Warlords Battlecry III (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 7.2 (3.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Jason Ocampo
• Reviewed on: 05/24/2004
• Released on: 05/19/2004
• Originally published on GameSpot: Warlords Battlecry III (PC) Review

The Warlords Battlecry series has always felt like the perennial underdog of the real-time strategy genre. In a field dominated by the likes of Blizzard's Starcraft and Warcraft games and Ensemble's Age of Empires, the first two Warlords Battlecry games managed to carve a niche following with strategy fans. Warlords Battlecry II, in particular, has become something of a cult favorite thanks to its superb gameplay, innovative dynamic campaign, persistent heroes, and plethora of playable races. So, with Warlords Battlecry III, the developers at Infinite Interactive have played it relatively safe. Aside from some sprucing up of the graphics and some admittedly daring changes with the campaign, this new sequel doesn't fall far from the tree. As a result, it plays very much like its predecessors. While this should definitely please fans of the series, it also lends the game a sort of timelessness, because it looks and feels very old-fashioned in a genre racing ahead to embrace 3D graphics and streamlined gameplay.

As in the previous two games, your first job in Warlords Battlecry III is to create a hero with whom to lead your armies during the campaign. The hero plays a critical role during battles by not only leading your armies but also by seizing critical resources scattered over the map. More importantly, the hero unit imparts a very strong role-playing element to the game because he or she can gain experience, level up, and learn powerful new skills and abilities. Since there are 15 races and more than a dozen character classes to choose from, you can create virtually any kind of hero-type imaginable, from a sword-wielding barbarian to a powerful spellcaster. And, once again, your hero remains persistent over the course of the campaign, which means that you can develop quite a powerful hero by the time the story finally unfolds.

The new campaign structure is quite a departure from Warlords Battlecry II, which took the form of a Risk-style board game where you conquered the world province by province. In its place is a new RPG-style adventure in which you must travel across the world--army in tow--to attempt to stop a powerful demon on the loose. As you travel from location to location, you must undertake a number of quests and missions, some random and some plot-critical. For instance, you can take a detour in a mountain pass to meet a powerful dragon who will aid you later in your quest if do him a favor by clearing the pass of some pesky barbarians and undead. In other missions, you'll have to undertake quests to get the local inhabitants to give you vital clues as to where the demon went. As a result, you may escort an elf queen on a dangerous journey, or you may be enlisted to stop a horde of monsters from invading the kingdom. As you enlist allies and conquer enemies, you can then choose which race you control for each mission. This can make quite a difference in the game, because one race may be better suited for a certain mission than another race. Furthermore, sometimes your hero may receive certain bonuses when leading his or her native race.

There are 15 playable races in the game--three of them new from Warlords Battlecry II--that feature a wide variety of fantasy-themed good and evil proponents. This is where the game's (and the series') impressive amount of depth comes into play. Each race has its own units, technology tree, and build tree, which means that each race plays differently from the others. The powerful Empire race, for example, uses a lot of iron ore in its conventional army, while the Elves and more-mystical races consume more magical crystal. In general, all the races balance fairly well against one another, and while you may find some players advocating X race over Y, you can easily find others touting the reverse.

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