First and most importantly: GOG sells the unmodified version. It doesn't include the awful community mod that ruins the charm of the game. Warlords Battlecry III is not a great strategy game. It's not even a strategy game sometimes, it's more of an RPG quite often. It's really a weird hybrid. Your hero has persistent levels. Your units can also level up during a battle. The level up system can be used to turn everything upside down. It's a real time strategy game with a single unit that has a lot of RPG elements attached to it. The rest of the units just get slightly stronger through gaining EXP just like it happens in a C&C game when your unit ranks up, except, this time, there's a lot more ranks to achieve. The potential was unlimited, there are almost as many factions to play as a Total War game would let you, combined with even more hero classes, if it was taken seriously, it would be on a scale that's impossible to properly balance. However, the game is really all about breaking it in silly ways by minmaxing a hero through dozens and possibly even hundreds of levels. The campaign is surprisingly good, in fact, the story is simple, but puts our main hero - of any faction - in the story without failure, you immediately feel compelled to "do something" about the issue without spoiling it. The game is, a bit clunky, but overall, the many ways it let's you to tinker with the system makes it enjoyable despite the very obvious aging of the gameplay. I can only recommend this, but it can drain free time very heavily, so consider that too.
