Another amusing snippet from Warlords Battlecry 3’s documentation (specifically, the readme.txt file):
The Flamer (one of the floating eyes from the Plaguelords race) was renamed to the “Eye of Flame”. Apparently Flamer is a slang term in the USA.
I installed the game a few days ago and have been playing it since. The game hasn’t been highly-rated by reviewers but I think most of them were disappointed the game was more of the same instead of something that moves the real-time strategy genre forward. I’ve been enjoying the game quite a bit on its own terms.
The game does have a dated look and could easily pass for a title from 1997. (On the plus side, it does have absurdly low system requirements.) I don’t confuse great graphics with great gameplay so I don’t really mind.
That said, the sprite-based 2D graphics do make it difficult to distinguish and select individual troops in large melee battles. There’s no way to zoom in and there’s no way of repositioning the “camera” to get a better view. You will need to assign hotkeys to keep track of critical units.
There have been three patches issued for the game since it was released. I had to install both the 16.4MB 1.02 patch and the 12.8MB 1.03 patch since the latter isn’t retroactive. The bug-fix list is lengthy but I’m encouraged by the fact the developers have been continually tweaking gameplay and providing additional bonus features.
One oddity: my firewall keeps warning an application called “AutoPlay Media Studio 4” is requesting net access whenever the WBC3 CD-ROM is inserted in the CD-ROM drive. According to the company that makes it:
Indigo Rose’s AutoPlay Media Studio 4.0 is the industry standard for creating professional interactive CD-ROM AutoPlay and AutoRun menu systems.
I’m not sure why the game’s AutoPlay launcher would need internet access.
Take note that in addition to the 920MB of game data installed in the installation folder, WBC3 dumps saved data into the My Documents folder of Windows XP. The readme.txt states this is “pursuant with the standards set by Windows XP” but this is the first game I’ve played that does that. It’s something to keep in mind should I need to back up my game data.
