Lord of the Realm III, I am proud owner.

I picked up Lords of the Realm III, and it has alot of neat new features. I was a veteran of Lords II, so I was used to certain things. I was used to turn-based resource management and real-time fighting, peasant population, health, food, taxes, all of the normal things. Lords III blew that out of the water.

Lords III introduces you to a completely real-time environment, which is pretty cool. No matter what you are doing, the game is progressing. Sometimes you just want to take a time out, but you can't really do that in this game. I find the gameplay to be pretty in-depth, though they do shift your attention off of resources quite alot.

As a lord, you command a kingdom, which is devided into mini-segments called "parcels". You assign vassals to manage these parcels, and you have four vassal types: knights, clergy, burghers, and serfs. Knights command your troops and turn the main building into a defense. Clergy raise productivity and Christianity (will talk about this later), and turn your main building into a church. Burghers make commerce and are your source of income, turning your main building into a town or city (which you can (thankfully) garrison). Serfs provide food for your armies, turning the main building into a farm (your people don't need food, I wonder why)?

Most of the time, it seems like you have no population at all, since you can't draft peasants into the army, or assign them resource tasks, or tax them. In fact, you do NOTHING with your population.

the fighting is a VAST improvement over Lords II. The AI is tough, your troops follow orders, and the controls are easy to use. in Lords II, you left clicked to do everything, and often confused moving with selecting. Thankfully, Lords III gives you complete control on the battlefield, down to which way your soldiers face, in a 360 degree selection.

Also, there are more than a dozen castles, compared to Lords II, which had only five. The Castles aren't much different from each other though, but the defense equipment is much more useful and less buggy. (If you've dumped the oil pots in Lords II, you'll know what I mean.)

Your Vassal pool is strengthened by your reputation. You have three categories, Honor, Chivalry, and Christianity. All of them help you earn new Vassals, as well as other features.

It's a great game, though an entirely different flavor from Lords II. I still enjoy Lords II quite alot.

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There goes my first Game Review, I'll probably post more.