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Unable to play due to errors

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: April 25, 2008
Author: Amazon User

After receiving and installing the game was unable to play due to an dat.error. Apparently this is a known issue from EA forums that many people experience after instillation. DO NOT recommend buying as EA has not released a fix. The only way is to download a torrent with a no cd crack which is not a fix.

still has problems

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: April 19, 2007
Author: Amazon User

There are a few problems yet remaining to be fixed with the upgrade. I've been playing the War of the Ring scenario, and it can get so frustrating.
First, you have to wait for your units to come as reinforcements. Not so for the enemy. ALL the computer troops get to attack you at once. Secondly, you do not know where exactly the enemies may be. ALL of them know exactly where you are. This is a major problem, as they will quickly outnumber you if you do not attack their buildings, yet you cannot go looking as the other enemy forces will come in from another direction and destroy your camp. Third, the targeting needs to be better. There are some units, such as the 3 drakes as well as some cavalry units that move extremely rapidly. If you are not exactly on the right spot or they run too quickly, your units will advance instead of fire. Fourthly, your units may not respond to commands. You can order them to move, yet if an enemy fires at them, units will stop. They do not move again until you tell them to. When 3 enemy forces are attacking you and you're waiting on the reinforcement clock to expire, you cannot possibly watch every single unit all the time. Yet of course, the AI has no problem doing that. Fifthly, and my biggest complain, it doesn't matter what race you select, enemy units will ALWAYS have a longer firing range than you do. His archers will outshoot yours, his catapults with always reach farther than your fortress can return fire. Elevation such as towers for archers or hills for your big guns do not matter. You have to abandon towers or move your units into enemy fire in order to return fire.
I'll throw in a sixth complaint. Fortesses may as well be made of straw. They're almost useless because they are so very expense to make yet so easily knocked down.
The campaign is not so frustrating, but getting into the other solo games can be.

Fun game, but full of bugs and not supported by EA

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: September 16, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Okay, let me start off by saying that this game can be fun...but, there are huge problems in it. There are so many bugs in the game. It constantly crashes on me if I play for a decent amount of time. Also, there are too many other bugs in the game to list. I've contacted EA and they just ignore me and everyone else who complains about it. There's not even any plan to release another patch for the game. If you like real time simulations (RTS), then get a game not made by EA because their customer support is a joke.

Rogash hurt!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 75 / 87
Date: December 11, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Since the conclusion of the magnificant Lord of the rings film trilogy, those of us who are fans of this fictional world have to turn to whatever sources we can to enjoy it. Well, there's the books and movies of course, but we do crave other things, such as high quality video games. EA, who has had a stellar record with creating great video games based on this universe, now brings us thier latest adventure, (takes deep breath) The lord of the rings: The battle for middle earth II expansion pack: The rise of the witch king (whew!).

Rather then replaying the classic adventure from the books, EA takes us way back in time for this expansion back, back to the time period just after Sauron was defeated by the last alliance. His most trusted servant, the witch king, has managed to flee destruction and now hides in the North of Middle earth, with only his trusty horse (who is never given a name), his big sword, and his small, three pronged scepter. Now dark lord-less, the Witch king does what any most trusted servant of evil would do...build up his own kingdom! And so, for the next 500 years (not really mentioned in game), everyone's favorite nazgul will attempt to destroy the kingdom of Arnor in the north and claim it for his own.

With the stage set, the game begins. You control the Witch king, his various allies, and the new game faction, Agmar. Your goal is to conquer the kingdom of Arnor by any means necessary, including standing on graves, gathering crystals, and destroying magical eleven trees, among other things. Oh yes, you'll be doing a lot of fighting. Because TLOTRTBFME2EPTROTWK takes place approximatly one thousand sixty years or so before Sauron began rebuilding Barad-dur, the player gets a nice backstory on some of the history of middle earth, including finding out what what the witch king was doing before the events in the films, what happend in the collapse of Arnor, and learn the backstory behind Glorfindel's famous line, "Do not pursue him! He will not return to these lands. Far off yet is his doom, and not by the hand of man will he fall." The new faction of Agmar is introduced, which is a big mix of foot troops, mounted troops, and the new class of sorcerers (but from my experience, they are pretty much useless). In addition, we get to see some famous locations in thier heyday, such as the Barrow downs (before they were corrupted and had nasty wraith things), and we even get to see Aman-sul before it was turned into rubble.

