Lords of the Realm III Updated Impressions
We take another look at the newest iteration of Sierra's castle-busting strategy series.
The strategy genre has been evolving lately, with more and more games combining elements of traditional real-time strategy and turn-based strategy into one package. Impressions Games, perhaps better known for its city-building games such as Caesar and Pharaoh, is attempting to make the same transformation with its Lords series. Set in the Middle Ages, the Lords of the Realm series allows you to assume the role of a medieval lord fighting for land and honor against neighboring fiefdoms. The previous iteration of Lords of the Realm was a 2D turn-based strategy with some real-time elements. Lords of the Realm III, in contrast, has a full 3D engine and is primarily a real-time game--although the battle command and kingdom management portions of the game remain as two distinct layers. The game also offers a multiplayer option over both LAN setups and the Internet.
Representatives from Sierra and Impressions recently visited GameSpot and demonstrated both the battle and kingdom management aspects of Lords of the Realm III. They also presented the castle editing tool, which will ship with the game. On the single-player side, the game comes with four campaigns covering the history of England, France, Germany, and Ireland. The missions within each campaign can involve more than two factions, and you're allowed to choose to play as any of them. Players who aren't as interested in fighting a long campaign will have a good assortment of simple battle missions from which to choose.
When you enter the battle aspect of the game, your troops are controlled at the company level. This means you will be moving and attacking with entire units of about 20 men, all led by a single knight. Unit types include the standard medieval fare, such as footmen, mounted cavalry, archers, and more. Strategy veterans will find that the pacing of battles in Lords III is relatively slow, allowing for more calculated movements rather than frantic clicking. However, this means that there will probably be fewer opportunities for players to make quick adjustments to compensate for any tactical blunders.
The game's interface allows you to change the formations of your troops to afford them different bonuses. For example, footmen can move into a special shield wall formation that gives them a defensive boost. The knights that lead your companies into battle can also be moved about to give your army different bonuses. If they command their units from the rear, your men get a boost in morale, which will keep them from fleeing or breaking ranks if the battle turns sour. You can also choose to move the knights to the front of the troops, where they serve as highly effective foot soldiers. We watched as a knight, leading a troop of archers, moved in front to intercept a nearly full-strength company of attacking footmen. Alone, he was able to distract the footmen long enough for a cavalry unit to arrive and save the archers from total destruction.
The siege units in the game are extremely diverse and include catapults, ballistae, trebuchets, and siege towers. You'll be engaging in plenty of siege battles in Lords III, so these special machines are crucial to victory. The castle defenders can make use of ballistae and catapults when mounted on the tops of towers. Boiling oil can be poured and archers can fire arrows from castle walls and battlements. Though any troop of infantry can move to a castle wall and automatically erect ladders, the siege towers are a much more efficient way to scale the castle walls. In fact, once you have a siege tower set up, it can funnel entire companies to the top of the castle walls quickly. The animation of each of the siege engines is highly articulated. As a trebuchet cocks and fires, you'll see two men cranking the firing arm into position while another couple of men heft its payload into place. As it fires, the arm comes up and slings its rocks more than a full-screen's width away.
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- GameSpot Score8.4great
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Lords of the Realm III Review
Lords of the Realm III is one of the freshest, most satisfying games produced by Impressions in years, and it's a great real-time strategy game in its own right.
- Mar 26, 2004
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- Sierra Entertainment
- Impressions Games
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- Release: Mar 17, 2004
- ESRB: Teen
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