Rating: 
Summary: Hopeful with concerns.
Review: I usually buy about two video games a year for my PC. I have to say Lords of the Realm II is still my favorite (I bought it in 1997). I only had two problems: one, it was too easy because the computer opponents did not fight very hard; and two, the graphics and storyline were not that interesting. I hope Lords III deals with these issues instead of revamping the entire game, or creating junk like Lords of Magic.
Rating: 
Summary: This game will rock
Review: For all those who do not yet know, Lords of the Realm III is set to come out at the beginning of Fall, 2003. My only recommendation to you: save your money and buy it on the first day it comes out!!!
The last of a long list of successful Sierra products should not disappoint Lords II fans and promises to introduce novices to a whole different style of PC gaming.In most RTS games, you just defend yourself until you outproduce your opponent's war machine, which produces a very redundant style of play, that even amazing graphics or innovative scenarios cannot overcome.
However, in Lords of the Realm III, a total different dimension is introduced: you play in a field with 200 other AIs (knights, clergy, independant cities, etc.) and the point is to become the most influent, not the unrealistic "world domination" objective. 200 different players on the same map, wow! Can you even imagine an online multi player game? In Lords III, instead of fighting against everyone else, you start out as someone's vassal and by completing his orders (conquer other territories, supply food and labor, and so on), you are yourself granted territory, armies, etc. This system allows you to be part of a greater plan and develop yourself in the shadow of a mentor, which is much closer to the truth of the Middle Ages!
Once you are influent enough, you can have your own vassals and direct them towards your enemy. I thought this was a great novelty that will make this new version of Lords incredibly interesting to play! Another point is the enhanced AI for the merchants! You may be asking yourslef, "why the hell would a merchant be granted an AI?", well if you and other players buy too much from one merchant, he will gain enough power to establish himslef as one of the players, like the city of Venice for example! A merchant that gets rich is greedy and will seek to conquer territory and expand his influence. For this reason, merchants muct be used with great care and only when they are absolutely needed.
Furthermore, it is possible to bribe the merchant into not selling a particular type of good to one of your enemies, in order to weaken his position, but one must still beware of the consequences of enrichning the merchant... Obviously, this is only a snapshot of the many features that we will al discover next September... Now all we can do is hope the day will come soon...
Overall, I think that this game will be a major revelation and will be a watershed in Strategy games. I can't wait, can you?
Rating: 
Summary: Horrible!!!
Review: I loved LotR 1 and 2, but this game is terrible. I don't know what they were thinking, or how it could have taken three years to make this game, but it isn't worth playing. The game focuses on the battle side, meaning that there is no management side at all. Even the battle side of the game is poorly done. Avoid this game at all costs. I am trying to get my money back just on principle.
Rating:
Summary: what a waste
Review: Not only did I waste my $20.00 on this game but I wasted another $20.00 on the strategy guide. Keep your money and play the old Lords of the Realm games. I will have to think long and hard befor I buy another game by Sierra.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I was a big fan of the Lord of the Realms series and was looking forward to part 3. However this game is terrible, it takes all of the previous fun game playing elements out of the game. There is no real decision making. I don't know how the developers can justify the time they spent on the game, there just isn't any gameplay worth talking about, what happened to quality control????
Rating:
Summary: Not as bad as people make it sound.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: What a Disappointment!!
Review: I am a big fan of the Lords of the Relm series, but I must admit that after only owning this game for one day, I am forced to trade it back in, what a dissappointment. I knew with the price that is wasn't going to be a great game, but didn't expect what I got. If you have played either of the two previous versions of this game, you will know what I am talking about. You don't control the building of your armies, or what your countries produce. All you do is pic a vassel and let them do everything and then you march your pre-determined sized army (oh sorry, you can combine them, but still have set limits), and march around and attack your enemies. So, you basically do nothing in this game. You just fight battles if you feel like it and even those aren't all that exciting. The battles are similar to Medieval Total War, but less detailed and not near as life like. The graphics of this game are great, but the game play itself is awful. I was really looking forward to this game, but wish I had saved my money. If you new to the whole Medeival strategy game style, then this game my be a good learning tool, but for those of us that have played Medeival Total War, Age of Empires and the previous Lords of the Relms games, you will find this game boring and not worth the money. I know, you are all just saying the same thing I said when I read the reviews of this game.... he just didn't like it and is bitter. Trust me, I said the same thing and went out and bought it today and now I am hoping the EB will give me at least a couple bucks for it to try and buy something else. So, for those of you on the fence about this game, I hope it helps some and for everyone else, try it at your own risk. Enjoy!! "Ave Caser, morituri te salutant"
Rating:
Summary: There is not much to say It's just too boring.
