Stronghold 4 returns to its medieval foundations on which to build some new ideas. For now, there is potential, but it seems that the developers still have a lot of work to do.
Stronghold is one of the few series that hasn’t seen a good game in over 20 years. It is still kept alive by various remasters and the hope that Firefly Studios will have some kind of flash of inspiration. In the case of the upcoming Stronghold 4, inspiration took them back to the very beginning. In fact, even before it – because Stronghold 4 is set before the events of the unit. More importantly, Stronghold returns to medieval England for the first time in 15 years.
A demo version of the game is currently available on Steam, within which you can play two missions, one each from the economic and military campaigns. The demo version reveals the basis of the gameplay itself, which is interspersed with some new ideas, but essentially very close to the game from 2001. So, you build your fort and try to defend it from opponents, while at the same time you take care of feeding your population and the coffers from which you finance the infrastructure and the army.
Stronghold 4 seeks to deepen its gameplay by introducing some additional resources (eg turnips, milk, etc.), new units (eg archers) and more types of different objects. All of this is arranged behind a redesigned progression system. As your fort expands and its population increases, so does your rank. With each new rank, new units and facilities are unlocked. This is nothing new in the genre of strategy games, but Stronghold has a well-integrated and elaborate progression system.
One of the novelties of Stronghold 4 is the so-called events that randomly appear every day. Events can be positive or negative. For example, if a fight breaks out in a pub, it causes your regiment’s trust to drop, and when a bitch gives birth, it raises your popularity for some reason. All these events are presented in the form of cards and you have nothing to do with them. That is, you can just watch the cards come and go, and adjust to their influence. It is disappointing that there is no interaction, that you as the ruler of the fort make decisions according to some events. Maybe there will be later, but in the demo version these events are quite disappointing.
In the gameplay, you are a warlord and an economist at the same time, and everything should be familiar to you if you have ever played the previous Strongholds. Battles are mostly about fending off the opponent’s attacks that come in waves. There is no more complex management of units, but you can determine their formation and behavior, it is important to use the terrain to your advantage, etc.
As far as the construction part is concerned, I have not noticed any major progress. There is no option to move objects (as in the Anno games), and I have to admit that it is a very strange decision not to issue building commands while the game is paused. Even more strange is that the assistant does not inform us when more wood is needed to build buildings. It would be unforgivable to leave it out!
Although Stronghold 4 switched to a new engine (Unreal 5), it seems that the skeleton of the original game is underneath everything. Even 25 years later, units have known pathfinding issues, so combat still feels clumsy. Overall with the visual side of the game I am not impressed. All the objects you place on the map seem to float on its surface, they are simply not merged with the environment in a way that is visible in other strategy games (eg Age of Empires 4).
Otherwise, Stronghold 4 should have a cinematic presentation of the story, with cutscenes that we have not seen in this series so far. Judging by what was shown in the demo version, it’s better that they didn’t even bother because these cutscenes are not even the level of indie production.
Maybe I’m being too harsh because Stronghold 4 will launch in early access and the development of the game is not finished, but there are several indications in the demo that the development of the game could take at least another year. Because when you have problems with the most basic selection of units in a strategic game, you are far from done. Despite this, Stronghold 4 has the potential to remind fans of the best days of the series. At times the demo infected me and got me interested in the game, and I can’t say the same for a lot of strategy games.
Apparently, Stronghold 4 should go into early access sometime in 2026, but for now we don’t have a specific release date.