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Kind of a mixed bag

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: November 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I am still undecided about this game. I've only put about 10-15 hours into it so far, but had put hundreds (possibly thousands) of hours into Warlords 2, 3, and 3 Dark Lords Rising.

For the most part, what it offers is impressive and visually pleasing. Once you get into it more, you realize that it actually has fewer features. Kind of like how Heroes of Might and Magic IV lost a ton of features, only not quite so bad. Good graphics, unfortunately, are not what I consider important in my turn-based strategy games however.

Anyway, I am not quite addicted to the game. I will probably finish the campaign, just because I am convinced that there will be something along the way that will be cool. I haven't seen it yet, however, after breezing through the first 3 parts of the campaign.

Some of the things that particularly bug me is there is no vectoring. You have to physically manage every single unit when you send them to places. You can set production waypoints, but that is a huge mess. Chances are, once they get to a city, there will already be 8 troops in it, so they will just stand outside unless you happen to see them. Also, the movement points really bother me... if I have a stack of 7 units, and they pass by another unit which is out of movement... everybody loses their movement for that turn. It doesn't matter if my stack of 7 had 20 mv points left, or if I ungroup the one unit that was out of movement. Very frustrating.

Also, heroes are seriously crippled in this game. In the other warlord games, you built up heroes that would be one-man armies, and stockpile every magical item and hoard every quest available. Here, magical items are rather weak, quests and ruins are so time-consuming to be almost pointless, and heroes are expendable.

There are some interesting ideas here, and I think this could have been a great game if they expanded on the previous games rather than slashing out so many old features. It almost feels like the game was unfinished, and that it needed another two or three months to be developed.

Great Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: November 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I have played every Warlords.This latest game is the best of the turn-based releases.It seems to have a little of all the previous Warlords games in it,from the first one to the Battlecry games.I loaded the game and right away down-loaded the patch before i played the game and have had no problems at all.The game is smooth and stable.Combat is all new from previous Warlords games.It is much more hands on,although you can default all combat to the computer if you want to speed it up or don't want to spend the time playing it out.It is much harder to capture cities.The units also seemed to be more balanced with no single unit really dominating in combat.If you like the Warlords series you won't be disappointed with this game.I have been playing the remade Illuria scenario(original Warlords scenario)for about 30 hours now and I am not half way through yet.

Not as bad as people say, but not great

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game isn't as bad as some of the other reviews say (especially once you get the patch), but I would agree that it's not great. The main problem is that they removed some of the nicest features from previous versions of the game:

1. No more "King of the Hill" feature. To win, you have to capture every other enemy capital. That gets pretty boring once you've established an invincible supply chain. At least you don't have to conquer every city; you just have to capture every enemy capital.

2. No more unit vectoring! Removing this was a big mistake. The new "production waypoints" system, as people have said, is a step backwards and can be a MAJOR hassle to tinker with once you've built a large empire.

3. I agree that magic items have become kind of wimpy now (though I don't agree with whoever said that heroes have become expendable--you won't feel that way when you see what a very high level hero can do). Exploring ruins usually isn't a good gamble unless you have a very strong stack. Otherwise, you'll lose units in the battle, and the reward is rarely worth it.

4. The AI is still very predictable. Basically, the computer will always choose the fastest route to its target, meaning that if you can take control of the obvious transit routes, the AI will have a hard time positioning its troops to attack you. So I don't agree with the reviewer who said that strong flying troops negate the effect of terrain. In practice, it doesn't work that way, because the AI (stupidly) always tries to use roads if it can. You almost never have to protect your flank.

On the plus side:

1. Magic, though still too weak, has been seriously upgraded. There was virtually no reason to fool around with magic in previous versions of the game; at least now the spells are stronger and the magic system is more complex.

2. The graphics are a lot better. But no one has ever played the Warlords series for the graphics.

3. Combat is more balanced. Plan on losing more units than in the past. You also have to think more carefully about how to put a stack together. Hint: having an archon and a unicorn in the same stack can be VERY useful, because they bless and heal your troops (respectively).

4. The game is stable and loads surprisingly quickly.

Not worth the price

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: May 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

What a waste. I really liked the previous Warlords products and played them all. I was expecting some great things from this version. Especially when I found that it would not work properly because it required DX9. Wow! DX9! It must have some spectacular effects. So I upgraded my graphics card (since my old one didn't support DX9) and finally installed the game. Ho hum. Graphics were dull in most parts. Nothing really exciting about them. Nothing to warrent getting a new graphics card for, that's for sure.

Game play is simplistic. Not much thought or strategy involved. Run around the map and destroy the enemy. Got my Heroes way up there in points. Not too hard to do.

Tried the multiplayer stuff. Sad. Here's a great Friday night: gather your friends into your computer room and have them bring their copies of WL4. Install it on all your systems then sit around and WAIT for each person to play their turn! Can you believe that? Sit there and watch the little time bar go across your screen waiting for "player 1" to finish his turn. Wow. Underwhelming, to say the least.

I sent email to UbiSoft asking if there was something about multiplayer I was missing in the woefully un-helpful doc. Never got a reply. Would like to get a refund though.

Warlords the Magnificent

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: March 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Excellent game play. It seems that every aspect has been considered in the creation. Lots of fun!

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