This did the trick. Thanks. Everything, including dialogue boxes got slowed down, but music becomes choppy.

Till I found this on the website:
"To Gamers: Adjust the Sleep/Awake Cycle in [Control] so that the video won’t get jumpy/choppy. You may want to try a very small value."

And this did the trick. Adjusted gradually till I get smooth sound and music (for me a value of 15-20 is good). It causes some animations, like cows or flags, to speed up a little, but the dialogue boxes are fine.

Thanks!

I didn't know that the demo had a different map. Cool. Maybe you should ask GOG to add it as a goodie.

@ZFR,

i used to use that 'slowdown' utility quite a bit back in the day.

The problem with being a Windows gamer is you have these 'cliff edges' in terms of OS and the games that came out on them. At various points the new Windows version just does not play the older OS games.

For you it is the cliff edge of the jump from W98 era to Windows 7. You might try fiddling with DosBox (if the game you are trying to get to work was Dos based? it might not be) or really you are left with either emulating W98 inside Windows 7 (tricky and not easy or guaranteed to work)

As for Lords of the Realm 2, i found i liked the original one the most (i have both in numerous forms, for the Amiga (when i first played it) and for PC) and have both GOG versions and both work 100% fine on Windows 7. They are cheap too (especially in a sale!).

Edit: i see you have the GOG versions and were just after the specific level on the demo. Well glad you got it working, and glad i now know about BES :)

I've actually seen ARGH MATEY versions of games not carried by any store which run off of custom installers which essentially run Win98 within DosBox(iirc)...so it is possible to do legally(with a legal win98 key/install and dosbox) for some games.

Yeah, for many games usually the demo/shareware was the first map, episode or whatever, but for quite a few games it was a completely different level. Rise of the Triad comes to mind, where the shareware The HUNT Begins consisted of an original episode that was not part of the full version.

GOG probably won't want to add it due to the technical problems involved, but the Lords of the Realms 2 demo is already available here:
http://www.sierrahelp.com/Misc/Demos.html

Problem is, it uses a 16-bit installer, so you'll have to:
Open it with 7zip or some other unzipping software. The exe is actually a self-extracting archive. The second exe is also a self extracting archive, so open it with 7zip again.
Once you reach the actual setup, use the following guide:
https://reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=10988

You can also try installing it over Windows 3.x/95 running over DOSBox. I couldn't get it to run on Windows 3.x on DOSBox, but installation itself should be fine. After you isntall it, you can copy it over to Windows 7.

Or, here is the unpacked ready-to-play version that I have (I got mine from an old 90s CD, so I'm not sure if it's the pre-release demo or the final demo; I suspect the latter):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/etjibplcvl14gwi/L2DEMO.zip?dl=0
(provided as is).

Once you have it, use the BES to slow it down that InkPanther provided the link to. Or if you don't mind missing the dialog boxes (most of them are same as full game) and autocalcing battles just play it at full speed.