Lord of the Rings: The Battle For Middle Earth Review (no fat)

by Electronic Arts Platform: PC Genre: RTS	ESRB Rating: Teen Release: 2004-12-06	Lord of the Rings: The Battle For Middle Earth Features: Two challenging campaigns A blend of RTS and RPG elements Original Lord of the Rings movie soundtrack Online multiplayer option
	Egamer's Rating: 9 / 10. Reviewed on: 2005-10-24

Game Description

Lord of the Rings: The Battle For Middle Earth is perhaps one of the few computer games that actually have a strong connection with the films bearing the same names. Gamers and the fans of the Trilogy had soaring expectations from the franchise, Electronic Arts’s ‘Official Product’ sticker vents them even further…to see how the game fares, read on.

LoTR: The Battle For Middle Earth Gameplay

Different from other strategy games, Lord of the Rings: The Battle For Middle Earth features only one type of resources, generated by buildings. Some of the difficulty in the game is due to the limited areas the player is allowed to place each type of buildings. For example, the site designated for Rohan farms doesn't bear towers, making it more difficult for the player to defend large numbers of farms.

Also, the size of an army is limited by a fixed number of command points, since each unit uses them in different amounts. As a result there is almost no possibility of a rush, as in other RTS games and the players must really use their wits in combat.

The battles' speed is high players must prepare well before they start, to avoid unpleasant surprises. Knowing your army's strong and week points gives you a head start. For example, Rohan cavalry, even outnumbered, will sweep through large masses of orcs, forcing those playing the Mordor campaign to really use strategy and tactics if they want to have the slightest chance of winning. As mentioned above, the game developers worked hard to give players the best immersive feeling possible, creating great combat scenes.

The game also features an upgrade system more typical for RPG games. As you train more and more troops from certain buildings, they gain experience, becoming more efficient and allowing for new types of units and upgrades to be created and researched. All units are also influenced by this system during combat, and therefore, an army of veterans is much more effective than a recruit, determining the players to use balanced armies of heroes, veterans and recruits rather than large masses of newly formed troops.

Players also can count on the heroes' special abilities in combat. Also, you keep your army as scenarios go by. This feature has its downsides, because if one player looses most of his veterans by the end of one battle, the chances are he won't win the next battle, facing an army of experienced and skilled troops.

LoTR: The Battle For Middle Earth Campaigns

The game challenges the players with two campaigns, the Gondor Campaign, among the ‘good guys’, and the Mordor Campaign, with Sauron and his kind. And of course, there is the possibility of going online and take on virtual scenarios.

The campaigns have an epic line that has to be followed while playing, although there is a small flexibility giving players a certain feeling of freedom in their decisions, yet not allowing radical turn-arounds form the original story.

LoTR: The Battle For Middle Earth System Requirements

As a minimum system requirements for Lord of the Rings: The Battle For Middle Earth, you need a Pentium III with 1GHz, 256 MB RAM, and a ATI Radeon or GeForce card.

However, for best results, the recommended system would be Athlon XP 2000+, 512+ MB RAM, 64 MB ATI Radeon 9500 video card

In addition to all that, the players will also need 4.5 gigabytes of free space on their hard disks, as the game spans over no less than 4 CDs. The game’s manual describing the units, controls and gameplay is included in the software package.

LoTR: The Battle For Middle Earth Graphics and Sound

The graphics quality becomes obvious from the first encounters with the main menu, and the game's interface in general. The creators of Lord of the Rings: The Battle For Middle Earth world have worked painstakingly on the landscape rendering to make the game as close to the movie as possible. As a result, everything from the Mordor wastelands, the immersive elven forests, to the units' animations is good enough to send the players' minds back to the movie trilogy.

To add to the nostalgic value of the game, the movie license also allowed EA to implement the soundtrack of the original movie along with the characters' voices.

LoTR: The Battle For Middle Earth Summing Up

There are certainly better RTS games out there, but Lord of the Rings: The Battle For Middle Earth is among the few that give players an immersive experience to such levels. Perhaps this particular game has the advantage of a book and movie that has ruled our imaginations, but for the everlasting appetite for another look at the world of Middle-Earth, this game is certainly a collectable.

LoTR: The Battle For Middle Earth Cost

The game currently retails for $39.99US at the time of writing.