1.) The most important problem (in my opinion) its about castle design . The need of dozens of towers to really defend yourself in case of PvP . also all that space that you must defend or you can get pillaged very easy. It's like "one directon" road, everybody must sing the same song again and again, can't actually build a nice castle like we used to in past Stronghold series.
2.) Another problem it's about archers shooting through walls, *?
3.) Village graphics . Stronghold (1) had an epic graphic content, it gives a real medieval ambience, its purely cool. SHK it's flat. A very annoying green , no terrain leveled (no hills, no mountains) , trees are just a jpeg attached to the background .
4.) Can't trade gold . A lot of players could really join in war for their faction / house / friends by sponsoring it. I have over 1.500.000 gold on europe 1 (I play mostly as a farmer) and was quite hard to help them just by trading resources.
5.) Parishes has nothing to do with any Stronghold. It's like someone drops buildings inside a wall and thats it. I've seen browser strategy games which have more interesting building system.
6.) No open field fights. You can see how your friend its attacked and enemy troops are just moving around your village on the map but can't do nothing. Really? This could make SHK unique among strategy medieval games.
I'm quite a fan of FireFly Studios and Stronghold series but it's quite ugly when I see a video, a well made promotion video of some new content (epic castles btw
) . 50% it's false. You can't build a nice castle, you must put towers to defend the keep from catapults.
