Is it still worth buying Stronghold: Definitive Edition?

[PrinzPersia]

Hello.

So, I own Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition, and while I did enjoy playing it, the performance issues bother me a bit—especially when the GPU is pushed to its limit and I get lower FPS in some areas. Unfortunately, my laptop doesn’t have a very powerful graphics card (just a Quadro M1000M with 2GB VRAM instead of something like a Geforce or RTX series).

That’s why I’m considering getting Stronghold: Definitive Edition on Steam. It’s 2D, so I assume it would be more performance-efficient than Age of Empires.

I just wanted to ask if it’s worth it—if the game is not much worse than Age of Empires, and whether there are still enough players active online.

[Onyx]

In my opinion, the Stronghold series emphasizes more of the castle builder/sim side of the house and less on the RTS aspects in comparison to AoE. I've always enjoyed both series, albeit much less so with AoE3 in particular, but they do offer rather different experiences.

Of note, this does not have matchmaking. So if you're champing at the bit for competitive PvP action, you're going to have to search for people. There's probably a discord or two out there or some other forum for finding people. Personally I've always been more interested in the campaign, economic campaigns, scenarios (siege and invasions), and free build instead of PvP.

If money is tight, there is the Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition slated for release this July. That will also have skirmish AI, if that's up your alley.

[Max_Regime]

you must know if u are lookin for multiplayer - this game is broken and it is not enjoyable to play multiplayer here, because all players there exploit infinite tower units bug (they put more soldiers there than possible maximum, you can put even more than 1000 archers in one tower - when enemy come close it looks like machine gun tower with archers), which is present for 23 years, and if u use flying stone, to destroy the bugged tower with hundrets of archers in there - you will be probably removed from server cuz only rule they use is NO FLY STONE AND NO COWS... so multiplayer is dead here... why no fix for this ?? maybe they all like this bug, i cant get answer from devs if they going to fix this- probably not, or maybe they have no idea how to fix this.. idk

campaign mode was cool, other modes to play with AI are also cool, so for camapign and side stories you have plenty of hours to play and it is fun, like 200-300 hours, if u finish this there is plenty of maps from workshop and you can find more extra content there to play. so if u ask me it is 50/50 cuz campaign yes, and i would not count on multiplayer here

[Brother]

growing up playing both games im still more likely to play stronghold if that makes sense, more building variety, dont have to wait for build, just have resources and can build it, can make cool walls and gates troops can actually stand on, make weapons and armour instead of just training, and waiting, and waiting, in SH if you have the peasents, you can instant train

overall i keep going back and have bough all the strongholds twice, and kinda stopped at AOE 3 but really just personal pref on building mechanics and maybe cause i played SH first

[Buntkreuz]

While i kind of enjoyed my time, i also played Crusader HD and when coming back to playing some more of this one, it felt awful.
Super slow paced, balance is totally off (tavern costs 50 wood and the max happiness is 4, wtf), missions are hit or miss, nearly no one likes attack siege missions and theres far too many of those and then they are half baked, QoL is lacking and in total the controls feel off and weird (zoom is too sensible and goes in levels and each zoom level feels bad, you can view your stock with a button, but you cant open the market from most areas and especially not the stockpile button on the bottom left, theres a ton of missing QoL regarding that, like not being able to click an item in your stockpile to go to the market place).

And so on.
Its not bad by any means and for 5€ basically a good pick.
Just saying that Crusader HD feels much better even though it lacks some convenient features and with Crusader DE on the horizon, i dont think its worth it.