Lords of the Realm II is a strategy game that allows the player to manipulate a populous of people through farming, mining, foresting, and creating weapons and armies. The goal of the game is to conquer all of the counties in your country. To do this you must wage war against the lords of the country and defeat them with diplomacy and battle.
The story is set in the medieval times, the year 1268 to be exact.
The king of the country you live in has died and the struggle between the lords has begun to decide who will be the new king. You are one of five nobles waging war against each other for the ultimate prize of kingship. The main question of the game is "Do you have what it takes to be king?" The player's role in Lords of the Realm II is to act as a lord of a particular county in a country that the player chooses. As lord of this county the player must feed the people, farm with grain and cattle, mine stone and iron, build castles for defense, create weapons and armies, and defeat the other lords and neutral territories of the country. As other counties are defeated, the player gains control of these counties and must manage them as well. When all of the counties have been defeated the player wins as king of the country.
The game play is turned based. Each player manages their county, or counties, every season. The computer players take their turns first and then the non-computer player(s) takes his/her turn. When the player's turn for that season is completed the player ends his turn by clicking on the "End turn" icon. The scoring for Lords of the Realm II is done by calculating the overall happiness of the player's people, the number of people in the player's counties, the number of counties acquired, the number of castles possessed, and the amount of money possessed. These scores are used in calculating which player is the "greatest noble." Although these scores are interesting to look at, but the only score that really matters is which player defeats all of the counties. There are a couple of special features worthy of mentioning here. The first is that Lords of the Realm II has the capability for multiple players. This is achieved by utilizing an IPX, modem, or serial network connection.
The other special feature is contained within the battle mode of the game. When doing battle with other nobles, there is a nice feature that allows you to automatically calculate who will win the battle. The game calculates this by taking into account the number and type of soldiers each opposition has. Castle defenses are also taken into account. This is a neat feature because it allows you to skip the sometimes lengthy battle sequences of the game. Lords of the Realm II is a very challenging game. The strategy needed to defeat the computer opponents creates a difficult task for the player(s). The real fun comes with conquering more and more counties until the crown is yours. The only thing I found to be "not fun" about this game is that after playing it a while, even the most difficult setting is not difficult enough. Lords of the Realm II is a less complex game than many other games in this genre, but I think this is a good thing. You don't have to concentrate on unimportant details and can concentrate on the more fun aspects of the game such as battles. For an older game in this genre, Lords of the Realm II is an excellent game. The overall strengths of Lords of the Realm II are that it provides an interesting and challenging strategy game. The user interface is simple and not overwhelmed with boring details. The battles are strategically intensive and interesting as well.
