Posted on: April 8, 2019

WookieFightNight

Games: Reviews: 24

Good but flawed Turn-Based Strategy

Disclaimer, I have ben playing this game since it released. To be honest, this game is only for the die hard person that likes to micromanage everything. To do otherwise is to spell doom. You can auto-calculate battles but you will incur severe losses. Next, the AI falls into very predictable patterns and always seems to have unlimited resources to draw up armies to hammer you. Don;t get me wrong, I like this game but I don't recommend it to newcomers. The huge learning curve and somewhat unfair AI will turn off many. If you endure and continue to learn this game you will find that you yourself will exploit many features of the game in order to win. Examples being: mace-men are the most cost effective units around. Also, turning a county to wheat only is also the most efficient. The pathfinding for this game is pretty bad and honestly the real enjoyment comes from trying to balance between an economically focused or military focused county. Overall I would recommend this game to fans of turn-based strategies but be warned that the AI definitely does not play by your rules. If you are not interested in trying to micro-manage an economy and military then I would suggest you move onto other games. The game gets the following rating off of my own subjective criteria: 1 star for excellent presentation and atmosphere, 1 star for content and replayability, 1 star for having a nice balance between managing economics with military. I would cautiously recommend this game to all fans of turn-based strategies who enjoy a good challenge and don't mind a potentially cheating AI. All others need not apply and should seek out games that have forgone economic management for pure strategy.

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Posted on: June 12, 2012

lexleningrad

Verified owner

Games: 34 Reviews: 1

Between this and HOMMII = My childhood

I remember going over almost every day to my friends house down the street to watch his dad play this game. Eventually I got my parents to get us a computer powerful enough to run it, I must have spent years on this game. Downright addictive and if you're into strategy games a timeless classic. Even now after playing total war and similar titles I still pine for the county management and the pompous knight whining at me. Buy this and Heroes of the Might and Magic II and kiss your life goodbye 1990's style (in the best way possible).

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Posted on: August 4, 2011

0xlubos

Verified owner

Games: Reviews: 1

Pleasant Surprise

The following review is only Lords of the Realm 2 related. I had never heard of this game before buying it at a discount here on GOG.com. I did not expect to get a charming game, which could deeply interest me. Yet I was mistaken. Surprisingly, I discovered a very interesting and sophisticated game. The most crucial element of the game-play lies in the administration of your counties. Every county differs by number of people living there (changing through immigration, emigration, drafting, deaths and births), your popularity in the county (taxes, food rations, drafting again), industries located there (that is immutable, but there is always a blacksmith and a logging site, then there may be either an iron mining site or a stone quarrying site), grain supply, number of fields and last but not least, by number of cattle being bred. The skill of an ingenious player consists in advantageous division of peasants among all the industries, agriculture, possibly castle building or field reclaiming. By the way, agriculture is worked out smartly. Every turn represents a season and each season is different. In winter, you have to sacrifice some of your grain to seed fields, as long as you want to harvest any in autumn. However, you can easily overuse fields and make them almost infertile. Therefore, you have to alternately let fields lie fallow and seed them. To conquer other counties and to defend yours, you need armies, naturally. You can both hire mercenaries and draft people arming them with your own weapons either bought or created. Before any battle you can choose whether or not you wish to lead your armies by yourself. If you do not, the battle is auto-calculated. As far as I know, auto-calculating is always the worst option making this game devilishly difficult (playing only through auto-calculated battles may be a challenge for the hardcore players). The battles are playable; however, the artificial intelligence is poor and you may find fighting to be the worst part of this game. To sum up, this game comprises elaborated economic and social system with many innovative elements and challenging combat. I recommend trying this game to anyone who likes turn-based strategies!

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Posted on: December 30, 2022

nato21

Verified owner

Games: 353 Reviews: 16

One of the best games ever made

Don't be mislead by the misinformational reviews out there. Lords of The Real II (included in this package) is one of the best strategy games ever made. This is fun, relatively fast and its AI knows how to play its own game without cheating. It runs smoothly in any system from windows 95 up to windows 10. (It has to be Windows unfornutately). Its art also aged very well. You assume the role of an medieval candidate to throne and fight your way to kingship. 10/10 old game. 9.75/10 timeless gaming.

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Posted on: August 5, 2009

Eclipse

Verified owner

Games: 223 Reviews: 12

Deep but still quite easy to pick up

With this review I'm talking more about Lords of the Ream II, included in this pack, as i never had the occasion to play the first one like i did with the second, years ago. All the LOTRII gameplay is based around few mechanics, you have to gather food as meat or grain and resources like iron and wood, trying to find the perfect balance to improve your army and not starve your people. Besides taking care of your homeland you'll want also to expand your territories, in a medieval risiko fashion. I recommend this game even to those scared about the complexity and the time involved in similar games, the interface is clear and always well designed. The game is easy to start playing, but still quite deep and definitely hard to master. The worst part of the game is possibly the realtime battle system, that simply doesn't add anything, this game was born in the warcraft II C&C era so they just had to pull it inside, it just doesn't stand the normal RTS games. Luckly there's always the option to let the computer resolve the battles for you, letting you to focus on the most important things, without sacrificing time in micro-management. I wish to see also LORT III on GOG, even if i really think the best of the serie is still the second one, pick it up!

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