Rating: 
Summary: It's really worse than ONE STAR !
Review: 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. ;)
Rating:
Summary: Definitly a disapointment. Don't wast your money.
Review: Lords of the Realm II was one of my favorite vidio games ever. I spent hundreds of hours playing it and would probably still be playing it if it still ran on my newer computers. I have been waiting for this game for over a year and preordered it as soon as it became available. I even went out and got a new graphics card to be able to play it.My expectations were extremely high and LOR III failed me miserably. The battles were extemely buggy and the game play in general was not interesting. Furthermore, the tutorial was poor and UI in general was not very usable. This is a perfect example of ruining a great 2D game by trying to make it a 3D game. Sierra sacrificed all of the interesting game play of LOR II for the sake of buggy 3D display of battles. Don't waste your money.
Rating:
Summary: Save your money
Review: I received this game today and I have to say it is the biggest disapointment I've had in a game. For those of you that loved LOR2, don't buy this game. It sucks. The econmic engine is gone, the vasal system used take all the fun out of managing your econmy and food production. The game's only real function is waging war. After about 20 minutes of this it gets boring. Save your money and play LOR2, it was much better.
Rating:
Summary: Never buy a game without playing the demo first!!
Review: I had my doubts about buying a game whose MSRP dropped from $50 to $20 vitually overnight. Unfortunately, I bought it anyway assuming since the earlier games were so much fun this one must be too. I've played bad games before but this time I really feel like I was had. Zero stars.
Rating:
Summary: Lords of the Realm 3
Review: This is the biggest disappointment I have ever experienced in purchasing a computer game. The first Lords of the Realm game is perhaps my favorite for its time with the Lords of the Realm 2 game also a great favorite. From the moment you open the box you experience problems with running the game. The graphics are disturbingly poor to the point of distraction. The real problem, however, is the gameplay. After about five hours of intense effort at the first tutorial campaign level, I still could not make any sense of the game and what you were supposed to do. The real time aspect is totally inappropriate for a strategy game of this scope. The combat is buggy, poorly lighted, and very dated in appearance. This is a disaster and a terrible blow to the reputation of "Impressions" games. It might have been better to simply have not released the game and admit the entire "real time" approach for a game such as this was ill conceived. I can not believe they spent two years on this. I would have given this game less than a star if such a rating was available.
Rating:
Summary: 20 bucks of junk...
Review: I had such high hopes for this title. The first two LOTR games were pure gaming goodness. The first warning sign was the drastic reduction of price from 49.99 to 19.99. Sierra gave up on this one and released a piece of junk and they know it. Almost all the fun aspects of the earlier games have been removed and you are left with a boring, somewhat buggy, cheap game that isnt worth playing. Shame on Sierra.
Rating:
Summary: Not even value for money at $20. It's just not fun.
Review: LOTR2 was a classic game. LOTR3 should have expanded on the things that made LOTR2 good, but strangely removes all the interesting bits in managing your lands, and leaves you with kind of a weaker version of a "Total War" title. Everything happens in real time, which means armies *crawl* across the global map far to slowly. This would have been better handled as a turn based element. Not fun. Individual parcels of land don't seem to be anymore valuable than any other parecls of land. You don't seem to get invovled into that "damn I really need that mine/deposit/wood". No choke points on the maps either. Not fun. Actual battles are frenzied, quick, and extremely hard to control. Calvary types can get arcoss the battle maps faster than I can even select my troops and get them into some sort of logical order. Not fun. There are many possible formations and stances for individual troops, but no logical formations for groupings of more than one troop type. I.e. if you select a troop of archers and a troop of pikemen for instance and tell them to march to a location, they march off as if the others didn't exist. That means the faster moving archers arrive first and get wasted by melee types, then the pikes arrive, who engage the enemy melee types, but get mowed down by the enemy archers. Lightly armored ranged troops should fall in behind melee troops. Other games have been doing this for years now. Whats the problem? Not fun. Not too much point trying flanking with calvary either. The lighter faster troops arrive first, so you may as well just plough straight into them. My battle tactics have simply been to pause the game, select all troops, and direct them all to attack en mass at the center of the enemies ranks. Mindless. Not fun. Attacking castles is painful. You can't seige them as in LOTR2, you just attack with your current troops straight away. Troops scale the walls etc, but this combat seems buggy and confusing. Units appear to get get trapped up on the walls, and no quick capture the flag to end battles. LOTR2 is *much* better in this aspect. No skirmish mode. Yep. NO SKIRMISH MODE. Not fun. I'd suggest looking around for "Kohan Immortal Sovereigns", or a "Total War" game over this one.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible Gameplay
Review: Being a huge fan of Lords of the Realm 2, I had high expectations for Lords 3. After playing it, the $20 price tag makes sense. In my opinion, the game is horrible. They've taken all of the best aspects from Lords of the Realm 2, removed them, and fixed up the graphics a bit (which aren't too impressive). Most the economical aspects of Lords 2 have been destroyed, and the battles are fairly boring and somewhat buggy. After waiting for a long time for this release I'm extremely dissapointed. If I could return this game for half the cost I payed for it I would.
Rating:
Summary: This game is horrible
Review: After waiting forever for the release and then for it to be delivered to the store, I eagerly installed it on my computer. This game is a high graphic shadow of LOTR II! You have very little input into what is going on. You sit around doing nothing for long periods of time and when you do get into battle, control is very bad. The castle building interface is laughable. I don't know how Sierra did it after having sooo long to develop this game, but the sucked all the fun out of LOTR! And beware, it has crashed on my twice, and I have XP Professional!!
Rating: 
Summary: You've got to wonder..
Review: You've got to wonder about any game that has been in development in since late 2001 and does not get released until March 2004. You've also have to be concerned about the fact that its release date was constantly pushed back and that its price fell from $49.99 to $19.99. Finally, why is this game being released so quietly and with so little fanfare. The official webpage is eeriely silent and more omniously a patch was released even before the game shipped. These are troubling questions and lead to the ultimate question: what is wrong with this game? I am going to wait until I read some reviews by non-fanboy reviewers before I consider purchasing. (A fanboy is someone who spends his time on the official webpage, salivating at every nugget of info dropped to him by the developers, and is so blinded in his loyalty to the product that he ignores glaring problems. A fanboy is also someone who writes glowing five star reviews on Amazon.com for a game that he has not played yet.)
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