This game is effectively unplayable on modern systems. It's a shame as the entire point of GOG was to make old games playable but now it seems they just don't bother.
Cows are central to my war effort. Swords and soldiers, weapons and warriors? They matter as well. I mean, they certainly have their place in the grand scheme of things, but cows are the real backbone. My war-drums are the thunder of a thousand bovine hooves. Because Lords of the Realm 2 is a game of economic balancing masquerading as a game of military warfare. Battles are won with strong armies, but armies don't feed themselves and troops don't grow in vats. The same population that provides your soldiers also makes your blacksmiths and your farmers. If everybody is drafted into your army, who will feed and arm them? On the flip side, if everybody is busy tending turnips then who goes off to war? It's this balancing act which lies at the base of every decision. It's very easy to misjudge things – you send half the town away to war, knowing it'll be an easy win, and six months later they are still sieging the castle while the harvest rots in the field. Should you have sent less people? Would a smaller army have had a chance at capturing that county? Like I say, it's a constant economic balancing act. As for the rest of the game, it holds up well. The battles are fun and the characters nicely defined – you can recognise the difference between, say, the treacherous Countess or the brash Knight. The controls haven't aged very well and some of the difficulty options are quite well hidden, but there’s an easy charm to the game that transcends its creaking bones. So give 1996 another chance, but remember - the sickle is mightier than the sword.