Furthermore, this expansion pack features a respectable amount of new content. We have the new faction, Agmar, a new campaign, a revised war of the ring mode, and an updated create a hero mode.

But with all this new content...just exactly how fun is the game?

While the previous two games in the battle for middle earth franchise have been fun with a respectable level of challenge, the new campaign in TLOTRTBFME2EPTROTWK is without a doubt, the hardest yet in the series. The difficulty level here is high, so high that, with the exception of the first and last missions, it's pretty much gauranteed that you're going to have to re-try each mission at least once. On some, five or six times. For me, this is the biggest flaw of TLOTRTBFME2EPTROTWK. It's just way too hard. I played through the campgain on easy difficulty, and on some of the later missions I was having my rear end kicked and punched non-stop. Several times my teeth were gritting and grinding against each other in frustration. And at one mission (the second Barrow downs), at one point I was howling and screaming like a banshee in sheer frustration and anger (on the fifth retry no less). Why? Very commonnly, you're going up against very well armed and armored troops during the missions. And not only are they fully upgraded, they frequently outnumber you, sometimes coming out of nowhere on the maps, overwhelming you and making you re-play the mission all over again. Why did it take the witch king 500 years to conquer Arnor? I think it was because he kept pressing the "Restart mission" button over and over again. And keep in mind that I was playing the game on easy. I triple dog dare anyone to play this game on hard difficulty. If you manage to keep from smashing your moniter and taking a sledgehammer to the CD, then you have the nerves of a god.

The best way I can sum up my feelings about the new campaign is that it feels more like a chore to play it, rather then an experience to be enjoyed. Rather then looking forward to each new mission, I found myself slightly dreading each one, only to find my fears confirmed as I was faced with seemenly impossible mission objectives, overwhelming numbers of vastly superior troops, or moments of "How the hell am I going to do that?!" By the time the climactic siege of the campaign comes by (which took me an hour and twenty two minutes to complete) , I was more burned out then anything else, and simply wanted to get it over with so I could see how the game ended. Rather then the exciting siege of Dol Guldor, or the battle of the black gates from the previous two games, the end of TLOTRTBFME2EPTROTWK is a slight burnout. The final mission, which I won't reveal here, does bring back some of the simple enjoyment of the previous two games, but overall, the new campaign is, for me, too hard, too irritating and most of all, just not very fun. That's not to say however, that it isn't all bad. The first Barrow Downs mission is an absoloutly chaotic "King of the hill" mission that, while hard, is exciting to watch as you desperatly try to keep control of a hill while being assaulted again and again.

With the campaign out of the way, what else does TLOTRTBFME2EPTROTWK offer? Skirmish and multiplayer return, but since I cannot play online, I can only comment on skirmish. For this mode we get several new maps, including ones that were previously only avaliable on the collectors edition of the battle for middle earth two, such as the argonath, amon sul, a perfectly balanced snow map to see who truly is the better duelist, and even the paths of the dead.

All the factions in the game, with the exception of Agmar, get various tweaks and upgardes. Men for example, get rohan spearmen and mounted knights. Elves get noldorin warriors (the elven warriors seen at the last alliance), Dwarves get prince Bard of Dale as a new hero, so on and so forth. New berserker units are introduced in this expansion, who are basically very powerful units that can cause a lot of destruction to anything or anyone they come across. In a nice touch however, each faction can have only a few of these units on the field at any given time to help balance things out, so that Isengard can't overrun the field with an army of uruk-hai death bringers (who are armed with gigantic swords). My favorite tweaking is with mordor (who now gets Gothmag the orc as a hero), where instead of individual nazgul, you now get to control eight of them as a single unit, meaning that there are eight black horsies and thier riders galloping across the field (but I do wonder why you recruit the fearsome nine from the seige works? That doesn't make much sense). Tolkien fans will also appreciate how one of the nine is now named as Khamûl.

