Stronghold

A lot of great RTS games have already been released, namely Red Alert series, Warcraft series, Starcraft, and much much more. The main reason people play them is because it's plainly fun, well-known, VERY well-known, has great sounds, and are eye candies. I myself have played and liked the mentioned games. However, one thing is missing from those series: realism. No, realism not graphics-wise, but gameplay-wise. But if you want to play a game that not's only realistic, but also excels in the field of sounds, graphics, lifespan and especially gameplay then Stronghold is definitely the game for you.

The graphics are very-well detailed for a 2D RTS game. Idle peasants have a variety and working peasants can be easily distinguished from each other. The military units look great. All of the sprites, trees, plants etc. were animated nicely and smoothly. The only thing that needs a bit more work for the graphics department is the background. At the first glance, the iron ores look like gored colorish meat. The crenelated walls could use some attention too. They look messed up when built horizontally/vertically instead of diagonally.

In the Military game, you can choose Campaign, Invasion or Siege. The Campaign mode is the story mode. You play a series of battles with a story, where after every battle you gain new stuff like new units or buildings. This game isn't titled "Stronghold" for nothing. The Campaign mode mainly focuses on defense. The story isn't complex, just right for an RTS game.

Invasion mode is the best part of Stronghold, in my opinion. In this mode, you must build a base of course, but it's not that simple. Stronghold is a mixture of RTS and simulation. Which means there's more to than just build, train, kill. The cycle goes like this: the first thing you should do is to set up a keep, where your king will hide during enemy siege. Then place a granary, where all your food would be stored. You can't just build structures, you'll need people to use and run them properly, so you must build hovels so that peasants will start moving in to your kingdom. Don't worry, you have more than enough materials to start a camp. Peasants will automatically fill in the empty posts of buildings so you don't have to point them on what to do.