When we at Strategy Gaming first heard that Impressions will make a sequel to the award winning game Lord of the Realm 2, we were ecstatic. Once more, we will return to the medieval times, manage counties, raise armies and wage war on our neighbors and most importantly, reestablish the superiority of cows over wheat. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t wait to get another chance to fine tune my counties, to raise the perfect medieval army and to march into that hapless idiot who had the misfortune to have a start location near mine. The simple but deep turn-based economy, the clean, crisp animation, the rush of positioning your troops behind natural barriers, the rush of seeing your halberdiers lumber from one patch of trees to another under the fire of enemy archers and of course, the glory of siege warfare, where your military genius outshines the guy on the other side of the LAN cable, that was Lord of the Realms 2.

Lord of the Realm and its sequel Lord of the Realm 2 were both a mix of turn based management with real-time battles. The goal of the game was to use guile, diplomacy and force to overcome all enemies until you are the only one left on the map. There was a campaign mode where one had to play five successively harder maps to be crowned the King of England. The main map is divided into several smaller provinces. In the turn-based management mode, one had to maintain an economy that could support castles and armies in each province, with resources such as grain, dairy, cows, wood, iron, stone, population and happiness to worry about, there were many ways to overcome one’s foes. Now comes Lord of the Realm 3. One has to wonder about Sierra’s decision to publish the game at $20 instead of the retail $49.99. While we could attribute it to Sierra’s generosity, I’d rather point at Impressions’ failure. If a game was good, why sell it for less?

The design woes start from Impression trying to follow the popular trend of RTS. They decided to cut out all the turn-based stuff and focus on a hybrid RTS. Basically, you still managed your province in a turn-based manner, but the turns go by in real time. That’s just wonderful. Furthermore, in an even more troubling decision, Impressions decided to make the turns run while you are in battle. While it’s admirable that they are trying to aim for realism, realism sometimes gets in the way of fun. So while you are fighting in battle, other battles might rage on, and at the same time you are expected to manage your provinces.

How? Well thanks to the simplified province system, you no longer need to worry about province management altogether. A province is now composed of several smaller pieces. Whoever controls the central piece controls the whole province, but enemy troops can attack the individual pieces and weaken your province. The only thing you have to worry about in province management is what kind of a leader you want to assign to each piece of the province. Gone are the traveling merchants, the resources, the peasants. You, as the almighty ruler of your own land, are now too good to be a merchant. In come your henchmen to do your bidding. In fact they manage all aspect of province management; the only control you have is to decide who gets to have all the control. The only resource your highness needs to bother with is gold, which you use to pay ransoms, hire mercenaries and perform diplomatic missions.

The henchmen interface is one of the bright spots of the game. Furthermore, it a very accurate representation of how medieval Europe really worked. You can hire nobles from different classes, from Poor, Average, Knight and Royal. The increase in rank is reflected in better abilities and sometimes better troops to command. The four types of henchmen are commoners, who when put into a piece of land will make crops that allows you to field more armies; burghers, who create wealth; priests, who increase your Christianity rating, and knights who fortify your holding and also raises troops. These henchmen also have their own unique traits that add different flaws and advantages. For example, bravery will increase your troops attack; piousness will increase your Christianity rating. The ruler character representing you also has his own attributes: chivalry, Christianity and honor, which affects your relationship towards other lords and towards your own vassals.

Diplomacy is perhaps the single greatest improvement from its predecessor. The Lord of the Realm 2 diplomatic settings were largely clumsy and useless, you basically allied with one faction so that you can take out another and then come back to finish off your ally. In Lord of the Realm 3, options such as sending a fair maiden to the enemy general to stall an enemy army and hiring thieves to steal your opponents wealth and fund your own endeavors allow you a whole new way to corrupt, undermine and destroy other lords’ authority.

Onto the troops, the combat system has been improved for the better. Your army is composed of one or several knights. They are the elite units that lead a squad of up to 20 men. Each knight is able to command a different type of troop, which I think is randomly generated, but the higher his rank, the better troops he gets. Warfare is now squad based and instead of commanding individual units, you command the knight that leads each squad. Lord of the Realm 3 also features more troop types than its predecessor. Furthermore, each troop type has their own attributes and some even have special abilities. The addition of troop combat abilities, such as counterattack, flame arrows, charging, of troop morale and just more different types of troops really add new depths to battles and it will also be the last time you raise an ungodly longbowmen army. The best part of battles is siege battles, with the option to build your own castles, sieges become that much more fun. The ease of use of the castle building tool coupled with the great new castle warfare features such as ladders and flaming arrows will make going head to head against a human opponent that much more enjoyable.

Another thing that bugged me was the game’s clumsy interface. Located at the bottom of the screen is a control panel full of tabs. In real-time, it’s quite annoying to not be able to have all the information on one panel and to always have to constantly cycle the tabs in case a really good vassal joined you or there are mercenaries to hire. Another minor problem is the dependence of the bottom control panel during battles. You have to select troops and change formations in that little panel and I would just much rather be able to select my troops on the field, right click, and tell them to get into a new formation.

The game’s graphics and audio are fairly polished, nothing out of the ordinary but respectable. The new 3D engine to render battle graphics is an improvement over the 2D battlefield of its predecessors but some elements on the battlefield sometimes have a too blocky or too jaggy look to them. Individual troops are very well rendered and are very detailed and the animation is excellent. For example, the catapult’s firing sequence involves several frames where the crew lowers the throwing arm, loads it with a boulder and then fires it. But in other parts, the animation is lacking, especially when my troops pop in and out of the towers. I personally preferred the lush and colorful landscape of Lord of the Realm 2 to the bland and monotone main map of Lord of the Realm 3.

The music score is fairly good and appropriate for the game. Sound is also pretty average, nothing you would need Klipsch Ultra 5.1s for but having sound definitely improves on the overall game play experience.