Players in this game assume the role of medieval lords, each the ruler of a county. Throughout the game, lords must divide the labor of their peasants between agriculture (herding cattle and growing wheat) and industry (mining iron, quarrying stone, cutting wood, and manufacturing weapons), decide how to tax their people, and adjust food distribution. When necessary, they can upgrade their fortifications, raise troops, hire mercenaries, and buy needed goods from merchants. The ultimate goal of the game is to conquer enemy counties and become king over the entire country.
Troop types include peasants, macemen, archers, crossbowmen, pikemen, swordsmen, and knights. Castles begin as simple, ungarrisoned palisades and can be upgraded, resources available, to a motte-and-bailey, Norman keep, stone castle, or royal castle (a big stone castle with a moat).
Sieges are the high point of this game. Attackers can assault fortifications with troops supported by catapults, siege towers, and battering rams, and defenders can man the walls with their soldiers and pour boiling oil on the besiegers.
Lords of the Realm II has improved upon the deficiencies of its predecessor, Lords of the Realm, and provides a good balance of strategy and tactics, economic management and battle.
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Lords of the Realm 2 was the first strategy game I played. A friend brought it over in 7th grade, and in the past 7 years it's been the one game I've gone back to repeatedly. I have yet to grow tired of this game.First, I love the game's soundtrack. I've actually put all the music WAV files in a playlist...and while I'm on the subject of the audio, if you haven't listened to setup2.wav, DO IT!
As for gameplay, it isn't exactly the most complicated of strategy games, but I think that's part of what makes it fun. If you're going to create an army, wait for one of the merchants to come through so you can buy ale. It's much easier to feed people on grain than cows, and it doesn't hurt happiness. The Knight is a spoiled brat. It is music to my ears to hear "The county is yours, my lord..." After countless hours playing this game, things like these are what you will discover. Oh, and defending your first siege without losing a guy (and no auto-calc either)...now there's a feeling of intense pride.
If you can manage to get the (now flaky) multiplayer system to work anymore (it sure as heck wasn't designed for XP!), you're in for quite a treat. The Siege Pack adds in a new gameplay form, the Skirmish. This is the real-time battles of the game played separate from the game itself. These are great for when you don't have time to sit through the typical hours for an RTS, but have a taste for medieval battle.
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I just found and played LOTRII 2 weeks ago for the first time in 3 years. I am a sucker for this time period and started with Defender of the Crown back in the Tandy days. I was still surprised how challenging and good LOTRII was after all this time!This is a challenging game, especially when the difficulty level is set to anything over 'normal'.
The control over economy, farming resource management, castle building and military design is wonderful. The graphics are good for a game of its age as do the sounds.
Military battles are reminiscant of Warcraft controls.
It has run very successfully on my Windows XP box and sounds beter than ever through Audigy.
I give 4 out of 5 as AI diplomacy could use an upgrade. I can't wait for Lords Of The Realm III to come out. Until then enjoy this, its still worth the purchase!
James
Honest reviews on Lords of the Realm: Royal Collection - PC/Mac
This is a GREAT turn-based strategy game; perhaps on my list of top 5 of all time. The only real drawback is that it is pretty old, so it has to be in compatibility mode on Vista, and isn't as smooth on XP (though it still works, it doesn't play the cut screens). Not sure how it works on Linux-based OS. But it's simply to play and to learn to play with on-screen tips, and will keep you entertained for hours, notwithstanding its age.***UPDATE***
After reviewing my own review, I realized I hardly mentioned anything about the game play, so here it is in a nutshell: The king is dead, and now everybody is fighting for the crown (including you). Each "level" is a country (Ireland, for example) that is broken up into different counties, or a region (the middle-east) that is broken up into different countries. You have to capture each county by attacking it with an army you have built up with troops and weapons gleaned from you other counties. After you capture all of the counties, you go on to the next "level," which is just another country or region.
Though the gameplay is mostly turn-based (a turn every season), the battles are all real-time (or can be auto-calculated if you don't want to fight them). After taking a county, you have to make and keep it happy by keeping taxes low, rations in good supply, people in good health, and war-mongering to a minimum. You control all of these elements. A happy county will attract and keep peasants, which are allocated to different production areas (stone, wood, iron, wheat farm, dairy farm, blacksmith, field reclamation). You need to produce wheat and dairy to feed your people (or reclaim fields to farm), and you use resources to build castles and weapons to attack other counties and defend against invaders.
Very addicting, and I play it ever now, 13 years after I got my original copy.
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