Stronghold: Caverns of Sorcery

You guys need to release these games with chapter checkpoints, like many of your contemporaries do. Its so frustrating to fail checks because of how vaguely you decide to word a choice.

Looking for a character driven story? Well despite the beginning where you're introduced to an established friend group and the numerous relationship stats bogging down the stat page, this is not it. Sometimes it even feels like the game forgets the side characters exist! You have no meaningful interactions with them outside of designated spots in the story that stops the plot progression to the point it feels like you have be removed from it entirely just to talk to the characters. They don't interact with the plot elements in any meaningful way. They don't comment on the events in any meaningful way or share insight. How does the story affect them? No idea! Fox will tell you how they like fungi though! How does this get represented in the story itself? It doesn't! You don't get group interactions. While in the story itself you may get one or two lines of dialogue from the characters per point in they story, they don't make me feel any sort of way about them. They just sort of... happen? Like I thought I was going to get a story about a friend group that is shaped and or affected by the events of the story in some way, but there are no characters arcs for the side characters outside of romancing them (or in whatever other ways you can choose to pursue a relationship with them). And because the romance scenes also can't appear within the plot outside of revealing your relationship with the other characters (which doesn't feel like it leaves any impact so what's the point?), you get two or three romances scenes with your chosen RO and that's it. Your relationship does not exist to the plot (did I mention you have to be taken out of the plot to interact with the characters?) There are at least 6 characters that can join you on your journey but you are the one doing everything by the way. The start of the story has the characters working together to help you but like, that's as far as the co-op goes. The story kind of just tells you they fight with you or something, but you don't get to see it. And when it does get mentioned, it feels like a throwaway line as if the author legitimately did forget the other characters are also there. What does the term Sorcerer mean in the context of this story? Read the entire thing and couldn't tell you. There might be a definition hidden somewhere but within the context of the story? Despite you being a Sorcerer seeming to define your relationship with your relative, the concept itself doesn't really get explored. I literally can't say if Sorcerers are purely magical, or are also just regular people who like studying and the subjects they study just so happen to be magical in nature. There is no exploration on what being a Sorcerer means to the other characters and their identity. Zoe is the only other character I can think of that uses magic. I think the group preforms a spell together at the start of the story but after that, Fox and Corbin don't really do anything magical. (Actually I think Zoe is only the only that may express a yearning to succeed but it happens in one of those scenes where a problem gets prompted to you and you resolve it in one conversation, never to be brought up again). I don't even know why Corbin is there and I romanced the guy. He's a hunter that also weaves and has an issues with people encroaching on his idea of freedom, but other than that, I don't even think he's a sorcerer. He talks about leaving the tower some day, but like, why did he choose to live there to being with??? In fact, the guy tries to be the reliable sort, but there are 2-3 instances in the story where it tells you he can't do much. You, on the other hand, can pray and get things done - no magic required! What role DO the gods play in everyday life? Hard to say. MC seems to be the only character that interacts with them. The other characters don't mention them except for maybe Corbin that one time the idea of building an alter pops up (and you can actively choose to not have the alter be dedicated to a god???). You can choose to have the festival at the end of they story be dedicated to them. But you can just as easily have it be about you or the dragon. How much impact DOES the waking dragon have on the story? You can remove it and nothing changes except maybe the very end. In fact, if the story was literally just about you finding caverns in a mountain after a spell misfires and you and your friends decide to explore it for the sake the scientific and/or magical advancement, I feel like the other elements in the story would've had roomed to breathe. This story could have literally just been about you either damaging or strengthening the relationships with the goblins, and balancing the issue between the spiders and the Dryads, and it would have been fine! In fact, the story could have placed the groups conflicting ideas (what little there is) in the forefront. In your first exploration, you can choose to repair the ecosystem or do research. Having similar scenes sprinkled through out and further exploring what's more important to the characters, and actually have the characters care, would have done some good! (If you fail to clean the ecosystem, you kind of get this weird, "well we tried, onward and forward" attitude from the group that didn't really get me invested in their thoughts or opinions - what hint of them there are - in the least). In fact, how your choices are presented to you kind of feels like you're aligning yourself with the a character for the sake of relationships points, and no further conversation into your choices is had. If I'm really being honest, I wanted more from them when it came to the goblins. I wanted them to have an opinion on forming ties and establishing camps. I wanted to see those opinions grow and change! As it stands now, you say jump, they jump. If you want relations with the goblins they're kind of sort of begrudging about it, and aren't very trustful of,them but it's barely there and you can literally ignore they're feelings on the matter with no consequence. You don't even really see them interact with the goblins all that much. Not a single "You were right, I was wrong" kind of moment, Fox comments on one in regards to their gender identity, and that's the closest you get to a character issue tying into the plot (and it's resolved in one conversation with no mentioning of it again, because again, these interactions happen outside of the plot). TDLR: If this story would've actually done more with the characters, your relationship them and with each other as a supposed friend group, the gods, and lacked a dragon, I may have enjoyed reading it more. Otherwise, the first free chapters I read, felt like they promised a completely different experience then what was offered in the paid portion and that may have turned my opinions so sour.

This game is as dull as the original and feels very.. forced for lack of better term. Don’t recommend.

Although I enjoyed the first game, I didn't liked the story of the second one, after a few hours of playing it, I stopped.

Good

love it