Lords of the Realm AGA (Amiga) - A Playguide and Review - by LemonAmiga.com
59Lords Of The Realm is a medieval strategy game created from an idea by David Lester, and published by his own Impressions label in time for Christmas 1994. It features land cultivation, sieges, battles, and a good deal of strategy, so lets take a look.
Production Notes:
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Captured: 19th-28th August 2021
Narrated: 7th May 2022
Edited: 27th Aug 2021 - 13th June 2022
After the rather simple Castles and Kingdoms of England games, trying to learn Lords of the Realm was a little more tricky. First of all, I watched a longplay; which ran for several hours on YouTube, where some Australian guy talked me through how to play it. Then, armed with this info, I set out on my journey, and recorded hours of footage as a result, over a couple of weeks. At one point, I put out a Live Steam of me playing this, with no voice over, but I waved my mouse pointer over the important bits so people could follow along. Non of the footage from the Live Stream is used in this video, and the footage cuts to several days later, when I led the final assault on the last enemies. From here, I never went back to finish the game, in case I was tempted to record the ending and up it into this review.
Even with the hours of tuition, the game was still deeper than I thought. For one thing, towards the end of the campaign, my fields were over-worked and the yield per crop went down. It was only then that I learned the benefit of crop rotation, and having fallow (resting) fields - which is not mentioned in the review. I also didnt mention the peasant rebel bands which run around the countryside, stealing food, and causing grief. There is one rogue peasant group in the video, which is where the 'forages' button comes in to play, but these are easy to deal with and soon collapse at the sight of a few poleaxes, and these rebels arn't mentioned in the narration.
Having got quite a few hours of footage, it was then time to compress the highlights down to about an hour in length, and add the usual bits of info about the makers of the game, and also the period in history in which this game is set. Editing of the narration took several days, and relied on various audio fixing tools. There is one small section in the middle where I seem to be shouting, but the rest is balanced nicely, and hopefully the in-game music isn't too annoying for headphones users.
I had to re-render this again due to YouTube freezing and then cutting off the ending of the original video. I tried to add a blank space after the end credits so that these play through to the end, but the video still freezes at the very end. At least it freezes on the 'Will return' section, and we only miss the final fade out from there.
Danscore:
Strategy games arn't sometimes everyone's favourite genre, and this one contains a lot of micro management ideas to keep the player dedicated to their role. In this one, it isn't enough to steam-roller a huge army into the enemy, and instead 75% of the time we are looking at County screens; moving around peasants, workers, fields, crops and live stock. The graphics are nicely drawn but the music lets the game down, and many players said they found it annoying and repetitive, and quite distracting sometimes, as the music changes with each screen selection. I didn't mind the music but it didn't feel like a classic soundtrack. Gameplay is mostly a waiting game; waiting to get some troops together, waiting while they march to their destination, waiting to plant crops and repair the damages fields. Waiting for shops. Waiting to sell and buy goods. Waiting for siege equipment to destroy castles. There is some fun to be had in the battles, and the normal level of enemy AI is mostly a push over, as long as you combine army's. The game will take quite some hours to get through, and offers more than just a basic variety of things to do. However, learning how to play it in the first place can feel daunting, and you must be a master of the economy in order to save starving citizens before they revolt. Im not sure if I could have gotten into this game back in the day, but having someone tell me how the game works on youtube really helped to understand it. I'd give this 7.5 out of 10.
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