User Rating: 7.3 | Lords of the Realm III PC
I suppose that given all the obstacles this game faced just to get relesed, it's wonder it's as good as it is, but as a fan of Lords of the Realm II, I can't help feeling a little disappointed. Don't get me wrong... LOTR III is a fun game, but it doesn't have as much strategic depth as LOTR II and even with the tutorials it's a darn difficult game to learn. The first map classified as "easy" took me 2.5 hours. That's probably a little longer than average, but it's no cakewalk. The gameplay is the saving grace of this game. It is quite underwhelming graphically (and looks downright ugly during a lot of the battle sequences). Much like many other strategy games, your goal is to lay a royal smackdown on the neighboring lands. Total domination is the name of the game. You accomplish your goal by assigning vassals to manage your parcels of land to either raise an army, make food, or make money. The finer points of all this are left up to your vassals, supposedly freeing you up to make all the 'important' decisions, but I couldn't help feeling like there was not enough to do. The previous Lords of the Realm games were turn-based, and this game has a snail-like pace to it like its turn-based forbears. What ends up happening is, you're either attacking or waiting for your Knights to raise armies. There are a few other managerial tasks to do (such as clicking a button to upgrade a castle) but that's the meat of the game. The battle screen is the other half of the game. Its layout is similar to any other real time strategy game, with terrain, a variety of units, and if it's a siege, a castle. There isn't a whole lot of depth in the combat screen. Units don't have a wide variety of formations, and like the Shogun games, you can only select 1 'company' or squadron of units, not individuals. That would be fine, but the units don't behave in a very realistic fashion. When ordered to scale a castle wall, companies of units all bunch up to get on the same 2 ladders. Almost always... no wait, ALWAYS, I find myself allowing the computer to control the battle, because controlling the battles aren't that much fun and don't seem to affect the outcome. It doesn't help that when the battles begin, and you switch to the traditional RTS-style view, your units are VERY far away from the enemy units. It literally takes 1-1.5 minutes REAL-TIME just for the two armies to meet each other on the battle-field. For all the complaining, there is an addictive quality to this game. The strategy lies in managing which armies go where, not the makeup of those armies. You don't have any direct control over what type of units can be raised by your knights, but you can choose the knights with the units that best augment the ones you have already. The AI is also quite competent, making for epic conflicts for control of land. If you're not careful, while you're attacking one county, another house could be laying the smack down on your farms and defenseless churches. It's essential to get a perfect balance of attacking forces and homeland security. The addictive gameplay is what makes this game a good game instead of a kinda crappy game. The graphics are really a low point. The level of geometric detail is low on all of the models of the units. This is expected in a game that has hundreds of units onscreen, but you won't believe for a second that the crazy-looking brown thing you're looking at is a horse. Nothing moves realistically, or looks that good... everything is blocky. And it's not as if the blockiness is hidden by a certain style (like in Warcraft III). The models just look like my 7 year old brother made them. The terrain and castles on the other hand look great. The strategic view of the game is also in 3d, and looks good, but not impressive at all. The sound and music in the game sound good, with a variety of synth music and sound effects. The music is pretty standard fare, and sounds like any other game, but its gothic/ churchy flair fits the game nicely. There isn't much to say for sound in games... it's either bad, excellent, or middle of the road. This game is middle of the road. Nothing stands out to me. Well if you're still reading, here's my conclusion: LOTR III is a decent game, and for the value-price of 19.99 retail, it might be worth picking up if you're a fan of medieval combat, or the previous Lords of the Realm games. If you're not too into long involved strategy games, you might want to avoid the urge to buy. There are definitely better games out there.
