Review: Stronghold Crusader Extreme strategy game

Crusader Extreme is an update to the now-fairly-old Stronghold Crusader.

The original was a pretty good war strategy game involving, as the name suggests, laying siege to forts and castles with a backdrop of the Middle Ages.

Sadly, there isn't much that's new in this so-called Extreme edition, except that the new Extreme missions are exactly that: extremely difficult. It's a cross between the pure military strategy of Age of Empires and the civilisation-building of Settlers – you have to do both, building a sustainable economy and a working army, in order to get anywhere.

You get the choice of playing the original game and playing the new one when you start. The original is still entertaining but it looks dated now. Gameplay can get hectic because enemies appear with such speed after the start of a mission. There's a decent learning curve in the tutorial campaign, but some of the other missions are very hard to get started on before your armies are mown down by marauders.

The new version adds very little, other than making the missions much harder. We took several goes at the first one to get by without being hopelessly thrashed very early on, and it didn't get much better from there.

Graphics are the same as they were before – it looks fine, particularly at high resolutions, but it's nothing special. Sound is the same – the music is dull and the silly vocal responses your troops give to commands quickly get irritating.

If you're a Stronghold fanatic and you've been waiting all this time for the next instalment, dig in. Otherwise, look elsewhere for your strategy hit.

Vista compatible: Yes