Stronghold Kingdoms

 PC
User Score
4.7

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 98 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 31 out of 98
  2. Mixed: 17 out of 98
  3. Negative: 50 out of 98

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  1. Back2c
    Nov 10, 2013
    3
    This game has some really interesting stuff in it. Building your own village is really fun. But as was said many a time, it is NOT a sim game. And it is really not done for casual players.

    I've played 4 months on that game. After 2 months, when my village just began to be big enough, a player took it from me. So, I had to just begin again, from the (almost) very beginning. After growing    This game has some really interesting stuff in it. Building your own village is really fun. But as was said many a time, it is NOT a sim game. And it is really not done for casual players.

    I've played 4 months on that game. After 2 months, when my village just began to be big enough, a player took it from me. So, I had to just begin again, from the (almost) very beginning. After growing again, my village was burnt to the ground by another player, fur apparently no other reason than fun. After being asked, he just didn't like the fact that I began to be a bit more too powerful in my county.

    So, I'm quite sure the ony way to enjoy that game is to start playing from the very beginning of each world. It's to destroy other players so they don't destroy you first. Or, maybe, invest a lot of money to catch up with other players. Except if you don't care starting afresh every other month...

    And that's a shame, because the management system is a bit complex and quite interesting !

    That being said, it is really nice for people who like PvP. But then again, new players are disadvantaged your armies are quite slow while your foes can be at your doors in less than 10 minutes (even less if they are close to you). I find it a bit too quick, even more compared to many other MMO.    … Expand
  2. strongholdplay
    Nov 20, 2013
    0
    I've been playing Stronghold for a year now. Its enjoyable for the people you meet and play with and I would have given it a much higher score except for the company and their lack of interest in their paying players. There are a few very frustrating aspects of the game they should address but they insult you if you send in a suggestion. For example, simply allowing players to recallI've been playing Stronghold for a year now. Its enjoyable for the people you meet and play with and I would have given it a much higher score except for the company and their lack of interest in their paying players. There are a few very frustrating aspects of the game they should address but they insult you if you send in a suggestion. For example, simply allowing players to recall their traders is very much needed, but they won't take any feedback from their players. It sometimes takes several clicks to get traders out and you can very easily send them on a day's trip by accident and then you can't recall them. They can't be bothered fixing that.

    They have banned accounts of people for no reason. They almost banned mine, never told me why but as soon as I threatened to do chargebacks on each and every credit card charge they reversed it and still never told me why. It's pretty cheap to play compared to Evony but I can't give a shady company like this a good rating.    … Expand
  3. mogwairn
    Mar 23, 2013
    4
    Someone trying to do something interesting with the MMORTS genre. Very buggy and full of micro-transaction begging, but at least they are trying. Considering it looks like there was a team of people behind the game; very poor effort, single person dev teams can crank out far higher quality games.
  4. Superior
    Jul 18, 2013
    4
    Isn't special compared to other games, besides there are a lot of games in this genre and somehow it lacks content and the interface is less play-friendly and less good-looking.
  5. garzog
    Nov 8, 2013
    0
    DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME ON THIS GAME.

    I played stronghold crusader a long time ago and enjoyed the fast-paced rts aspect firefly implemented. I figured kingdoms would be similar, and in a general sense, it was pretty close. I just wrapped up a week of playing. I found myself waiting upwards of 2 hours for a single building to be created, painfully slow research and resource gathering,    DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME ON THIS GAME.

    I played stronghold crusader a long time ago and enjoyed the fast-paced rts aspect firefly implemented. I figured kingdoms would be similar, and in a general sense, it was pretty close.

    I just wrapped up a week of playing. I found myself waiting upwards of 2 hours for a single building to be created, painfully slow research and resource gathering, and limited access to any decent content. So with limited resources, and nothing else to do but just simply wait, I found myself bored with the game after about 3 days.

    After my small, introductory "noob protection" expired, some veteran player absolutely annihilated me, and lost everything I spent a week doing.

    Complete waste of time, find something better.    … Expand
  6. Blacknsilver
    Mar 20, 2014
    2
    Your enjoyment of this game will depend on several factors:

    -Are you okay with inputting 1-2 commands and waiting half an hour or more before they're complete? -Are you okay with being a tiny cog in a massive machine with virtually no impact on the game? -Are you okay with paying customers getting a fairly massive advantage over the rest? (the game is marketed as F2P) -Are you okay    Your enjoyment of this game will depend on several factors:

    -Are you okay with inputting 1-2 commands and waiting half an hour or more before they're complete?
    -Are you okay with being a tiny cog in a massive machine with virtually no impact on the game?
    -Are you okay with paying customers getting a fairly massive advantage over the rest? (the game is marketed as F2P)
    -Are you okay with the lack of a decent tutorial and a very hostile community?

