2001’s Stronghold has held a delightful little home in my brain ever since I first played the demo off of some magazine cover disk. It was wickedly addictive, utterly gorgeous, and had a wonderful British humour that helped set it apart from other historical strategy games of the era. I eventually bought the full game and fell completely in love with it; I then rekindled that love with the Definitive Edition remaster we got back in 2023.

Stronghold Crusader landed only a year after the original game, and somehow it completely passed me by. In fact, *all* of Stronghold’s many sequels passed me by. I was aware of them and had intentions to get to them, but I just never did. So for me, playing Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition has been an experience with over 20 years of slowly boiling enthusiasm behind it.

After a couple of weeks of binging it, I’m not as hot on it as I hoped I’d be.

Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition is an absolutely top-notch real-time strategy game on its own terms. It plays quite well, looks beautiful, and this remaster even sports a host of new features with more promised to come. Where Stronghold saw you chasing a trio of silly animal-themed lords out of Britain in a fictional vengeance quest, Crusader shifts focus to the actual First and Third Crusades.

It’s a fascinating part of history to explore, which to this day, remains a bit underexposed in popular media. Unfortunately, the shift robs it of both the compelling campaign structure and lighthearted charm of its predecessor.

It does play well, though… mostly, anyway. The core loop of building up your castle’s economy and defences is as satisfying and addictive as in its prior. Combat strategies are much deeper, too, with the addition of recruitable mercenary units such as stealthy wall-climbing assassins and chaos-sewing fire throwers.

None of it means all that much in any single-player mission where you’re forced onto the offensive, though, as it’s just too damn easy to cheese the enemy by building a chain of walls and towers lined with archers and artillery right up to the edge of their base. In fact, with just about every campaign mission and scenario, once you manage to establish a solid foothold, your victory becomes pretty much inevitable as the enemy’s patterns of play become so rapidly predictable.

On the economic front, the desert environments of the holy land mean you’re only able to place farm buildings on what green oasis space each map scarcely features. It’s a change I dig a lot, as it tends to force you and your opponents to use more of the field and squabble over areas away from each other’s main keep. Fire and disease can also spread rapidly and devastatingly through your castle, which further discourages building absurdly dense fortresses. Again, though, these factors don’t matter hugely against the AI bots once you realise just how easily manipulated they are.

There’s a brilliant map creation toolset that allows you to build whole scenarios and share them via Steam Workshop. There’s an expansive Free Build mode too for those who wish to do just that: build freely. You pick your map, plonk down your keep, and just construct your own little fiefdom to your heart’s content, free of bothersome enemy intrusions. It’s supremely pleasant and is something I wish more RTS games gave specific allowance for.

There’s a heck of a lot of good stuff to be found here, especially given its budget price point. The work put into remastering the visuals and audio for modern day is utterly top-notch. The ability to speed up and slow down gameplay on the fly, paired with the sheer breadth of available play variations, ensures that there’s something here for any and all kinds of strategy gamers.