Unfortunately,
Warlords of the Wasteland just doesn’t offer quite enough gameplay for the money spent. Even though it’s a “budget” title ($20 or thereabouts), it doesn’t contain enough missions to really make it worth it. Spend a long day with it and you’ll beat the game, and after that, there’s really not much else to do with the title.
What Chronicles attempts to do is make a coherent storyline. You play as Tarnum, a barbarian warlord, out to rebel against the evil overlords. Throughout the levels, you’re often presented with little messages in-between turns that “advance the storyline.” While it’s somewhat intriguing, I was never entirely convinced that the story in Chronicles held up any more than any of the campaigns in, say, The Restoration of Erathia. That’s not to say the levels are bad -- in fact, some of them are quite good. They’re just not as coherent a whole as 3DO would like you to believe.
As for the gameplay, it’s identical to Heroes of Might and Magic: III: the same units, same towns, same everything. Fortunately, I love the entire Heroes series, so that didn’t bother me. What bothered me was the brevity of the game and, well, lack of lasting value.
For what it’s worth, the Heroes engine has been perfected over the years, and the levels that you play are all highly enjoyable. The timed level a few missions in is fun, even if I completed it with a good two months to spare.