Review: There is not much to say It's just too boring.
Lords 3 is a true disappointment. Unlike Lord II even Lord 1 was much more better than Lords 1
Rating: 
Summary: Rinse and repeat
Review: I was raised on the original Lords game, and played 2 a little bit as well. I was certainly surprised to find this little gem for 19.99 on Amazon...so I decided to pick it up. What started out as general interest turned to disapointment rather quickly. The geniuses at Sierra decided to relinquish most of the aspects that made the predecessors fun. Now all you do is build an army, wait for the troops to swell its ranks, and unleash your hordes upon your foes. Rinse and repeat. You have the option to engage into each individual battle, but that matters little in the later stages. You end up furiously managing each army all over the map (no thumbnail or country map to quick scroll too-frustrating) and when you feel satisfied with your tasks, you wait. And wait. And wait. Feeling the need to provide strategic help to your troops? Good luck. It seems to me the battles are basically won with rudimentary plans and superior numbers. My heavy cavalry takes on some swordsmen and ends up routed? WTF?! Economics and empire management have been completely phased out of this game. EVERYTHING is delegated to your vassals. Yeah, you have to build a farm, a city for income, but overall? Build armies, move around, fight, rinse and repeat. My suggestion - save your money, and buy a total war. I picked up Medieval, and hope I won't be as disappointed as I was with this once proud classic...
Rating:
Summary: I was dissappointed.
Review: This game was on my top 10 wish list for games I wanted. I could not wait for it to come out. Now that I have it, how dissappointing it was. When I first got Lords of the Realms 2, I played it the first day for 15 staight hours. It was my first taste of real time strategy and started my conversion from puzzle games to RTS and FPS games. With Realms 3, it took all of the good things from Realms 2 and got rid of them. You can no longer control the resources you collect like rock, trees, and your food. You now place a vassal on a vacant plot and you get either gold or food. Thats it. You also can't raise an army. The only way you can get an army is to place a Knight on a vacant plot or buy mercanaries. But if you don't own enough land, you can only have so many Knights or you will not have enough money or farms. If you are short on farms, your army will abandon you. The longer your Knight is on the board, the more men he will collect, but it takes a very long time to collect a very small amount of men. You used to be able to control your lands easier and make your city grow, then raise an army. But not now. The most irritating thing is fighting. If you go to an enemies lands and take out his farm, if you don't leave an army back, they will instantly place another vassal for a farm. Even if you take out their castle, you still can't take over their land until you do more damage to their land. The next irritating thing is the armies. You can kill all of the enemies armies which leaves his plot open. He will then place another Knight to replace his beaten Knight and then attack you and somehow he has an army twice your size. I beat one enemies Knights completely 3 straight times and he still came back with 2 large armies and force me from his land. Not sure how that happened as I went through every Knight of the Realm and never found a large army once. When an army takes damage, their color changes. When they get to red, they are discouraged and they disband during the fight. So how he can keep coming back is beyond me becasue your army needs time to heal. And the last irritating thing is the battles. It seems like every time I go to the battle screen, another army attacks my lands. That is because there is no pause in the game when try to fight the battles yourself. If you let the computer do it for you, you lose alot more than you should plus you don't get to play the game. There needs to be a pause during battles so you can enjoy the game more. You also can't build siege weapons. You have buy siege mercanaries. Not cooll at all. The games doesn't totally suck. It is challenging (although very repititious) and the graphics are pretty good (although I haven't been able to see the intro movie or any other cutscenes even thought I downloaded the patch. not sure whats up with that), but that is about it. If they plan on making another, they better go back to what worked for Realms 2 & 3 and incorporate it in Realms 4, otherwise this franchise is dead if it isn't already.
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