    My answers were no and I've voted accordingly.    … Expand
  7. Ravaldy
    Oct 1, 2014
    1
    This is the worst model for a strategy game as it allows for the following: 1) Pay to win 2) Unfair odds(The last server I played there were 1800 players against 80). 3) Politics (who you know) decides who wins, not the war component of the game

    You have 3 choices in this game: You can either join the team that's winning by a land slide, join the team that is getting pummeled or join    This is the worst model for a strategy game as it allows for the following: 1) Pay to win 2) Unfair odds(The last server I played there were 1800 players against 80). 3) Politics (who you know) decides who wins, not the war component of the game

    You have 3 choices in this game: You can either join the team that's winning by a land slide, join the team that is getting pummeled or join the team that has a peace treaty and is only allowed to farm (no attacking).

    It took me 2 servers and lots of time invested to realize this game is fixed. The players who rule all servers are the same players on all server. They all know each other and they make sure to exclude everybody they don't like (which is whoever challenges them).    … Expand
  8. Cloven
    Apr 18, 2015
    3
    Pay2win to the extreme

    Some reviewers are like "sure, you can play this F2P just fine" well, sure, if you don't mind your opponents village's producing resources 500%-700%-1000%-1200% faster, their armies moving 500% faster, their scouts moving 600% faster and grabbing 300% more loot, their castles being built INSTANTLY while yours takes a whole week, their research completing INSTANTLY    Pay2win to the extreme

    Some reviewers are like "sure, you can play this F2P just fine" well, sure, if you don't mind your opponents village's producing resources 500%-700%-1000%-1200% faster, their armies moving 500% faster, their scouts moving 600% faster and grabbing 300% more loot, their castles being built INSTANTLY while yours takes a whole week, their research completing INSTANTLY while yours takes hours, etc... so sure you can play F2P just fine, just don't be surprised when a heavy-carder razes all 10 of your villages down in a few hours.

    As if this uncontrolled card usage wasn't bad enough the game is rife with multi-accounters that cheat to control more parishes, gain ranks faster, have more armies, etc..

    The developers, Firefly Studios, don't care about any of this: after 4-5 years they've done very little to improve the game despite the $$$ they rake in from card-addicts.

    The core game-play is actually pretty decent but the awful GREED of the developers with their pay2win model is why I rated this a 3 instead of a 7.    … Expand
  9. correllian
    May 11, 2014
    0
    Unless you start within the first couple of days on a new server you won't be competitive. It takes 2 months to complete a castle that is defensible and if everyone else has a month start you are doomed. Even if you do start at the same time many other players spend hundreds and even thousands on the game. And essentially it is a pay to win game.

    If you are just interested in building a    Unless you start within the first couple of days on a new server you won't be competitive. It takes 2 months to complete a castle that is defensible and if everyone else has a month start you are doomed. Even if you do start at the same time many other players spend hundreds and even thousands on the game. And essentially it is a pay to win game.

    If you are just interested in building a little empire and developing it or farming as players call it, forget it. You will eventually become the target of some predatory psychopath that will ruin your game.

    It is a game that moves mind numbingly slowly but you will have to sit at the computer constantly waiting to "Interdict" another players attack to save your villages or gather random resources that appear on the map.

    Then you have to endure the complaints of people on the forums that moan that their servers are farm worlds after those same players have wiped out everyone else who have then moved to other worlds or other games.

    I gave it a good try for about 2 months hoping to get the most out of Stronghold Kingdoms. But it will be 2 months in my life I will never get back.    … Expand
  10. KnightOwl
    Dec 20, 2014
    0
    HUGE WASTE OF TIME BEWARE!!!
    Somehow worse than the game they came out with over a decade ago. It's just pathetic overall, I would rate a negative rating if possible. Obviously a pay-to-win game with nothing at all separating you from the players who hunt around for new players to destroy. I wasted my time trying to start a game on here and got stuck on the tutorial because it doesn't    HUGE WASTE OF TIME BEWARE!!!
    Somehow worse than the game they came out with over a decade ago. It's just pathetic overall, I would rate a negative rating if possible. Obviously a pay-to-win game with nothing at all separating you from the players who hunt around for new players to destroy. I wasted my time trying to start a game on here and got stuck on the tutorial because it doesn't even work anymore. They probably don't update anything on this game unless it is something for the paying players to spend their money on.    … Expand
  11. supercagan
    May 5, 2015
    0
    Avoid this game like the plaque!!!
    Firefly only wants to make a quick money out of this game. They allow cheating and do not ban players who are using 3rd party bots and programs to auto play the game.
    The game itself is based on a money making scheme. You can make a whole castle that takes 1 month to build in 2 minutes using $$$. Even if you somehow lose your castle just spend some    Avoid this game like the plaque!!!
    Firefly only wants to make a quick money out of this game. They allow cheating and do not ban players who are using 3rd party bots and programs to auto play the game.

