I read all of these 5 s-star reviews and definitely they are coming from people who played it back in 1998. I bought the game immediately after it got online here at GOG and this is only now i write my feelings about it. A couple of days later and many years later as well counting from end of 90s... Let me tell you that i have never played Warlords 3 to saturation. This is because all released back then were pretty buggy and hard to finish - it crashed all the time. Now its plays smooth (thanks GOG?). Oh, how cool was it to play Warlords 1 on PC 286 back in... hell i do not remember even the year exactly! Warlords 2 was the pinnacle of the series - it made Warlords 1 so much better and added a lot of new stuff. Warlords 3 tried to go for more! The added Xp for heroes and Hp for armies. I bought the game, played it for hours non-stop and it was fun! But... i got saturated at some point pretty fast. Through first 3-5 hours actually. The reason? Let me tell you: *** Dear GOG, With all the love i have, i have to admit now that simply wrapping old games to work on modern OSes to sell them here does not satisfy the old gamers. Warlords 3 is the greatest example i had. Well, it works with such pearls as Loom, but not with Warlords series! Let me explain. Warlords 1-3 were produced for mediocre PC as we see them now. The way to improve the gameplay would be simply to extend the map size - 100x100 was in 90s, now we have 8-16 GBs of RAM! What i wanted to say in other words: you can't simply sell old stuff working on modern OSes, for majority of games it does not work. If you want to sell with impact - do something to improve it by leaving the old game intact. For Warlords it could be simply a new random map generator with additional armies, items and 1000x1000 tiles of goodies! *** OK, saying all that i still love Warlords series! But playing it more than 5 hours makes me bored. Still , i have to admit that there are no any other games that could satisfy the quench)
Played this one in 1997 or around, so my review is based on that experience. At that time I really loved the game and atmosphere, but due to the lack of English knowledge it was very hard to follow different missions/quests (dragon hunting). So, the way I finished the game was the following: 1) raise and harvest crops, 2) go out of the castle and buy the best armor and sword available, 3) attack the King's castle (I always ended up in war with him due to inability to follow assigned missions ), but without army vs. army fight (you have to be quick enough to end up with a castle melee fighting, 4) kill the King with the sword in melee battle. I think I should buy it now on GOG and try again, I really want to explore the dragon quest part of the game and understand the castle building part as well. I recon that tactical army fights lacked mechanics and were brutally straightforward and boring. But something in this game is really involving, try it. Middle ages, a lot of different genres: adventure, kind of RPG, tactics, strategy, 3D melee and tournaments. Some of these parts are funny and worked, some did not. In the end of 90s it was something really new and amazing.
Just finished the game. Let me tell you my thoughts about this game while my impressions are still fresh. I gave it the full 5-star rating. Why? The answer is simple in my case - this is the only game I have finished this year. I am already a big boy with serious job and family, so I play just 20-40 mins once in a while. Serpent in the Staglands was worth my time! Now in a bit more detail. I start from the cons and how to fix them: 1) Everybody complains about the rough start and brutal combat with foxes. This is true. I simply solved it by editing my saves to increase initial stats a bit, enough to survive foxes without constant save/load stuff. I used the following Editor: https://github.com/simonratner/sits. Just do not cheat too much. I had pretty challenging combat till the very end of the game, plus explored all possible spell/skill tactics without replaying the game from scratch. 2) Everybody complains about absence of the now regular things such as quest journal and such. Well, at first I felt the same. But as the story unfolded, I realized that it is kind of more involving to take notes and remember things. This is not a shortcoming, well, at least if you manage the first 20% of the game. The same with that you get lost at first - no idea there to go (well, Erlein tells you actually and provides maps). 3) Some combat mechanics are not realistic. Agreed, especially that you can engage enemies one by one. But you can simply always attack the whole group - its your choice (as I did after minor stats manipulation). 4) The end of the game is really frustrating. Totally agree, be prepared. Expansion? Now about the great stuff. The story is really really nice. It takes time to get into it, but after 20% of the game I got really hooked. The art and atmosphere are really authentic, special and help you to dive into the world of Vol. Music (except for bog areas) is just great and adds to the atmosphere. I looking forward to the expansion (will it even be?)!
