Lords of the Realm 2 is the newest strategy game made by Sierra On-Line. It takes turn based building and real time combat and combines them to make a pretty fun game. In the turn based area, you have to grow wheat and raise cattle for your towns people. If there is not enough food there happiness level will drop which usually leads to rioting. You also have to gather wood and ore in order to make weapons. When merchants come into your country you can buy supplies from them like food, and weapons. Once you have enough weapons and people build an army. One thing you can't do is just go out and make a huge army because the peasents now in the army wont be out gathering resources and the happiness level will drop. There are only 6 weapons to equip your men with, swords, pikes, maces, bows, crossbows, and a full knight aresenal. You can always just leave the peasents how they are with just their pitchforks to fight with but prepared to be slaughtered in later levels. Once in a while mercenaries, may show up in your country. They cost lots of money but you wont have to reqruit any of your peasents and use any weapons. Only use if you have lots of money in reserve.

Now lets get to probobly the best part about the game, the combat. Even though it's basicly a C&C clone it still is plenty of fun. You cant beat charging across a bridge and letting those arrows fly while you knights rush into a group of  pesky peasents. You must remember to always protect your archers. At hand to hand combat they can't use there bows and will be forced to use small daggers. All of that is fun but the game really shines in the castle sieges. There you must construct catapults siege towers, battering rams, and against a strong castle, fill in a moat to penetrate the walls. Inside it is usually a hectic rush to try and capture the enemys flag. Once the flag is in your armys possession you automatically win the battle. I was once out numbered four to one and still won because I was able to get the flag. But be warned, it is usually heavilly guarded. To stop an army you must use archers and the ever popular, boiling oil. If the walls are breached send most of your troops over to protect the flag while the others wear down the enemy. All of it adds up to some very fun battles.

You can play Lords 2 over the modem, a network, or head to head but it sucks on all of those. Since its turn based you must wait for the other player to finish there turn which really slows down the game. Overall, Lords of  the Realm 2 is a fun and entertaining game but has a few flaws and not enough units too choose from. 3 1/2 out of 5 demons.

Update: I just read an add in a magazine of  a Lords of the Realm expansion pack. It has a combat only mode for those of you who aren't that great at the resouce management (like me). It will also include 10 new castle designs, a map editor, and free internet play. Without the turn based mode it should be great.