Warlords III: Darklords Rising

Warlords III DLR is the STAND ALONE SEQUEL TO 1997’s Turn-Based Strategy Game of the Year (CGW magazine gave it a 5/5 star) and includes all features and campaigns of the original Warlords III. In addition, Darklords Rising has too many enhancements to the AI, game options, diplomacy and alliance options to list here. Page 9 -13 of the manual details all the amazing extras (including robust Scenario, Item, campaign editors) that this game has to offer to make your head spin. This is the Pinnacle of the series. Highly sophisticated in certain aspects, yet simplistic in others, the game stands out among the rest of Fantasy tbs strategy games as being 100% original and unique in its design and execution from the rest of tbs strategy games. Successful titles like HOMM, and Fantasy General owe a debt to WARLORDS. Here's my advice for people that are considering buying the game: This is a Pure Strategy game. The tactical combat is non-interactive and very brief & city/castle management is virtually nonexistent which makes the game move faster keeping the player focus on the strategic element. I personally never have a boring turn in this game. In other games, even HOMM, you have to press the end-turn button several times to get some action to happen especially from the enemy side. Not on Warlords. Every turn has a lot of events that keep the player engaged at all times. The things I personally like the most: 1-Creating custom army sets feels like deck building. The possibilities are almost endless. 2-Magic system & new Heroes adds immensely to the variety and depth of the game (missing from Warlords II) 3-Automatic vectoring of any army to your other cities. 4-Nine new game types including victory while allied with computer players 5-Improved AI - The A grade stack routines have been improved greatly over Warlords II (I still lose a game to the AI from time to time even after playing the game for almost 20 Years!)

I joined GOG nearly 7 years ago looking for this game. Today my patience is rewarded. I realize that compared to newer games this doesn't look like much, but don't judge this book by its cover. This game is really fun. It's simple to understand and for a 21 year old game the AI is pretty good. I'm looking forward to spending a LOT of time with this beautiful piece of history.

This includes the content from Warlords III: Reign of Heroes, which I believe was the original version of this game and Darklords Rising was an expansion. This game is fantastic and at an incredible price. One of the first and only video games I played with my dad when I was a kid.

It's Warlords III: Darklords Rising, the reason for GOG.COM existing.