    The game itself is based on a money making scheme. You can make a whole castle that takes 1 month to build in 2 minutes using $$$. Even if you somehow lose your castle just spend some money and you got a brand new one in 2 minutes.

    Most of the players have 2-3 accounts (russians have 4-5) that they play using VPN servers (or you can pay and buy tokens) that lets you cheat even faster.

    Save your money and time and go play another game.    … Expand
  12. Ergenus
    Mar 10, 2015
    3
    It is a very realistic game to be honest. First of all, richest guy ( in real life, not in the game ) has the greatest potential to be the king. And second, it is true that your village can be destroyed in a few minutes which will cost you maybe weeks of work ( if you pay nothing for the game ). The third, this game depends on online relations and it shouldn't surprise you if someone backIt is a very realistic game to be honest. First of all, richest guy ( in real life, not in the game ) has the greatest potential to be the king. And second, it is true that your village can be destroyed in a few minutes which will cost you maybe weeks of work ( if you pay nothing for the game ). The third, this game depends on online relations and it shouldn't surprise you if someone back stabs you for power or position. So overall, being powerful, rich and having a good title have the same effects as it has in real life. There are a** lickers, backstabbers, ego maniacs, loners etc. every kind of people.

    When you begin the game, it looks like a cool, slow paced game, but as you continue to develop, game requires more time and more and more. Oh, if a big war starts and if you have an important role in your faction, you better spend your whole day at the game. Talking with people , convincing or deceiving others, making decisions, wars, destruction, lost villages, lost weeks, lost real bucks, paying more money to survive, spending more time to not get raped ... .... ........

    I would say the the worst part of this game is huge mega ultra impact of paying bucks to be strong or survive. Literally, there were people who spend 100-200$ per day during war times and big wars can last week/s.

    The other bad part is, it is a MMO RTS ( what the heck? )! You don't have turns, they don't have turns, you have to play non-stop if it is possible for you.

    This game is only fun at the beginning until you realise these things... So high score givers probably haven't played enough yet to realise these facts or they are still busy at feeding their egos.    … Expand
  13. myhouse020
    Jul 14, 2015
    4
    The game is ok but not for small children, there are lots of pornographic links sent to random players and throughout the mail threads

    I always check once a week to see what my children are doing on the internet I saw a live sex site and asked what they were doing watching that, they said they copied and pasted a link someone sent them on stronghold kingdoms, we try to protect our kids    The game is ok but not for small children, there are lots of pornographic links sent to random players and throughout the mail threads

    I always check once a week to see what my children are doing on the internet I saw a live sex site and asked what they were doing watching that, they said they copied and pasted a link someone sent them on stronghold kingdoms, we try to protect our kids the best we can but with these games and thousands of perverts on them what can you do!!!    … Expand
  14. GH5TSpawn
    Sep 6, 2015
    0
    The game itself is decent. It has 8 bit graphics, and no cinematics past the intro. The game is a never ending command and conquer style pvp. The other negative reviews are correct, Firefly studios is only about making a buck off of you. The game is free to play, but you need to purchase cards and tokens in order to have a chance. The game play is unregulated, and firefly has no actualThe game itself is decent. It has 8 bit graphics, and no cinematics past the intro. The game is a never ending command and conquer style pvp. The other negative reviews are correct, Firefly studios is only about making a buck off of you. The game is free to play, but you need to purchase cards and tokens in order to have a chance. The game play is unregulated, and firefly has no actual control over the gameplay outside of writing the code. New players beware, if you don't start in age 1 on any map you will never last long enough to enjoy the game. The card packs are a joke and a waste of time and money. Parents the game has no filters on language or in game behaviors. Firefly just ignores your complaints and tells you that if you don't like it then don't play. So, I say don't play. If you decide to play, hope you enjoy having to be at your pc all the time in order to progress, and progress takes forever to get anywhere. This is not a game for children or anyone who actually games. It is an insult to mmorpg games everywhere.… Expand
  15. Tarbev
    Feb 17, 2017
    0
    New, paying players on established servers (the most recent servers are extremely well established) WILL lose everything. The game can not be played practically without at least buying premium tokens.

