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It's really worse than ONE STAR !

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: March 22, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If I could have give it negative stars I would have. Expecting an upgrade to Lords of the Realm II, what I/we got was a totally different game. IT's an RTS POS. Gone is all the fun of turn based micromanaging and playstyle. All that is left is what the Siege Pak of LOTR II gave us, battle battle battle, boring. There's lots better RTS games out there, heck you can get EMIRES DAWN of the MODERN WORLD for less than $20 on ebay now and it's 1000x better than this game. No demo, and I surely can see why, nobody would have bought it, except a few clicky babies maybe. I'm glad I had a seven day return policy, I only needed ONE though! This isn't even worth bargain bin $5 to me. I have too many GREAT RTS games than to play this. Heck MTW (Medieval Total War) is better. It's $20 or less also on ebay and probably here at Amazon.com also. This one's a dud. It's so much of a dud they won't let you say anything bad about it over at the official website forums. If you think I'm kidding go try. ;)

Not as bad as people make it sound.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 16
Date: April 02, 2004
Author: Amazon User

One can not argue that this game is not a departure from Lords2. The food system, army recruitment, combat interface, and political systems all have received an overhaul, and there are also additional levels of complexity as well. The initial result might lead to the notion that the game is overly simplified, but the combinations of these systems makes for a new game play experience that is much more in depth than Lords2.

All of the economic element has been replaced by a system of vassals which you assign to units of land in your province called "parcels." Different types of vassals provide different yield from that parcel - knights recruit troops, bergers allow you to hire mercenaries and special units, and bring in coin, serfs provide food for your armies, and clerics make churches. The vassals themselves all come with advantages (and disadvantages sometimes) that separate them from other vassals of a similar type, and your conduct in game directly determines which vassals you have access to. The vassals also are unique, in that if you acquire one vassal, you may be depriving your opponent of that same one.

There are three values that your actions affect: christianity, chivalry, and honor. These can be raised or lowered by whom you attack, where your battles are fought, various decisions made outside of battle, and how many church parcels you have, among other things. The three values give penalties and bonuses in both combat and diplomatic relationships with the enemy, and play a large role in determining which vassals you have available to you, which in turn affects which type of military units you will have available to you and what kind of bonuses you can get out of your non-knight vassals. The result of this is that the way in which you conduct your military affairs has a large affect on your game play experience to a much larger extent than in Lords2.

The political system, while not vast enough to really warrant the name "system" in comparison with combat, for example, is more flexible than Lords2, and works well with the three "attributes."

There are some elements of the game that I can not fully describe in detail, as they are often more complex than they first appear, but there are more unit types, more seige engines, custom build castles, and medieval:total war ish battles in scope. The economics are simple in appearance, but the strategies that derive from them are quite numerous, and there is a bit of a learning curve before you can feel comfortable with the vassal system. The overland rate of movement of armies is pretty adequate, and directly affected by your country infrastruction as well as food supply, and the battles are set up so you can take part when you feel a need, or leave it to the AI when you are fighting on multiple fronts and focus on the important fights.

All in all, I think that the experience comes off as much more realistic in a refreshing sort of way. It by no means is as frantic as these modern quasi-strategy games like warcraft 3, and even if you're getting soundly trounced, makes for a reasonably long experience, so you don't really feel like you're in danger of things getting out of your control as much. Depending on what pace you like things to happen, there is also an option to choose "slow" mode, but on the normal mode, as a big fan of turn based games over RTS, I never found myself being pressed for time too much.

A few things detract enough to prevent a 5 star rating, but perhaps they will change:

You can't set up a game on x map with x number of computers. You have to play games out of the campaign, which essentially let you do the same thing, but it'd be nice to have some more custom game options.

Army movements sometimes are interrupted uncontrollably. You try and combine two armies that are pretty close by, and one of them is engaged by an enemy army from farther away, and they aren't allowed to combine first. You can not bring an army to attack a seiging force, or help the defending army, and if an enemy army makes for the castle, and you click to send an army into the castle to aid defenders, even if they're closer they some times will not go in the castle, or they may engage the enemy instead of going into the castle. It DOES prevent you from endlessly running away from the same enemy army and staying at a stalemate indefinitely, but it also can be a bit of a pain.

There's no easy way to select a specific army inside a castle. You have to double click all your armies one at a time in the troop selection screen sometimes, until you find the right one.

A couple other minor issues, but for the most part, this game is excellent, and seems to be criticized more for it's difference from Lords2 than on it's actual merit as a strategy game. At 19.99, it's definitely worth a try.

This is just the demo right? Right?!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: March 31, 2004
Author: Amazon User

It's a trick, get an axe! I just bought it. Save yourself the heart-ache. Sierra is obviously having some problems, and this is not pretty. Just say, "No." Don't make me say I told you so. Buy StarCraft by the same company. Buy Lords of the Realm I, II, or the Siege Pack. Try HomeWorld. They didn't finish this game and released it anyway. It is so bad, you'll just about cry. Hint: If it was 1987, I'd give it a 4. And, I'm not just writing for fans of first person shooters. Oh, those people will climb the walls. RTS people won't like this either.

Major Letdown!!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: July 23, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Wow! Was I suprised when I played this game. Seira should have stuck with the original format, as in the first Lords of the Realm.
They really automated to much. I like more control. The graphics are very nice though. That is the only plus side.

