Rating: 
Summary: Worst Game EVER!
Review: As a long time gamer I must say that this is the epitome of a mediocre game. Bad graphics, bad gameplay, bad all. I looked forward to a Stronghold-like experience, where you got to build up your caste, instead, you get to "upgrade your caste" what the heck? this must be the single worst sim-game I have ever played.I read their forums. Everyone there was concerned about the announced price. It was supposedly a new "marketing" strategy, but its just a blunder dressed up with a tie. (...)NOT WORTH YOUR TIME NOT WORTH THE DRIVE TO YOUR GAME RETAIL STORE DONT BUY IT, PERIOD.
Rating: 
Summary: Not as expected
Review: The game is basically boring unless you have a photogenic memory for all of the vassals and their powers. It moves too slow. Very disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: Buyer beware!
Review: If you loved playing LOTR2, than stay away from this one. All the best elements are gone, all you can do is appoint people to oversee your lands and than sit back and watch your armies move slowly across the map. Gets pretty boring after 10 minutes. I am taking this sorry excuse for a game back to the store. Worst 20 dollars i have ever spent!
Rating:
Summary: There is one big problem with this game.
Review: It is real time and not turned based. I think if this game was turned based it would be a fine game. In my opinon, that actuall fighting has improved from Lords of the realms 2. The econemy and county managment has gotten worse, but if you got to fight battles that wouldn't matter so much. The thing is that you never can really fight the battles. Since the whole thing is real time, when you zoom in on a battle you can't tell what is going on elsewhere, so you generally just have to leave the battles to the computer. In the end, you end up just building up armies to the maximum size, telling them to attack another castle, wait until they win, and place the maximum amount of knights possible in the fiefs, plus the minimum number of serfs needed. With your new troops you build another huge army. This just continues until you have more armys than you know what to do with and win. Don't get me wrong, this game is okay for a while, and when you only have a few territories it is fun since you can actually fight battles. I played this for a few days, but it got borring quickly.
Rating:
Summary: Huge disappointment
Review: I pre-ordered this game the day it was posted based on how much fun Lords Of The Realm 2 was. Unfortunately, everything that made LOTR2 fun wasn't in here. The territory values, the farming, the battle sounds...all gone. The siege system is laughable, and the AI for both your own unit movements and the enemy movements are terrible. Now I know why the price was $19.99...not worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Wrote a long review but it got deleted!
Review: So here's my star rating to at least affect that. Pissed my revew was deleted!
Rating:
Summary: Major Disappointment
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible, just plain terrible
Review: Not only did I go out to try and find the game when it came out but when i had to buy it online i had it expressed shipped. I would have to say that it is the most disappointing game I have ever played. If you are expecting anything close to lords II you will be extremely sadened when you play this. I did not even play long enough to find the bugs that people claim to have in the battles. After going through the poor tutorial i am surprised anyone made it to the actual gameplay. If you are considering buying this please just dont waste your money, take the memories you have of lords II and enjoy them, because lords III will just ruin them.
Rating:
Summary: Huge dissapointment
Review: I just have to mirror the other recent posters here...I was very excited to get my hands on this game being a fan of the first 2 LOTR titles. Everything that made the earlier games fun just isn't found in this game and what you end up with is a second rate real time strategy game that has poor UI, difficult control and just plain boring gameplay. Sierra knew they had a stinker on their hands and slashed the price in half to try to dupe you into still buying it. Don't let them get away with it. I wouldn't play this game even if it were free.
Rating:
Summary: This game is a HUGE disappointment...
Review: 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.
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