Warlords II

"A truly spectacular strategy game"

In a time of need, one game offered out its hand in an attempt to reclaim the time period of 1996. Unfortunately, no one grabbed back as I assume no one has ever played this game. But what you are missing! Upon loading the game you are set to choose over 100 different levels which about half have different characters ranging from ancient zulu, medieval, scifi, fantasy, war, and modern day characters for you to choose from. After choosing your map (or customizing your own) you can select what group (eight in all) you want to be, customize your shield logo and name your civilization. All while selecting your opponent's difficulty and the rules you want to play with. Then the game of Warlords begins!

This game is played in turns, usually you play by yourself but you can throw another human in there. You are first prompted to choosing a male or female hero (you'll be using a lot) and then naming them. From here you can set out to collect items and taking up quests. The main focus of the game is to capture all the cities as your own while battling with the other enemy warlords. To do that, you must first think about what's going on; your capital city will usually give you a few characters to recruit and usually the stronger they are the more turns they'll need to be recruited and the more gold they'll cost. You'll gain gold mainly from capturing more cities and sidequests so the better you do the more gold you'll have. This also comes in handy to recruit more heroes later on.

Actual gameplay can be summarized as choosing up to eight units that are over each other and then moving them, yes, characters do have a set movement number usually around 20. Some can fly over mountains and such and others can't. Roads are abundant and will only cost one movement but grass, hills, and other hazards will take more. Say around 100 cities are on the map, eight groups would occupy eight cities altogether, the other 92 would be occupied by one measly guard of a neutral group. You can choose to attack these castles and sort of shield screen pops up displaying the units for both sides and then based on who's stronger they will start eliminating recruits from both sides (usually stronger ones win but it's a small chance they won't) until one side is victorious. Most of the times you'll be fighting for a city so if you win then you can choose to burn it, sack/pillage, or occupy it. That's how you'll play for the majority of the game. But it really starts to get intense when you realize there's a diplomacy chart that lets you check out who's at war with each other and then you can set up who you want to go to war with or just be neutral or remain at peace. They start to declare war on you if you start to betray civilizations that you were at peace with, start to come into their territory or you're just plain winning.

You can really get into this game, as it takes awhile to complete a single war but you'll quickly get sucked in and not want to quit. Not to mention the replay value of this game is enormous. With over 100 maps to play on and over 8 groups per match (meaning different starting groups and set of recruits) you can play this game for a very long time.

The music in this game is beauty to the ears. You can easily just stop playing and just let it flow but you can also use it get pysched and start planning out your strategies. There's also a crazy cool warlord guy that pops up every so often with mind-boggling war tips and future predictions. This is a game for the ages!

There you have it, I've never seen this game anywhere and I don't even know how I got it. It just appeared one day. But if you can find it, I definitely recommend this over the newer ones as it stays true to its roots.

Farewell Warlord, we shall meet again

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 07/21/06