    I have played every Stronghold game since the original 16 years ago, and I have a huge amount of nostalgia for the economic campaigns of the first game. The basic premise for Stronghold    New, paying players on established servers (the most recent servers are extremely well established) WILL lose everything. The game can not be played practically without at least buying premium tokens.

    I have played every Stronghold game since the original 16 years ago, and I have a huge amount of nostalgia for the economic campaigns of the first game. The basic premise for Stronghold Kingdoms got me very excited to play a real-time game so similar (at least visually) to that first game.

    But here is why I feel violated by this game;

    Little to no information about server types when starting - just the maps seem to be different. I went with Global Conflict. Resources generate so slowly I bought a couple of card packs. Queuing buildings and research makes the premium tokens pretty essential for anybody who sleeps and works normal hours, or is not sat on a computer all day.So I bought a 30 day token too.

    3 to 4 weeks of having a village, building a nicely designed castle with thick walls, filling the walls with as many archers as I can recruit and beginning to look a bit slim for new building space in the village, one of the many huge players around me took my village. Poof. Gone.

    There was no warning that a player can take my village. I never provoked anybody. I just simmed and built my castle /army in case anybody came to pilfer my resources. One time I logged in to find that my mini metropolis now belonged to a player with 9 other villages and I had to start over.

    Problem - everytime you start over and develop your village so far, a person with an impossible-to-defend-against army with take it. Because it saves them weeks of building it up themselves, and is far far far cheaper to have somebody else build it, and take it from the little player. Players with more than a couple of villages would be insane to found a new village when they can just take some new player's village after a couple of weeks of letting them expand it.

    Customer service were useless when I asked them to take my premium token to use on what I'm told is a slightly more sim friendly Heretic server. I have to buy another. (Which I am obviously not going to do). Nor have I continued playing. I contacted customer service a couple of times to move my digital products and then close the account, but they seemed quite terse in their responses and told me nothing is possible.

    I played a similar game in 2007, being Travian. I do not play the game these days, but they had a system in place missing from Stronghold Kingdoms - a player with only one village cannot have that village conquered. Without something similar in place, the paying customer who captured my village has permanently eliminated another paying customer. I won't be back.    … Expand
  16. sowy
    May 26, 2013
    2
    This game has some good potential mostly due to natural politics that occur with real people. There is an emphasis on spending money in order to succeed despite this being a free-to-play. My family played this game together and hoped enjoyed our short time on the game. Hidden in the rules are restrictions on people playing from the same shared IP which only apply to free accounts and asThis game has some good potential mostly due to natural politics that occur with real people. There is an emphasis on spending money in order to succeed despite this being a free-to-play. My family played this game together and hoped enjoyed our short time on the game. Hidden in the rules are restrictions on people playing from the same shared IP which only apply to free accounts and as such everybody in our household paid for premium tokens. It was shortly after we invested over 100$ into the game that my son found his account "blocked" and when we tried to email the admins about it they gave a carbon copy reply back which only linked to the rules (which we did not break)

