1. Highlanderonly1

   9

   Stronghold Kingdoms is an over all great free-to-play Strategy MMO. The game is a hybrid of a traditional tower defense games and a modern RTS. While the graphics might be a bit behind the times, the gameplay is engaging and full of the right amount of challenge. This title does a great job of appealing to both the casual and hardcore gamer market by mixing the elements of economics, politics, and war. I would highly suggest giving this game a try. It's free so what do you have to lose?… Expand

   • Helpful? 2 of 2 users said Yes.
2. Raspiz

   8

   Not a whole lot of informative reviews on here so here's my take:
   
   Stronghold Kingdoms is a free to play strategy MMO. The game is played on a map of the United Kingdom with each country divided into provinces, counties, and parishes. The player starts with a single tiny village and harvests resources, grows food, constructs buildings and keeps a satisfied populace in order to grow. Each village also contains a keep which must be fortified and defended with troops, walls, and other obstacles such as moats or spiked pits. To advance the player must earn "honour" by accomplishing various deeds such as defeating enemy player and AI fortifications, collecting resources on the map, pleasing the peasants, and holding banquets. Honour is essentially the experience point system in the game, and with each new level comes the ability to research new technology to improve defenses, industry, farming, or education.
   
   Being an MMO, the world map is full of other players. Players send troops in to enemy villages to try and raze them, or strike alliances and work out trade partnerships. Player factions exist to let players join forces under a single banner and smite their enemies. Factions can join larger houses for an even bigger single force. Political ramifications take hold as players who may be located near each other in a parish may be part of opposing factions or houses, which can lead to interesting results. Each parish, county, province, and country has leaders elected from within their governing body. These leaders can build and reinforce each governing body to protect from invaders as well as give bonuses that affect all players within each area. Just like real life politics, leaders can be swept away with every election if they are doing a poor job. I personally approach the game from more of an economic standpoint, and have worked out alliances with other players to assist in defense, and have not put as much research and resources into defense. So there are plenty of options for how a player wants to advance in the game.
   
   This game follows the "pay to win" model to generate money for the game company, Firefly. I'm usually not a fan of this type of revenue model, but after playing for a few days I didn't mind plunking down a few bucks to get a little boost in the game and to help keep the game going financially. Pricing is reasonably priced if a person plans on spending a lot of time in the game, and are discounted when purchased in larger quantities. The player purchases "Firefly Crowns" with real money which can then be traded for premium tokens or packs of cards. The premium tokens last for a week or month at a time depending on which one is purchased, and give players various extra abilities not available to free players such as moving buildings around, auto trading when logged out, and being able to queue building and research. The cards come in packs of 5 and can be bought from several specialized "sets" such as industry, defense, etc., or can come randomly from the entire set of cards. Each card is one time use and give bonuses such as increased productivity within the village, strengthened walls for the keep, and speeding up research. Some cards are instant rewards such as a large amount of a resource added to the player's stockpile, or time based such as increased wood harvesting for 12 hours. The cards add an extra layer of strategy and must be played wisely to get the most out of them. Although this is a form of play to win, I find the cards fun to use and make things interesting. Free players also receive free cards periodically to try to entice them to buy.
   
   One complaint many will have is the game is slow. Like many free games, there are restrictions on how fast players can advance which can get frustrating when it takes several hours to build a building or do research. Various technologies can be researched to decrease the time to do certain actions, but this is definitely a game that has to be played over time.
   
   Overall I've enjoyed this game quite a bit and as there aren't many games out there that offer a 4X (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) game experience in the company of other players, I found it to be a unique experience seeing battles between players as they fight for control of regions. As the player progresses the ability to purchase additional villages opens up which adds even more to the game as the player expands their territory, meets new players, and faces new challenges on the different village map types which have different resources available to each. Fans of the Stronghold series, or 4X games like Civilization, Age of Empires, or other strategy/manager games will find quite a bit to enjoy here for free, and more if they choose to pay. I would also say the quality is fairly high and deep for a free to play game. There is easily months of enjoyment to be had here.… Expand

   • Helpful? 2 of 2 users said Yes.
3. refdxf

   5

   This game is a good deal of fun when a server just starts. After that it gradually becomes stagnant and something akin to farmville with "diplomacy" if you can call dealing with (at a loss for words to describe) these types of personalities through chat. Me and my friends have had fun, but then again we're all stopping once Diablo 3 comes out and we simply wanted a game for the interim. Information on strategy is sparse and you will find yourself often regretting technology decisions you have made. Battle AI is god awful. I have sent my troops at the right side wall and they wrap around to the front. A small gap in a wall rendered my troop ai impotent. They all just stood there waiting for the troops in front to slowly trickle through the gap, while the enemy archers picked off the troops as they trickled through.… Collapse

   • Helpful? 2 of 2 users said Yes.
4. David75

   1

   AS many of the reviewer here said. Dont get mistaken, this is a pure PvP game .. nowhere safe to hide. Because of many trolls in the game, it's very likely you'll loose everything (don't bother spending money in the game). The game isn't balanced enough between new and older players.… Expand

   • Helpful? 2 of 4 users said Yes.

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