LOTR Battle for Middle-Earth review

EA LA, which gave us Command & Conquer: Generals, has modified its game engine and integrated it with the amazing world of Lord of The Rings focusing on the large scale battlefields. In this game you can actually influence the course of history in Middle-Earth since you have the option to play as either good or evil.

If it ain’t broke…

In the game you’ll meet many familiar faces from the books such as Legolas, Gimli, the Ents, Saruman and many others. The game also has all the different races and factions from Middle-Earth such as the soldiers of Gondor, the armies of Isengaard and the riders of Rohan. They all have their different strengths and weaknesses.

While resource management is a factor in the game, the main focus is on the combat action, since most of the resource gathering is done automatically, which is definitely a good decision from the developer.

How much you can build and how many resources you can gather depends on the abilities and technological features of your faction, though the basic principles of building and harvesting remain the same for all. This makes it easy to get a solid start in the game.

You know who

It’s definitely an advantage to be familiar with the books/movies since this will make it a lot easier to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the various armies in the game.

The Rohan riders, led by the hero Éomer, can trample the enemy forces and they have some good foot soldiers as well. The civilians they rescue count as resources for them. The soldiers of Gondor are best at defending buildings such as Helms Deep for instance, which, by the way, is a place where you’ll find yourself doing battle eventually at one side or the other of the walls. The soldiers of Gondor are dependent on food produced at farms and they are able to call in peasants as reinforcements in desperate situations.

Each army has its own hero with special abilities that have to be recharged after each use. The soldiers can team up with Legolas or Gandalf for instance, and they can call upon help from the undead army (The Oathbreakers). We don’t want to forget the tough Ents either. They can throw boulders and hit very hard. The game generally has a lot of hero abilities and surprises which all serve to add to the strategic depth.

The other side

In the evil department we find the troops of Mordor and Isengard that seem to have vast numbers. They encompass everything from huge trolls to orcs and Uruk Hai with Saruman in charge. Resources aren’t as important when you’re playing this side since your current amount of units depends on how many bases you control.

The evil side has a lot of bizarre features such as trolls’ abilities to eat orcs in order to gain hit points or the Uruk Hai being able to fight each other to gain combat experience. There are also slaughterhouses where you can sacrifice units to boost your economy.
You can upgrade your weapons and Saruman, like other heroes in the game, has special abilities such spellcasting among other things.

When playing the evil faction you have the chance to change the course of history in the books if you win the battles the bad guys originally lost.

Interactive environment

The level design is spectacular and resembles the scenes from the movies very well. The environment is highly interactive – for instance a troll can pick up a boulder and throw it at his enemies or pull up a tree with roots and everything to use as a giant club. Oliphants can lay waste to large areas with trees and Ents can pull stones right out of buildings to use as missiles or just to do some serious damage to the structure.

The great battles

The trademark battles of the books and movies are among the most impressive elements in the game. Battles such as the one at Minas Tirith and in Helms Deep, where a many war machines are involved, have definitely been reconstructed very impressively in the game.

You need to make sound strategic decisions since the dangers your army faces change as you progress in the battle. You may have breached the gates but what will you do now as archers rain deadly showers of arrows upon your footsoldiers and boiling oil spills down from above?

All this contributes to make Battle for Middle-Earth fun and engaging if very light on strategic elements. It looks really impressive when you have hundreds of soldiers gathered in a small area surrounded by trolls, catapults, heroes and so on. The game really captures the essence of the movies’ spectacular battle scenes.

True heroes

The many heroes in the game have special powers that are either innate or acquired in combat. For instance Saruman has the ability to throw destructive fireballs while Legolas can shoot arrows at lightning speed. But at the same time heroes accumulate points that are the basis for some really powerful attacks such as summoning a high-level Balrog if you’re playing the evil faction.

You control your army as squads and not as single units since the latter would have been very hard to manage. It supposedly also makes it possible for the graphics engine to draw up to 500 3D units at a time – besides the heroes and the environment.

A true adventure

Battle for Middle-Earth is accessible and fun to play although it does help to be a fan of Lord of the Rings.It’s nice to be able to actually change the course of history in the books and turn the tables on the major battles when playing the evil faction.

The game boasts great graphics and sound and a lot of care has been taken to make the presentation resemble the audiovisual quality of the movies. The game delivers a long lasting package with both singleplayer and multiplayer being highly entertaining and engaging.

So it's the perfect game then? Not quite. Amidst all the beautiful graphics, excellent sound and recreation of the cinematic epics EA has forgotton to include much in the way of depth.

Simple strategic principles such as flanking the enemy matter not a jot. A pikeman causes just as much harm to cavalry no matter which way he's facing. It's a real shame that any depth and intelligence has been removed from the game as it would have made it a classic of the genre.

As it stands, Battle for Middle earth is too lightweight to be a truly great RTS. Instead it's an amazing looking diversion that won't tax an intelligent player very much. A missed chance at something very special.

Source: Boomtown DK
English version by: Julian Henlov (Progrock)