    Upon speaking with some friends who still play, we discovered that they use shoddy coding to detect multiple players logging on from the same computer. This is unfortunate since we share computers as do most households. Don't try it and certainly don't waste money on it. They will take you for everything you will give them and then dispose of you like refuse at the end.    … Expand
  17. Raiken85
    Aug 14, 2013
    0
    If you're a loner and have tons of time on your hands, no family or friends and a lot of money to spend with no responsibilities in life then this is the game for you. Long, drawn out and expensive to play once you get hooked. I've known many a player who just sits home playing day in and day out dumping hundreds of dollars a week on this game from their welfare or unemployment checks.If you're a loner and have tons of time on your hands, no family or friends and a lot of money to spend with no responsibilities in life then this is the game for you. Long, drawn out and expensive to play once you get hooked. I've known many a player who just sits home playing day in and day out dumping hundreds of dollars a week on this game from their welfare or unemployment checks. It's a pay to play game, no ifs, ands or buts about it. And every time a new card update comes out they make cards that were more popular before almost impossible to get and you get more of the cards than ever before. It's a hook line and sinker game and they know exactly what they are doing to make the max profit. They even launch multiple worlds within weeks of each other because they make the most at the beginning months of each new world.And whatever you do do not have your family members create their own accounts on the same computer or IP address. Stronghold terms and rules contradict each other. You can register multiple accounts and even play them but you cannot help each other. The game won't allow it but, if you're running tokens on all accounts then that rule doesn't apply. Piss someone off in a war or fight and they report you and Firefly bans everything and you lose all the hard work and money you put in. They don't investigate, do not contact you, they just ban you without question and there's nothing you can do about it. I know people cheat but it's unfair of them to do this without so much as an investigation.… Expand
  18. Type4101
    Sep 16, 2013
    0
    Few games exemplify the negative elements of microtransactions more than Stronghold Kingdoms. This is a game that you can actually pay to play itself while you are away. Pay-to-win in its purest form, this game has no redeeming value. You either pay (in money) or you pay the price (in lost time/defeat by pay-to-win customers). Don't waste your time on this rip-off mess.
  19. Cosian
    Apr 15, 2014
    2
    This is the ultimate in Pay to Win game and people that say otherwise are just members of the currently top alliance. And that is what everyone does .... just switch to the strongest alliance when they start rolling your territory. I played for 9 months, controlled 3 parishes, and spent about $1400 so I do know how it works :) Consider that the game lets you buy as many cards as youThis is the ultimate in Pay to Win game and people that say otherwise are just members of the currently top alliance. And that is what everyone does .... just switch to the strongest alliance when they start rolling your territory. I played for 9 months, controlled 3 parishes, and spent about $1400 so I do know how it works :) Consider that the game lets you buy as many cards as you want, there is no limit on playing cards, and cards don't just give a bit of a bonus ... they give 5x and 10x bonuses ... they allow a player to virtually insta build a complete castle that a non carder would take literally weeks to build. It is fun early on and the play mechanics are better and more interesting than many FTP browser games. Also, the social and metagame here is a far cry better than most games in this genre. So get social and get plugged in early or die. And be prepared to spend boatloads of cash to compete.… Expand
  20. LordStrongpant
    Apr 5, 2012
    4
    TL;DR summary: Mediocre MMO exploit-resources-destroy-your-enemies strategy game with a significant social component and an unashamed pay-to-win business model. You need to get into clans and cooperate with other players if you want to climb the rankings, and make no mistake: if you don't spend money in this game you are just meat to the grinder for the paying players.

    The longer    TL;DR summary: Mediocre MMO exploit-resources-destroy-your-enemies strategy game with a significant social component and an unashamed pay-to-win business model. You need to get into clans and cooperate with other players if you want to climb the rankings, and make no mistake: if you don't spend money in this game you are just meat to the grinder for the paying players.

    The longer version:

    I've never played the Stronghold series so I can't compare it to that. But if you played an old browser-based game called "Tribal Wars", this is the same basic gameplay with some improvements and a .NET-based client.

    You are a feudal lord who rules villages and castles with peasants and resource production facilities. You can use the resources to build armies for making attacks against other player's villages and castles, defending against attacks on your villages and castles, or re-invest the resources to get more resource production facilities. Also there's a leveling up system that opens a technology tree to get better armies and production.

    Your villages and castles sit in a global map with many thousands of other players. There are bonuses for cooperating with other players in your immediate geographical vicinity. And as you gain power and level up you can try to gain control over geographical districts, which gives bonuses, but you need to compete with other players and try to gain the support of the lower ranking players in your district to do this.

    On top of this is another social layer of a faction and house system - factions are formed by players and factions join houses to attempt to gain global power. Games play out over months, and there are a number of game worlds that you can play in simultaneously, with new game worlds being opened up from time to time.

    So winning in this game requires producing lots of resources in your villages, leveling up, building armies, going out to plunder and conquer the villages of other players, and not having your villages conquered by others. On the surface your success in this game seems to depend on social and economic strategy - getting on the winning side of faction wars in your neighborhood and balancing the use of resources to attack, defend, and re-invest in capital to increase the rate of resource production.

    However there are additional ways of gaining resources and honor, and the extent to which you can exploit these ways depends on how much time you spend logged on. But when you are logged on, it's actually pretty boring. There's really not much to do but watch your armies to travel around on the global map or watch the timers count down for new buildings or resources to complete in your village.
    So there's a bonus for being online a lot, but being online a lot makes the game a boring (it's worse than grinding in an action RPG, because there's not even any action!)

