Stake your claim upon the Holy Land
Stronghold Crusader is a single-player strategy video game that lets you relive the historic Crusades in the Holy Land. Developed by Firefly Studios, this is the sequel to Stronghold and features a new location, a new storyline regarding the expansion of your forces, and two playable factions for more replayability.
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Similar to the Crusader Kings games, Stronghold Crusader has you conquering campaigns and skirmishes to win the war. This game is included in Stronghold Crusader HD, which adds more content and also allows you to play Stronghold: Crusader Extreme—the updated version of Crusader.
How many Stronghold games are there?
Stronghold is a 2001 historic real-time strategy game developed by Firefly Studios, wherein you expand your kingdom through military pursuits. Set in the Middle Ages in England, you have to manage both the military and economic sides of your nation—all the while surviving scenarios such as fires and invasions and conquering other lands. It became highly successful and spawned numerous sequels, as well as HD versions of some of the games.
The first was Stronghold Crusader, which was set in the Middle East during the Crusades and brought in enhanced RTS elements. Here, there are four separate but linear campaigns to go through and lets you choose whether to play as a European king or as an Arabic lord. After this game came the confusingly titled Stronghold 2. It offered 3D graphics and the addition of new gameplay mechanics such as crime and punishment.
The fourth game was Stronghold Legends and adds the new mechanic of controlling both human and mythical armies. The next game released was Stronghold: Crusader Extreme, which was basically Crusader but has extra content. Surprisingly, the series tries the path of a free-to-play MMO-style game with Stronghold Kingdoms. However, it came back to its roots with the next several installments: Stronghold 3, Stronghold Crusader II, and Stronghold: Warlords—although none of them really beat the solid gameplay of the first ones.
What's the difference between Stronghold Crusader and Extreme?
Being one of the more well-received Stronghold games, Stronghold Crusader was given several updates. It’s known as Stronghold Warchest in certain countries and had added new characters and another Crusader Trail to tackle. However, these were eventually added when Stronghold: Crusader Extreme was released. It’s primarily the expanded version of Crusader, as it adds new AI opponents, maps, buildings, special Tactical Powers, and increases the unit cap of 1,000 troops to a staggering 10,000.
Other than these additions, however, there’s actually not much of a change in Extreme when you compare it to Crusader. You’re still offered the same four historical campaigns and 100 or so unique skirmish missions. You can still play either on the side of the Arabs or the Europeans. It also still offers a multiplayer mode. While interface issues—such as the lack of more tool tips for certain UI elements and the strange layout of certain tabs—persist here, this game is still one of the better titles in this series.
Lead the Crusades
All in all, Stronghold Crusader helped its franchise grow thanks to the additions and improvements over the first game. There are some minor issues but they don’t really bother you in your gameplay experience and the other versions of this game do well to add more content. If you’re interested in real-time historical strategy games, this is a good entry to try out in this series.
