This review should have came one month ago. Anyway, 2 days after I continued I completed the game. Overall, the game was good, unique and fun.
The game is split into good and bad campaigns. The good campaign follows the events which happened in the Lord of the Rings trilogy closely, bringing you into the heart of battles. The bad campaign, on the other hand, is a lot different, though common battles like the battle of Helms Deep and Minas Tirith were still the same.
Having said this, the game brings you deep into the spirit of LOTR, with the soundtracks straight from the movie itself, and the voices of heroes all came from the original actors themselves.
Gameplay is not bad, though there are several balance issues. Fire arrows seemed to be too powerful, especially when used in the masses. The command points needed for trolls are way too little, and when massed, seems like an unstoppable force. The balance is definitely better than Battle for Middle-Earth 2 though. Upgraded arrows in BFME 2 are even stronger, and horses hardly suffered any damage when trampling. Trolls are weaker in BFME 2 though.
The graphics are good, and the sound is nice too. However when there’s a giant army or battle going on, the frame rate dips drastically, causing some slow-mo action, also known as lag.
One issue I had was with the campaigns. About 75% of battles in campaigns involve just attacking enemy territories, making it very repetitive. Just choose a territory to attack, build up a base, build up your army, then attack. The army you use moves as a group, so they are retained and brought along when you attack. Army upgrades are also retained, but things like grouped units and the trees which the trolls already have don’t get retained, so this is a pretty irritating problem for me. I have to find a forest for my 60 trolls to uproot trees from.
Evil races can become unbelievably rich, because they have the deforestation power (turn trees into resources), industry power (double resources earned for selected industries), and the scavenger power (earn resources for every kill). So I often end up with over 50,000 gold, not because I took a long time, but because of these powers.
Gandalf, balrog and the army of the dead are undoubtedly the best units in the game. The balrog is summoned and does devastating damage to everything, killing any unit in one or two hits, and buildings in usually 3 hits. Its breathe fire ability destroys buildings in a blow. Its fire whip is pretty hilarious, especially the sound. I whipped Aragon and it had this really funny whipping sound, and Aragon started to flying through the air towards me. The balrog doesn’t die easily, and I think only Gandalf and the army of the dead can kill it. The balrog doesn’t last very long though, but the damage it can do makes up for it.
The army of the dead is as good as the balrog, killing units effortlessly. Its damage against buildings is rather weak though. This army is also a good anti-balrog weapon.
Gandalf is a hero you can recruit. His power doesn’t lie in his melee attacks, but instead his spells. His wizard blast easily kills groups of armies. And who doesn’t love the word of power? A level 10 spell, Gandalf concentrates all his energy, and lets it all out in a pretty big radius around him, killing everything smaller than trolls. It looks nice, it sounds nice, and the way everyone flys away from Gandalf is just cool. Gandalf has the lightning sword spell, which is his anti-balrog spell. It easily takes away half if the balrog’s health, and recharges pretty quickly for the kill.
There’s two trailers for this game, because they’re both equally good. One of them has Gandalf’s word of power spell in it.
Battle for Middle-Earth Trailer 1 (1:33)
Battle for Middle-Earth Trailer 2 (2:13)
Graphics: 8.5
Sound: 8.5
Gameplay: 7.8
Lasting appeal: 7.5
Overall: 8.5
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