Lords of the Realm - Worthy of the Throne

[StewShearerOld]

Lords of the Realm - Worthy of the Throne

Lords of the Realm is an early-90s strategy game that pits the player against rival lords vying for the throne of England. You'll raise armies, fight battles and conquer counties, but only if your pesky peasants let you.

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[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Ah, an old friend come back to ply his services to me. Perhaps an alliance is in order?

Granted for me it was Lords of the Realm II which had improved siege combat and better interface, but aside from that they're quite similar. I was always saddened by the fact that the Bishop always fielded the largest armies of anyone, but those armies consisted of pitchfork-wielding peasants, the weakest unit in the game by far. Religiously-driven Zerg Rush FML.

 

[NoPants2win]

Two things, the first thing is super important.

Before you play Wing Commander Privateer next week: Get a gamepad with lots of buttons and map the keyboard and the stick controls to the pad. I used the PS3 controller. Seriously, after you die in a fireball because you accidentally launched your last missile again remap the controls.

On topic:

Lords 2 is impossible to play without house rules. Armies pillage far to quickly and a few peasants can detach from the main force and completely maul a district in a single turn. Also catapults are OP.

 

[Archon]

Stew, I'm thrilled to see you review this game! It was one of my all-time favorites and probably on some subconscious level an inspiration for ACKS.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

I played the crap or Lords of the Realm 2 way back in the day. Man, that and Lords of Magic are easily the best turn-based strategy games I ever played. I would totally play it again if I had it. I agree that even if it was released today, say on mobile platforms or something, people would really like it.

 

[Raesvelg]

As I recall it, the main problem I had with the first game was how easy it was to game the economic side of things. Once you had that figured out, losing was practically impossible.

Rather like Master of Orion, really.

 

[StewShearerOld]

Stew, I'm thrilled to see you review this game! It was one of my all-time favorites and probably on some subconscious level an inspiration for ACKS.

Glad you enjoyed it Alex! Hope I did the game justice!

 

[-Dragmire-]

Is there a reason why Good Old Reviews don't show up under the reviews section of the Escapist?

snip

Any Idea?

 

[StewShearerOld]

Is there a reason why Good Old Reviews don't show up under the reviews section of the Escapist?

snip

Any Idea?

It has its own unique category on the back end.

You can the find the rest of them here:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/goodoldreviews

 

[-Dragmire-]

Is there a reason why Good Old Reviews don't show up under the reviews section of the Escapist?

snip

Any Idea?

It has its own unique category on the back end.

You can the find the rest of them here:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/goodoldreviews

Thanks, I'll bookmark that!

Still, odd distinction. They're still game reviews, just a little dated.

 

[RJ 17]

I remember playing Lords of the Realm III. One of my favorite things was the diplomacy of that game...just because I was still a kid back when I played the game. The reason I liked it so much was that you click "compliment" to try and butter up one of the opponents, but you're given the opportunity to write your own letter! So you could write that the Countess' mother was a hamster and her father smelt of elderberries but, since the game registers that you clicked "compliment", she'll come back with "How nice of you to say that!"

Being too young to really understand the mechanics of the game, I just remember playing defense...a lot. The good news is that in Lords III, all you needed was a garrison of a handful of archers and your fort/castle could survive pretty much anything.

Also: I like the lines the peasants have in battle. They're mainly used for filling in trenches and moats so your army can cross, but if you tell them to attack a group of archers they say "We'll be shot to pieces!" =3

 

[redknightalex]

I never tried the original Lord of the Realm but the sequel was the first video game I can truly remember playing. It was on my grandfather's brand-spanking new machine in the day that had a huge amount of memory and hard drive space (probably 4mb and 400mb respectively) and I played it as much as I could when I was around. It was the only game I truly mastered in the sense that every move an enemy AI player made I knew three turns in advance.

Bought it from GoG the moment I heard about it as my discs, which I still own, no longer worked in a non-native DOS environment. Those games were my childhood so very nice to see them up here as a review.

(Anyone find the amusing easter egg of a song they had in the instal directory? It was a gem!)

 

[Brad Tritone]

Ha! Great game, and great review, Stew. I had to chuckle at it, though. I was hoping you would settle the age-old question... is it "Lords of the Realm" or "Lord of the Realms"? Like me, you used them both, so the answer must be "yes".

EDIT: now nobody knows what I'm talking about! It must have all been an illusion.

 

[Brad Tritone]

delete this dupe, sorry. first post (duh).