Worth it

This game is definitely worth the 5 bucks to play, especially if you have friends that will get it with you as well. It's like a fantasy version of risk. Every match is unique due to the amount of variation the game presents. You can play against AI, other people, or both. The AI matches alone would still make this an enjoyable game, but being able to play against other players is what really sold me on this. There's a lot of strategy involved but the game is simple enough for anyone to pickup after 30 or so minutes of playing. The downsides of the game are that each match is a commitment taking on average about 5 hours of your time to complete, this isn't a huge issue as you can sit the game down and pick it back up where you left off at your leisure, and the matchmaking could greatly be improved. If you don't have anyone to invite to a PVP game then you're forced to match up with a random person. You can't just search for a match though, you click the type of game you want to play and you hit start. If there is a match already created then you join that one but if there's not then you do your turn 1 and basically just have to hope someone eventually gets matched into your game. Overall, fun yet tactically challenging with definite room for improvement when it comes to the matchmaking system. I do recommend you get this game.

Great Adaptation

I loved this game when I was younger. My brothers and I would sit around the old desktop playing this for hours and hours. I like that the Warlords II Deluxe maps still incorporate the fixed army options in each castle and require you make navies like in Warlords I. We actually used to play a customized version of the game a friend of my dad’s made which played almost exactly like the II deluxe version on this app. I am grateful someone took the time to make this app, my but is the AI players are fairly dumb. For example, they never create navies, ever, so on any map with much water they are incredibly easy to outmaneuver. I would give this 5 stars except that the reason I got the app was so me and my brothers could play it together again, but for the life of me and after much google research I can NOT figure out how to create a game and invite people to it. There just isn’t a way to do it, at least not one that makes any sense. That was the main draw and I can’t do it.

Classic turn-based fantasy wargame

This is an old DOS game from the 90s, updated with minor changes for the iPhone. You fight with stacks of troops, with combat modifiers for terrain, flying units, special (magical) units, and heroes. Captured cities generate income, which you spend to recruit and maintain different troops, so you have to choose the right troops, manage your money and logistics of troop movements, and plan your strategy and tactics while battling AI and/or other players. Heroes can also explore ruins to randomly get more gold, recruit magical troops, or get magic items for combat bonuses. The game auto saves as you go, which makes it a challenge, but you can undo every action since your last combat. I think it’s a great game, but there are two fixes that would really improve it. 1) In the original game, the AI would surrender if you have more than 40 cities, and they have 16 cities less than you. I’ve never had an AI surrender in this version, and it’s a bit tedious to play the game to the bitter end to get the victory, so I just quit when it’s obvious I’m going to win. So they really need the surrender feature in this version. 2) There’s no option to delete saved games. This one should be a pretty easy fix, and frankly, it’s a basic feature that any app with saved games should have.

Mostly the same from the original on the Mac

I grew up playing this game on the Mac for hours and hours as a kid. It’s great to see that this game has been revived and pretty much the same as the original. There are so many more maps to play, so exploring worlds other than Illuria is nice. I would give this game 5 stars, but there are a few elements of the original game that are not available in this version. These include: 1) no option for enhanced gameplay so armies can be produced faster than normal, 2) there is no option to view all battles (either com vs com or human vs com), or opt to see only battles that involve your armies, making it less obvious which forces survived or didn’t survive battles, 3) the difficulty settings for the computer are either knight, lord, or warlord, missing the Baron setting in between knight and lord difficulties, 4) you don’t get a report or text box after capturing or losing a city of how much gold you won/lost, and 5) when you conquer all other enemies, you cannot really explore the rest of the map as the ‘End Turn’ button is grayed out, meaning you cannot rest and regain movement (this is probably a glitch more than anything, but it makes it deflating somewhat when you do win). Other than that, the game is great and the added graphical and musical fanfare to battles is a nice addition.

Great game!

Warlords was one of my very first favorite computer games when I was growing up, and I was really happy to see it get ported to the iPad. Game play is great and I have enjoyed many hours of game play. I do have one very minor complaint. The sound effects in the game do not seem to be linked in any way to the volume controls. If sound effects are turned on in settings, then they are just as loud if my volume is on very quiet or very loud. I assume this is just a carry over of a port of this game from when it ran on PCs with much less sophisticated sound options.

Game makers are greedy

I already wrote out a long review but I’m not seeing it posted. I got to it from within the game which probably only hands it off to Apple if you rate them with 5 stars. Don’t purchase this game. It is a waste of money. Your $4.99 used to be worth it and gave you many maps. Now they require you to pay for all but 3 maps. At least for now. What’s next? Pay for every single map? Pay for every single Hero? Pay 10 cents per turn? Based on the game makers behavior, I would not be surprised by any of those. They are greedy and do not deserve our support. I understand that they need to make money which is why I was willing to pay for the game in the first place and pay for some of the extra maps. But this recent change is ridiculous. They are stealing from us. Last month, our game purchase got us gameplay on 14 maps. Now our purchase only gets us gameplay on 3 maps. Where is our refund for what they deducted from our gameplay? It’s like buying a car, driving it around for a month. Then the dealership coming and taking the tires and requiring you to pay extra for them because they decided the tires were not included in the original purchase.

Really good

I spent way too many hours on this game and I would highly recommend it there is a button that lets you buy heroes which is a little annoying but it is not forced on you or anything, it’s just a button in the corner kind of a weird thing to gripe about but it’s really the only annoyance I had and thinking about it, I guess I don’t really have good reason to either since it is just for people who want to and it isn’t really encouraged at all Anyway the game is great I highly recommend it

Great game, greedy developer

Many know this game from the early days of computer gaming. The port doesn’t work the same as the original but it’s fairly close (most annoyingly, automated troop movements aren’t optimized to avoid conflicts). I purchased the app a few years ago and it came with the classic maps from the original game. Since then the developer has chosen to lock all but three maps, which now have to be purchased separately. I could understand charging for newly developed maps, thereby extending gameplay, but hobbling the game and forcing devoted fans to now pay for something offered free with the purchase of the game just a few years ago seems greedy.

Warlords Classic is an official port of the fabulous game you have been playing in your childhood on PC, Mac or Amiga computers.

AppAdvice Sat Mar 29 2025