Warlords: Battlecry II is a great, problematic mess of a game. But it works just well enough to be very fun and rewarding. Warlords: Battlecry III on the other hand, almost has everything II has, but it's a ridiculous buggy mess of a game that is almost completely unplayable now, and was back when it was new. Firstly, it's buggy. It's (mostly) playable in it's default state on GoG. Mostly. Graphically it sort of works, but it really hates modern DWM's and can crash. But it does work. It is undoubtably unpolished though. Balance and difficulty are all over the place. In game information is severely lacking, and in a game from 2004 that's kinda pretty bad. There's a widescreen mod that improves things in some ways graphically (not in fidelity, but options), but is imperfect and incomplete. It mostly works and is a general improvement on vanilla. There's unofficial patches which make the game run really, really badly. I can't comment on the balance changes in them because I couldn't get the patches to a playable state. Supposedly there's a way to revert some changes and get them running, but one of the bugs that introduces breaks healing and lifesteal which were the two things I was specifically looking to patch in and fix. No bueno. There's a standalone TC mod for it that is somehow the worst. The installer does nothing but BSOD my machine. None of the community supported stuff has been updated in a year or more, so I doubt it's going anywhere thus far. This series deserves more support, it really does. A truly polished successor to W:B II would be amazing, but sadly III isn't it. It is playable though, and there is fun to be had. If you can get over the broken mess of a game it is, vanilla or the WS mod both work decently enough. Just save often. I'd say unless you were a fan of it back in the day, 10 bucks is too much. Pick it up in a sale for 5 bucks and you've got an okay deal for the money.
