Lords of the Realm 3: the game that should have been the addon to Lords of the realm 2

Lords of the realm 3 is mainly regarded as a unworthy successor of the 2 installment in the series. But I think a lot of this believe feeds from the situation that LOR 3 did not fulfill the high expectations set in it after the good work of the 2 title. Which does not mean that LOR3 is a bad game. This situation of unfulfilled expectations making it difficult to judge the game by its real value. A problem not present for this evaluation as I played LOR 3 before the 2 part.

Lord of the realm 2 has a turn based medieval-economy-simulation part and a realtime strategy part for battles. The economy part is the heart of the game. The main part of the town management lies in managing the human resources. By this aspect LOR 2 can be compared to banished where the management of the human workforce is one of the main aspects of the game. I am fairly astonished on the depth the game mechanics posses in a game released 1996. The graphic follows the functioning it is not the most beautiful one but has aged extremely well. Compared with the old settler releases the controls of the game are great.

The real time strategy battles are despite the old age still playable. The problem with this game is the amount of battles you have to fight. The auto-calculator in battles can only be used in the end phases of the game when it is not too important if you win a battle in 1 or 2 tries. So it can be stated that the game stands and falls with the gameplay in the battles and I LOR 2 losses this battle in the long run as the always same battles take away the game fun.

This lack of long time motivation, the love variety in troops and no personality are exactly the points where LOR 3 tries to work on and it needs to be said that this work is pretty successful. A new game mechanic is presented where vassals are placed on different provinces and they generate food, religion or troops. By doing this the lack of personality of the 2 title is not present anymore. Moreover new types of troops, the new formations and good sound design makes the battles more fun to play. The long time motivation in the battles and army production is given by developing vassals. If the player has won enough battle better and better generals will join you court and you will get better and better troops. All together good improvements to the 2 title. Unfortunately is that the developers apparently lost their motivation after this improvements.

In occlusion LOR 2 has good base giving game mechanics resulting in a wellrounded economy-simulation with added on mediocre real time battles. LOR 3 on the other hand has the improved battle mechanics and surrounding military strategy economics LOR 2 needed, but totally lacks the base economy part. That's way I see LOR 3 as the addon to LOR 2 and both of them not as a complete game.