    And this is where the one of the developers way of making money from this game - sell "premium account tokens". These are a limited time bonus - effectively a subscription - that automates your account so you can leave orders to attack, resource gather, and build while you are logged out. Basically you get a bonus that a non-paying player could only get by being logged in 24 hours a day.

    But there's more. You can buy "card packs" that give you cards you can play for bonuses like one-off resource gains and temporary resource production bonuses. So the more you spend, the stronger you are. In the long term there is no limit to the bonus you can gain this way. So if you just keep paying for more card packs you can gain close to a guarantee of victory.

    Add to all that the game hasn't been implemented very well. The client crashes or glitches from time to time, the UI is not all that well designed, and the server infrastructure sometimes gets bogged down. These issues aren't frequent, and to their credit the developers make frequent updates and usually manage to get rid of major bugs pretty quickly, but still there's a background annoyance factor from all this.

    Another annoyance - the documentation consists of a poor quality wiki. But at least there's an in-game chat system so you can always ask random strangers for advice.

    So to sum that all up once more: the core gameplay is a decent strategy game, but the gameplay model combined with the business model means the game is overwhelmingly pay-to-win. This game is ruled by paying players, and if you don't pay you will eventually be plundered and conquered by paying players who will be much stronger than you by the endgame.    … Expand
  21. David75
    Aug 21, 2012
    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.
  22. Vistance
    Mar 11, 2013
    2
    Tried the game out because I saw it on Steam and I liked the original Stronghold game. I expected a full fledged game, but this feels more like a game that would be on Facebook. The game runs windowed (cannot fullscreen) which says a lot about their design choices. Help links take you to their wikipedia pages. But all that aside, the gameplay is tedious and boring. It's full of "Wait 10Tried the game out because I saw it on Steam and I liked the original Stronghold game. I expected a full fledged game, but this feels more like a game that would be on Facebook. The game runs windowed (cannot fullscreen) which says a lot about their design choices. Help links take you to their wikipedia pages. But all that aside, the gameplay is tedious and boring. It's full of "Wait 10 minutes for your scout to go to this stash then wait 10 minutes for him to return" and "Wait 9 minutes for this building to be built". If you don't pay for the premium part, you aren't even allowed to queue up items, so you can only have one thing going at a time. My first day in I had some random thing attack me despite it telling me I was safe for a few days. Ha! The game doesn't hold your hand the group ransacked my village with no effort. As I tried to repair my castle the game constantly kept throwing exceptions (very long ones too) and then required me to re-join the world. After the 4th exception trying to rebuild the castle walls, I just deleted the game. Don't waste your time, while Stronghold was a cool game and had some fun castle building this is just that with a bunch of social Facebook-esque garbage on top of it with arbitrary time limits. The worst lazy kind of F2P games that are made if you ask me.… Expand
  23. Dagot
    Oct 26, 2012
    0
    The game is only worth playing if you are prepared to pay, otherwise its a very slow game. Its also not ideal if you or members of your family play on the same server. If you share a computer, you might find each family member's account being blocked.
  24. killertunes
    Feb 7, 2014
    2
    Moderators cheat and stonewall players when they complain. My friends and I played Stronghold Kingdoms for about a year. We just won the glory round and reside in a top 5 faction on our world. A moderator banned my two friends 2 nights ago for no reason and no explanation given. They banned them as we were getting ready to push hard on another world against our enemies. Not 5 minutes afterModerators cheat and stonewall players when they complain. My friends and I played Stronghold Kingdoms for about a year. We just won the glory round and reside in a top 5 faction on our world. A moderator banned my two friends 2 nights ago for no reason and no explanation given. They banned them as we were getting ready to push hard on another world against our enemies. Not 5 minutes after the bans our enemies started excommunicating the banned players. There is no way that our enemies would know that without a moderator interfering. Because of those bans we lost at least a month's worth of work and wasted god knows how much real money. The company is stonewalling us and we are being forced to deal with the same moderator that we think is cheating which just closes our tickets and insults our intelligence.

