Great series, nice addition, though not too different
User Rating: 8.1 | Warlords Battlecry III PC
I have been a huge fan of WB series ever since the first one. In my opinion, the only series to really successfully implement the Hero notion in an RTS, aside from the newer Spellforce games. But these heroes you level up in single player, multiplayer, skirmish, or whatever and can continue with them in all three settings. I find myself very careful with my hero, hoping for enough XP to really level up and get that next cool spell or ability to help me trounce my enemies. But as far as WB3 is concerned, I feel they took some of the leveling up fun away. WB2 struck a nice balance between race, class, profession. This one doesn't even include details about the abilities of a hero class, so you have to create a hero, go in and play, then see what his/her abilities are. I did manage to download a supplement .pdf doc to explain the heroes, etc., but come on, it should have been in the manual. And an Archmage, not having access to all schools of magic? Come on! I still love the new races, including the Ssrathi, who wouldn't want a T-Rex on his team stomping around and eating those pesky driads in one chomp? Overall, a really fun game, but if you can do without the new races and are after hero leveling, stick with WB1 or WB2. 
