Worth playing?

[Mousse]

It looks like a fun game but based on the reviewers, its largely negative because its p2w.

[RazingHel]

It's ok if:

You don't mind slow paced games
You understand that those who pay will have an advantage (albeit small) over those who don't
No player is an island, you need to work with others to be successful

I've played for over 2 years now and it's a game you can either play causally or as an enthusiast depending on the amount of time you can invest in it.

[Alun1]

i played for a long time, was on everyday, didn't bother me with the buying cards, i never personally bought any. the only reason i have now stopped is because i got bored.

a couple of things you should know,

the game is very slow to kick off, until you get a few villages that you can micromanage.

there will be people who buy crowns and card packs, it's the same in every game like this.

you can be completely reset and have to start over again if you can't defend atleast 1 village.

when you are reset and start over you do keep your gold, honor, research and faith, everything else goes.

other than what i have mentioned the game does get boring after a while. even the political element, you may want to control something but it will be down to your faction leader and most likely house marshall to decide.

i guess i got bored just being a parish steward.

EDIT: just to let you know i was reset 3 times and kept playing, i doesn't stop a determined person.

[RazingHel]

In game groups/tribes/guilds are known as factions and the 20 member limit only applies to worlds in the 4th age. Factions in worlds in all prior ages have a player cap of 40.

[Kelath]

Its an okay game. The issues I have with it are as follows: 1) Wars depend basically on one thing, faith points, basically both sides "shield" their villages with faith points and the first side to run out of faith points loses the war, as now those villages can be attacked, while your enemy remains protected. 2) Each world tends to eventually fall into the hands of one house, and its basically impossible to change that, but instead of changing the dynamics of the game to encourage massive change across the worlds landscape Firefly Studios just opens a new world, which pulls a lot of players away from the older worlds, which creates a bunch of "dead" worlds or farming worlds where people just farm and live under the ruling house(s) with no change in sight. 3) Firefly Studios created something called "ages" where certain things in the world are reset between "ages" to help foster what I wanted with #2, but basically the factions are just recreated, the only differences is that the parish castles need to be rebuilt and certain things cost more.

[DeathBySnuSnu]

unless you're willing to submit to a dictatorship with bullies ruling everything, who can wipe out all of your work overnight

[Strategy Player]

It is a fun game to play.

I have spent $10 on it since it came out and that was when it was in Beta. That was to let me earn the maximum 14 free cards a week. You spend $5 on crowns two times and you play up to rank 15.

I never bought any card packs, everyone gets cards.
I never bought the premium, does not give you that much of an edge since most of the stuff only works once every 4 hours.

You need to understand before you start how the game works.

It is player versus player, meaning that there will be other players who will kill you, reset in game. Your chance of survival very much depends on you finding a faction or house as soon as possible, ususally in the first 5 days when you are still under new player protection. It is player versus player, so the chance to advance and hold on to a parish, or a county depends more of what the group leader(s) decides then on what any individual player wants.

It is very, very slow, does not take long before a single building in a village or a single research point takes you over 9 hours in real life to complete.

You need to understand that there are players in this game who do spend hundreds of dollars on cards to get an advantage over you. I just want to hug them in real life because they keep the servers open for the rest of us.

You get to start in your little village, build it up and build your castle block by block, tower by tower. A single player can own anywhere from 1 to 40 villages.

From most of my playing time and experience with other players you will quit because you get bored with it. Even when you are maximum rank and have 20 villages you will get bored with it.

[Seiggrain Hart]

No. It's extremely Pay to Win if you want to get anywhere in the game beyond sitting in a single town.
The in game bonuses for those who pay money for crowns and premimum are extremely unbalancing.

[x|n00|b!x]

Its not worth because it is hard to build city if u not pay for it - all time other players are attacking you,

[doensch]

to me its worth playing it. its not only p2w, you can also make some good progress if your online in the game for some hours a day. i just wouldnt recommend playing it, if youre looking for a game to stop by for some minutes a day

[Swasta]

its a good game but some players boost themselves by using real money.

[RazingHel]

There is a definite pay to grow factor but I've played for over 3 years now only investing a total of $15. If you play for free don't expect to be leading the winning house in the glory race but you can team up with other players which I've done to win game 'ages' for which you get rewards. It's more about how good a diplomat/salesman you are than how much money you spend. If you are a compete dbag you can spend all the money in the world but it won't matter because the rest of the players hate you and will crush you.

No player is a castle, Stronghold Kingdoms is a MMO where friendship and reputation matter.

[Kundalini]

Played the game on and off since Alpha. Tried to love it as the MMORTS genre is very close to my heart but find it hard to recommend this game.

1. Extreme pay-to-win cash grab, don't let anyone fool you by saying you get free cards, you need to deposit 2 times atleast to unlock the ability to claim maximun amount of free cards.

2. I wouldnt even consider this a castle builder anymore since to be competetive you don't build castles. (Unless you consider ugly looking Large Tower spam with the minimiun amount of stone walls connecting them a castle.) I remember back in the day when most people tried to build beautiful and well made castles, now its just the same cookie cutter Tower spam.

3. Very unrealistic, especially when cards are used. Instant teleporting traders? check. Scouts that are so fast that they can travel from southern england to scotland in less than 10 minutes? check. Instant building and castle repair? Check.

4. Forget about trying to be competetive unless you spend £1000's on cards. I did a test a while back, saved up thousands of cards by logging in and claiming for over a year and also what I had from deposits. Used most of them in one fresh game and played atleast 8 hours a day for the first week with loads of experience too since I was an Alpha tester and know the game inside out.. Yes I was in the top 10 in the leaderboards for a while, but as soon as my cards run out I was quickly surprassed by those that simply had more money to spend than me. This is a rich peoples game, simple as that. This puts most korean browser MMO's to shame.

There are not many MMORTS games out there, especially since EA shut down Battleforge, but if you are looking for a decent Castle Builder MMO with PvP check out Dawn of Fantasy, its only $2 on steam right now. (It's made by a very small team of people so it has its bugs and drawbacks, but hey its way better value than this and I'm enjoying it so much more since its not pay-to-win. Plus its a fantasy game with Humans, Elves and Orcs to choose from :), Did I mention it has Dragons and Wizards in it?

[76561198118910816]

baby its a good day

[RazingHel]

Are your points are valid ones but are exaggerated, you will need to spend to be a competitive fighter but it's nowhere near the 1k + Euros. Depending on which world you play (older worlds will be cheaper) but to be an effectual fighter all you REALLY need is speed cards, resources and villages can all be contributed by faction members. Sure you can be much moe self sufficient with production cards and can pretty much insta build castles with castle cards but both can be done by faction members. Seldom is a faction composed of ALL fighters, suppliers also exist and in the early game, monkers. It's important to remember that cards are still not a substitute for an active faction, no player is a castle.

To sum up, you will have to pay to match other paying players but it's not necessary. You can have fun as I have just playing the economic side of the game with minimal pvp. Matter of fact I have stacks and stacks of free cards that I've never used. So if you are only interested in the pvp aspect of Stronghold Kingdoms then you are correct in that you will probably at one time or another end up carding. On the flip side of the coin, sim/city builder player types can have plenty of fun and make friends along the way for free.

[oteprocker530]

amazing if your brain has the capacity.

not simple. it's very fun.

join usa 1 northern utah find me Lord Death ill help anyone :)