    You cannot win when the company employee's are cheating.    … Expand
  25. beqerel
    Sep 2, 2012
    1
    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. agree completely plus admins cooperates with money payers
  26. jacksparr0
    May 2, 2012
    1
    You will be playing this game for hours. It's a very time intensive game and so if you want a game that will last you a long time, this is great. Most of the time that goes into the game is waiting time. For everything you build, everything you research, every place you go (in the most limited sense possible) you must wait. There'll be a counter which counts down to when something isYou will be playing this game for hours. It's a very time intensive game and so if you want a game that will last you a long time, this is great. Most of the time that goes into the game is waiting time. For everything you build, everything you research, every place you go (in the most limited sense possible) you must wait. There'll be a counter which counts down to when something is complete. The more things you do the longer the counter lasts. The game to me felt like it wasn't genuinely fun. I felt like I was having false fun, like I wanted to stop but I couldn't because there was more I had to do. The game is quite endless. There are always more things to do. The game feels like it was made as more of a business rather than to be a fun experience. It draws you in, addicts you, and forces you to use cards to modify your gameplay. Cards can do a lot, from increasing your resource output to... well, speeding the game up. The game was made sufficiently slow enough to cause you to become impatient and in turn speed up the game up. The only way to do this is through cards, and most cards must be bought. I must admit, this is a great business idea. The only way to get anywhere on this game is to be on it at all times. If you're offline for a single day you fall behind everyone else. The point of the game (I think) is to become powerful enough to rule the country, but, someone who spent a couple days more than you probably has a hundred more troops than you, completed a whole lot more research, etc. The fact that your account is DELETED after only a few days of inactivity also sucks. I mean, what the hell, what sort of MMO is this? 1/10.… Expand
  27. Lionhearted
    May 20, 2012
    0
    Let's just call this what it is. a slightly more polished version of Travian a browser game (which has better gameplay sadly).

    It's a cow clicker for people too bored at work, stay at home moms andpre teens learning about the net. this really isn't a game however except in the barest of forms, it's a competition. and frankly a time leech. Where enjoyment is supposed to be here you find    Let's just call this what it is. a slightly more polished version of Travian a browser game (which has better gameplay sadly).

    It's a cow clicker for people too bored at work, stay at home moms andpre teens learning about the net.
    this really isn't a game however except in the barest of forms, it's a competition. and frankly a time leech.
    Where enjoyment is supposed to be here you find mindless work. It's intangible, like a record of history without bounds or identity, or antyhing relatable except icons and arrows.
    This is a lengthy way to say it's addiction based, Pavlog dog base crappola that is seeping into our netspace like a ninja wearing a outfit with the title "game" as a nametag. But it is a lie, there is no cake.    … Expand
  28. TheGrindeR
    Jul 5, 2012
    2
    Looks like than the Stronghold and the Stronghold: Crusader, this is also have 2D graphics, but it worse than the older episodes. This is a Stronghold MMO, but i think its not a good game. If u want playing a good game, play with the Stronghold: Crusader with your friends, that much better.
  29. Nightfang1994
    Nov 23, 2016
    0
    this game is the **** pay to win game of all time, it made war commander ( a **** mmo rts from facebook) look amazing

    Its a castle builder mmo...except very very quickly, the buildings and research take hours, then days....THEN AT MAX CONSTRUCTION SPEED (max research on construction speed) ONE TOWER TAKES 9 HOURS TO BUILD. THERE IS NO LEVEL LIMIT as to whom you can attack so higher    this game is the **** pay to win game of all time, it made war commander ( a **** mmo rts from facebook) look amazing

    Its a castle builder mmo...except very very quickly, the buildings and research take hours, then days....THEN AT MAX CONSTRUCTION SPEED (max research on construction speed) ONE TOWER TAKES 9 HOURS TO BUILD. THERE IS NO LEVEL LIMIT as to whom you can attack so higher level players WIPE OUT new players all the time. There is no system protecting anything...so months of work will suddenly disappear

    War commander was garbage and it had

    1) a way to attack incoming armies
    2)decent mechanics to command army vs army battles or army vs base battles
    3) protected your base after being destroyed so you could just click repain

    STRONGHOLD KINGDOMS HAS NONE OF THIS. NOT to mention the pay to win aspect is ridiculous, you get a **** random pack of 5 random crappy cards for like more than a dollar. YOU CANT MOVE BUILDINGS AROUND WITHOUT PAYING MONEY AND YOU CANT MOVE CASTLE DEFENSE BUILDINGS AT ALL.

