Stronghold has always been a historical saga, focusing on medieval armies and famous war leaders. Although the first games featured European maps and figures, Stronghold: Warlords takes us to East Asia for a Campaign mode starring several well-known warriors. For example, you can fight the Hung kingdom with Thuc Phan, starting when he assumed the leadership of the Thuc clan after the death of his father, but other storylines are featuring Japanese daimyo Hideyoshi Toyotomi, the notorious Mongol emperor Genghis Khan, and China's first emperor Qin Shi Huang in the wars of unification. To be completely honest, all these storylines are both fun and interesting from a historical perspective, but we would have liked them to be longer and more varied.

Stronghold: Warlords offers you the possibility to play alone and follow the story, but you can also play it online—in fact, improving its online features was the reason for it to be delayed from January to March. Whatever your choice, it plays almost the same, with the only difference being how smart the opposing army plays... and in our experience, we're not so sure about human players being smarter than the AI.

One thing we must point out is that the game looks like a really nice game from the 2000s and doesn't really make use of modern graphical traits, but we found no bugs in our playtime. That being said, gameplay mechanics feel rather archaic and shallow once you dedicate enough time to it. If you're a casual RTS player looking for some quick matches, then Stronghold: Warlords appears as a great recommendation that will surely keep you hooked for several hours. However, hardcore fans of the genre will note that the core mechanics are not as enjoyable or exciting as they seem, and some options don't even make a difference whatsoever.

Your objective is to build a powerful army that's able to protect your kingdom while it gets bigger and more populated, so you can outnumber your enemies and bring them down in the most painful way. But creating more buildings and soldiers is not enough; they also need food and resources... and respect from their ruler. Higher taxes will make you less popular and your nation less attractive, but increasing your population and giving them a job is only one part of the equation as sooner than later, they will ask for better constructions, higher quality food, and better weapons and armors. That's our problem with Stronghold: Warlords: all these situations should make for a more complex game, but sometimes you find yourself just sacrificing your units and creating replacements without caring about the fine details.

If you don't care about the strategy aspects or find it too hard, then maybe it's time to try the Free Build mode, where you can dedicate all your time to building the most powerful yet beautiful nation without the fear of being vanquished. In this mode, you can carefully design the layout of your city. Will you focus on building an impressive fortified castle or just a peaceful village where farmers and gatherers can live a simple life? The only problem is that there are only 3 available maps, but that should be more than enough for most of you.