graphics and disappointing game play. PS, A sketch for a cut scene is as lazy as it gets. I demand a refund. SAVE YOUR MONEY DO NOT BUY.

Lord Solor is a tool. This game does not deserve a Ten. This game is clearly a unfinished product. If you check out firefly official forum, you can see the various gameplay issues that Firefly ignored. Wolf can climb ladders! Wolf can kill your armored lord! Any units can attack walls.
There is no strong walls option. What is the point of building walls if they don't block enemy units?
Building walls and staircases are like pulling your wisdom tooth by yourself.

If you want to save money, don't buy this game. Buy Stronghold 1 or 2. Stronghold 3 is a epic fail game.… Expand

great game need sum patches only. the only ting i mis is multilayer .love the way you can look in a house and the sounds in dis game make me relax . many troll dis game. i dowt get it its pretty good