Skip it

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: May 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

After a LONG wait and much excitment, Lords of the Realm III did NOT live up to the hype. It has none of the personality that II did, and is a shabby game over all. It certainly doesn't compare to Medieval Total War. Skip it completely, save your money, and buy a copy of Medieval instead. MUCH better game.

1 Twisted piece of crap

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 10
Date: March 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

ok first reason this sux is vassals those mental servents mess you up 2cd The terrible graphics 3rd is *FRAME BY FRAME MOVEMENT* i mean it i even have 546 mb of ram and you control units in companies not singely and every time a guy dies you get weaker abd weaker then when like 10 die(if you even get that many to control)your whole army flees there are no huge clashes if you want this then just get lords 2 or 1 they are much better also i threw this in my trash 3 hourse after i got it

Wrote a long review but it got deleted!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: March 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

So here's my star rating to at least affect that.

Pissed my revew was deleted!

Major Disappointment

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

It's not worth the $20.

First, the game requires a high end PC system so if you don't have the video hardware don't even bother. On my system I have an ATI Rage128 Pro with 32 MB of memory. In order to get the game even to run I had to upgrade my video driver and spend another 20 minutes messing with the Direct3D compressed text settings to even get the game to start. And once I did eventually get it to start the graphics were still screwed up.

I agree with most of the other reviews written here that they've managed to strip out the best parts of Lords II. It seems as though Sierra spent a lot of time on the boring details and made the game just overall more tedious than fun.

This game is a HUGE disappointment...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 22, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The 2d graphic elements and design to the game are GREAT- just beautiful. But the game is horrible! And yeah, it plays like a console game- really DUMBED down!

Here's the problems I see:

No sandbox mode- thats right folks, you need to UNLOCK maps to play them! ARG! You can't assign the AI's difficulty, and or even how many there are on a map!!!!!!!!!!! All preset scenarios- like I'm some stupid 13 year old who can't decide how he wants play all by himself.

Some odd behavior among the AI such as armies appearing instantly at home when they "retreat" from a battle in foreign lands. I had ALL of my enemy's army magically appear instatly at a castle I was JUST defeating- talk about stupid feature. retreating needs to be fixed. Once when I retreated ALL my armies magically dispersed to their home fiefdoms at home....

Game balance is lacking a certain edge to it that would make things more fun and graspable- esoteric I know, but LOTR2 had that, so did every other impression game, in fact.

Speed adjustments ruin animations- game plays sort of fast in normal mode- castles get built REALLY quick. All you do is pay money and about 1 minute later, castle all done!

You can't reinforce battles as they are going on!?!? What the? I had a poorly defended castle then rushed reinforcements... they arrived... and stood there doing nothing while the enemy army burned it to the ground!

Hiring mercenaries is not explained very well- as in when do they show up? randomely? depends on your town? what?

The manual is garbage.

interface is trash. hot spots are too small and not intuitive.

pilaging the enemy lands doesn't last but a few seconds and POOF up springs another enemy fief fort complete with troops. Annoying. Not an AI cheat as you can do this yourself too- once you assign the lord, poof you get an army or instant food for your army. Stupid.

there's no list of who your current assigned people are (like KoH already has ONSCREEN!)- only a list of *unassigned* people constantly lined up to go- who cares about them!

The interface as far as getting information and getting to do the things you want to do is really opage and involves a lot of clicking to search for the one piece of info you want.

But, as I've said elsewhere the graphic art to this game is superb- I mean the menues and faces and such. Really beautifully integrated... too bad that's not enough.

And little things ruin it too, here's another: You appear on the tactical map in castle fights in always the same position, and RARELY is this position facing the gatehouse- which is how a castle would have been DESIGNED when it was built to be approached. Catles are naked on the field and in EVERY case i've encountered you can totally SURROUND it(!!) and approach it from any angle you want! Almost always (even the largest most powerful castle) will be faced from the BACK or SIDE, so your gatehouse is worthless, and all the AI troops are lined up along that front wall while you "sneak" a MASSIVE army up behind them.... just sad....

Also, while playing last night I came upon a way to take over AI castles when they're the largest, strongest castle possible... it was almost too easy: once you knock down a wall, the AI units rush out one group at a time.... my archers waited patiently and picked them off. I had one group of chevaliers to the flank, and the stupid AI (rmember NOT ADJUSTABLE FOR DIFFICULTY) always rushed headlong into my main mass while my knights charged from the flank. Then we knock down a section of wall closer to another group... pick them off, rinse and repeat. -yawn- And I figured this out on the FIRST day??? Didn't anyone beta test this game??

I can't beleive the AI didn't gather everyone and at least rush me all at once the walls came down or my own men came within a certain closer range, if it's going to come outside of the walls at all!

The game *may* be fun during multiplayer- but I'm not a huge fan of that in strategy games where I want to play for a few hours.

I'm very sad for this day.

Please Read the Reviews

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: November 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

OK!!! Here we go i loved lotr2 great game and like everyone else has stated, this is nothing like lotr2. This triology should never have existed. They should have stopped at 2. I really am not going to get into the game and its details very much because it has been talked about over and over again by others. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME!!! That is all i have to say. I paid $8 on amazon for this and I would have rather thrown that $8 in the fire.

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