    firefly studios has proved they do not give a single **** about their fans with this product, DO NOT BUY, i made the mistake of giving them 10 dollars and i am done with this ****    … Expand
  30. Jessrond
    Apr 13, 2018
    4
    This game is pretty clunky and doesn't really have anything compelling to keep me coming back. it looks like it's a bargarian bin game from 1997 and I've had no multiplayer interaction in my first 30 minutes of playing. The entire tutorial was about five minutes. I thought it would get interesting when an attack came but it was just three units that all died from arrows automatically shotThis game is pretty clunky and doesn't really have anything compelling to keep me coming back. it looks like it's a bargarian bin game from 1997 and I've had no multiplayer interaction in my first 30 minutes of playing. The entire tutorial was about five minutes. I thought it would get interesting when an attack came but it was just three units that all died from arrows automatically shot by my castle. The concept seems interesting and it's nice to have real cities and a real-world map in this medieval setting, but I just don't really get the appeal so far. I am not ready to give up on it entirely, but I can't really see myself pressing on with this unless I find a solid group of people that actively play, which is the main element that attracts me to MMOs.… Expand
  31. Shugor
    Apr 1, 2019
    0
    Played for a bit on both PC and mobile.
    Do NOT play this. Not only is it a cash grab pay to win, support does not care about you. I reported multiple bugs and major optimization issues to them with photographic evidence. After telling me to restart my client when i encounter said problems (basically needing to restart it every 5 minutes), they proceeded to delete my tickets along with all    Played for a bit on both PC and mobile.
    Do NOT play this. Not only is it a cash grab pay to win, support does not care about you. I reported multiple bugs and major optimization issues to them with photographic evidence. After telling me to restart my client when i encounter said problems (basically needing to restart it every 5 minutes), they proceeded to delete my tickets along with all the evidence and arguments I wrote. They do not care about making this game better, they are satisfied with a buggy, laggy unoptimized fuming pile as long as people are dumb enough to spend tons of money on microtransactions.
    Pay to win mediocre game. Would be great if not for all the bugs, lack of optimization and intuitive UI and tons of microtransactions necessary to actually get things done (with maxed castle construction speed research decreasing build time by 60%, it still takes over 15 whole real world DAYS to build decent castle defences that won’t get smashed in under 1 minute... unless you buy with $$$ 5x speed ups and instant build cards)    … Expand
  32. Jegusy
    May 16, 2020
    0
    Game is full of people using bots and buying cheap card points from external parties. Administrators are doing nothing to fix all those things that make this game a crappy one...they even ban cheaters only for 1 day.
  33. LordHume
    May 28, 2020
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. in 7 years that I play stronghold it had never happened to me now I have been banned for the second time in a month for no reason, I regularly spend the money to buy firefly coins and when I write to the support they always answer me vaguely, I think the support has some mental problems ... I will not play anymore ... they have lost a customer ...don't wast your money here… Expand
  34. MrNik0o
    Feb 20, 2021
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. 1 Pay to win
    2 Administration doesnt give an && of our rexperience or reports
    3 There are no proper investigations or clear administration within the issues that are presented
    4 After wasting thousand of hours and paying to support the project, i was permanently banned , with just an explanation that i didnt follow .and should read the game rules

    5 People who would abuse would be reported with videos , images , and detailed data , nothing was happening to them

    6 myself i got chased down , like a rabit and banned permanently from SHK because , i just was an good loyal player to the enviironment,

    worst game, i ever countered to play, with the worst administrative staff,

    i really regret writing this ,but i really wanted for all you to know
    that i cant feel any endoursments towards this game ,

    i wish som1 would buy it out from Firefly and do something with it

    7 Admins / game supervisors would ban , specifically people on their wishes without proper explanation , its just a circus,    … Expand

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
75

Generally favorable reviews - based on 4 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 4
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 4
  3. Negative: 0 out of 4
  1. Hooked Gamers
    Feb 5, 2013
    77
    Stronghold Kingdoms does deserve the honour of being the world’s first castle building MMO and it does -despite its presentation- do it well. The game’s depth and scope go beyond that of the regular Stronghold games and is guaranteed to keep your mind firmly lodged into medieval times for a long, long time.
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  2. GameWatcher
    Jul 18, 2012
    85
    There are a whole lot of things I want to try over the next few months playing Stronghold Kingdoms, and it's gotten its teeth into me such that I'm ploughing a little time into it at least three times a day and not feeling cheated for any of the money I've spent. For a free-to-play title at the very least, that has to be mission accomplished.
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  3. Multiplayer.it
    Jun 29, 2012
    68
    Stronghold Kingdoms is a deep medieval management game that offers a huge tech tree and an interesting online formula. Oddly the engine is old and the game starts very slowly, especially for those who are not going to open their wallet. But it deserves a try if you got patience and prefer management over real time strategy.
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