If you want an example on how to ruin a good game series - this is the one. Step 1) Take away the thing that made the predecessors great - turn based battles with units moving in hexagons - and replace it with an "semi-real-time", "semi-free-movement" thing that feels so absurd to play, you want to cry and BEG for the old hexagons to reappear. Yes, you still have "movement rage" (measured in metres or something) and, yes, it is still kind of turn based. But no way you can plan your strategies with this mess of range / positioning system. Step 2) Add something new which is guaranteed to annoy everyone - the rediculous electricity pylon building / maintanance system - you have to build pylons and pipelines which connect your main base with outposts and YOUR (constuction) UNITS !! Looks like they were chained to those pylons.. And if this wasn´t enough.. your attack units also need a "moving pylon" to supply them on the battlefield. Looks stupid, and plays stupid. If they wanted to get rid off ammo/fuel depletion, then why the heck did they implement this? Step 3) Mix semi-real-time combat with pseudo turn based (base) building to create artificial stress... Where "base building" stands for : build buildings for every one of the three resources, then connect them with the pylons/ pipes... wow! This game has absolutely nothing to do with the old (and great!) Battle Isle games. In fact, none of the old designers worked on it - "Cauldron" developed it, not the boys from BlueByte. If I remember correctly, by the time BlueByte was working on it, they were taken over by Ubisoft and their baby (Battle Isle 5 was the working title of this game) taken away. Hence this absolutely unplayable mess. DO NOT BUY, it is a shame for the Battle Isle series!
This game really was a suprise to me. I still remember the day I bought it. Is was during a school excursion, and I had absolutely no Idea WHY the heck I chose this game. No advertising, no Hype created by the press... in fact, the gaming magazines I read at this time wrote more of a slating review, giving this title only half a page,whith 6 out of 10 Points, if any. But I did not remember I had read them, so different was the image of how this game could be I got while staring at the screenshots and reading the game´s specs. I just had a feeling, an hunch, so to say that there was something special inside this box. So I bought it... It promised: 1) Fully scalable graphics!! While Starcraft or C&C still worked with 640x480 (or worse) resolution, TA could be maxed out to 1600x1200 or even beyond. It was unbelievable for us little boys! How could one game be so advanced?? 2) Large maps. Even larger maps for those whith 64megs of RAM !!! How awesome was that?? A RTS that used all of your aviable RAM? And let you play even bigger maps if you upgrade your pc?! (Needless to say, this was the sole reason me and my friends were standing at the local pc-dealers shop demanding MORE RAM shortly thereafter! ) 3) Hundreds of units. AT ONCE! On one map. How could that be playable? SC was almost unplayable for me if more than 30 units were on screen. Not to mention c&c, where a pack of 9 bigger units often won the game. I was intrigued. 4) Orchestral Soundtrack. By Jeremy WHO??? Why would a game need an Orchestra ? If I remember correctly, they went to Prague to record it whith the Chech´s National Orchestra. Wow! That was something. But Classic? Not heavy metal? That´s not good! (I did not know HOW WRONG I was back then..) So to shorten things a bit: All, and I repeat ALL the things promised on the back of the package were (playable) reality! You could max out your monitor, and for the first time, a game matched the desktop resulition !!! WOW !!! It was plain awesome to get 8 (or UP TO 10!! when everyone fullfilled the RAM-prerequisites) in a LAN-game fighting each other in a war which really felt like it was heaving to and fro. You were leading a "tide of iron" towards your enemy´s base, only to get pushed back by his well organized counterattack. But never was there a time when you ran out of units and had to wait for your new "3 mighty units " to be produced, like in SC or C&C. How nice it was to tell your factorys to produce countless units one after another. Yes, no "unit production cue" like in all the other RTSs. Ordering 500 units? No problem. Wait for the first 20 to become produced, take them to battle and when you return to your base, 40 new ones will be waiting for your command. Sweet! This game IS the best RTS, if you are into large scale battles. If you like small skirmishes, go for SC or C&C. Even the newer SupremeCommander, which is made by the same team who made TA back then, does not quite offer the same dynamic battle experience TA did. (I use mods for SupCom to make it "feel" more like TA - that should say all, does it not??) ´Nuff said ! BUY it, if you have´nt already !
I gave this game a try, since it is 1) free and 2) old enough to be a "classic" The story about some "orc-invasion" was far from new even when this game was made, I bet. But they added some absurd and funny scenes & characters which makes the weak "orc"story sometimes less boring. And the main character, who became an adventurer "by chance" together with his sidekick "Ratpouch" .. well, I do like this kind of humor - others may find it plain stupid.. The manual features the same style of humor, by the way. The sounds are.. well, I thougt my speakers were damaged when i finally went past the intro-screen. But they implemented an option to silence the game. Good forward thinking, boys. The graphics are good enough! It is an old game, remember ? You can see whats going on, there are animations, several people walking around or sitting and drinking.. The interface is the main reason why I don´t really like this game. You have to click onto something/someone, then choose an action. Sounds easier then it actually is, since some characters tend to keep running away when you want to interact with them. Also some places and items are hidden so well, I for my part ended up looking for a "walkthrough".. I found playing it was more "work" than "fun" so I can´t really recommend it. After all - give this game a try if you have got this "What did I miss by not buying and playing this game back then??" feeling.
If you have played the older LordsOTR 1 and especially 2, you will have some demands on how a game of this series should look and feel like... But almost all of those expectations will be disappointed. This game is NOT turn based, it is NOT following the old "grow food and build weapons to supply your army" principle. The game is mostly about two things : hectic and pure luck. Why is this? 1) You need "Lords" to do anything, from building an army over generating money to even charm the church. You have only to recruit them and assign them to a piece of land, now becoming their fiefdom. Those "Lords" just pop up at your .. let it be called "lord recruiting pool" and come with greatly variing skills at their profession. Some bring big armies with them for just hiring them, some do not. But those lords do appear purely at random, especially the low level ones at the beginning of each game and it can be frustrating to see that the AI get´s all the good ones. Later on in the game there are better "high level lords", but they have special prerequirements like "army size xxl", "xyz gold in your treasurery" or "min. owned land" before you can hire them. This is where a little strategy and planning comes in and brings the game at least a little bit closer to the "S" in "RTS"... (I hope GOG has included the full manual and hints with this game, since in some european countries (germany and netherlands) , the game was distributed without any reference on how to aquire the higher level lords..) 2) The hectic clicking: Since all players, human and AI all act in real time, the lightning-fast assignment of lords is crucial especially at the beginning of the game. And did you look forward to fighting a battle in real time isometric combat? Do not think of it again, because while you lead your troops in the isometric combat, the AI is marching freely on the normal map towards your capital- the AI can do both - fight and manage resources, while you have to decide : fight or management... Yes, you can switch between both at will, but this is not really an option since most players will now let BOTH things go to ruin - the battle and the management. The game is not total rubbish, since the graphics are acceptable, the music and voiceacting is okay, (it really sounds medieval ;)) But if you wonder why you might have missed this game when it was published, or, did not know until now that it actiually HAS BEEN published.. This game looked old and outdated even as it was published, and it was never a "full price" AAA title, as if the publisher was ashamed of it. And he should be, at least a little bit for naming it lotr3...