War of the ring, a risk/boardgame style strategy game, gets various tweaks and upgrades too. more territories have been added, meaning that players can finally cover all of middle earth for the first time (with the exception of the mysterious, cloud covered lands to the very far north and east, of which we know nothing). Buildings, units, and heroes no longer take a few turns to complete, all being finished in one turn, which is a very nice touch. In addition, units can move across two friendly territories in one turn (which, according to the game, allows you to re-create Theoden's frantic charge towards Minas Tirith!), but in a minor gripe, create-a-hero's cannot move as normal hero units, which is odd considering that they are, you know, supposed to be heroes. They have to be attatched to other heroes in order to invade new territories, which is a gripe, as I'd like to see my hero forging out on his own, rather then tagging along with other heroes. As a final note, the AI has gotten tweaked as well, meaning that they will retreat when they cannot win a battle (which saves a LOT of time during turns), and you can, at last, keep all the units trained during the battles, and they no longer vanish when you return to the world map. Overall, War of the ring is now definitly nicer with these upgrades.

So what about the final feature, create a hero? Sadly, this is a bit of a dissapointment. Players are supposed to be given even more freedom in creating thier hereos then ever before, but that is only true to a very slight degree. You still get the same default, non-changable voices as before, you can't alter faces, and there is only one real new category (a new type of troll), but because I don't care for trolls, that does not affect me. You do get a few new items and pieces of clothing, but it's usually only two things per category. For example, the man of the west gets two new helmets, two new shoulder pads, a new outfit (chain-mail), and a few arm and leg pads, but that's it. No new swords, no new shields. Wizards get two new staffs (Gandalf the white and Saruman's), a face with a very long beard, and that's pretty much it. This pattern is repeated for all the other hero categories. You get one or two new additions in some of the apperance categories, but that's it. While I do appreciate the ability to create a digital version of myself, the possibilities here just seem, in concept, limitless. Why not add capes? Capes make people look even more bad-a**. Why not add outfits from the common soliders from each faction? Why not add spears? I know that a lot of people would love the ability to modify and tweak body height, weight, and most of all, faces. Seeing your actual face on a create a hero would be absoloutly fantastic. In terms of modifications to hero options and apperances, TLOTRTBFME2EPTROTWK is a sad dissapointment.

However, there is one nifty feature that is nice. The powers system in create a hero has been adjusted so that the cost of your hero in skirmish and war of the ring is relevant to the hero's powers and abilities. Previously, every hero, no matter how powerful or weak they were, cost only 2000 resources. Here, the cost of your hero depends on the skills he (or she, or it) posesses. For example, you can create a man of the west hero who can ride a horse and has a leadership ability, but nothing else. With those two skills, he costs only about 800 resources, meaning that you can bring him into play very early. If you make him very heavily armored and powerful (in terms of stats), this can very very useful. You could also create a very powerful wizard armed with sonic blast, fireball, lighting, teleportation, and the awe-inspiring word of power shockwave, but doing so will make him cost a whopping 5000 resources. I like this idea, as it makes you seriously think about how your hero is powered. Will you create a early game hero, or one who comes into play late to wipe the enemy out? Overall, this is an upgrade that gets a solid thumbs up from me.

So, in the end, we come to the big question. Should you buy this game? I think it really depends on if you're a lord of the rings fan, and if you don't mind spending a good amount of money (I payed thirty dollars) for a good amount of new features. Overall for me, the new campgain is a hard dissapointment (I have no plans to ever play it again), the skirmish mode is as fun as ever, War of the ring has been nicely upgraded, and there is a clever price system for create a hero, but with dissapointingly few updates to apperance options. If you're a die hard lord of the rings fan as I am, then you can probably overlook the flaws and have a good time. But if you're only a casual fan who does not have the patientce to slug through a very hard campaign (well, very hard in my opinion) with the same, modified game as before, you're probably better off not buying this.

In conclusion, if you're a big fan of this literary saga and of this game franchise in general, and you have a high tolerance level for frustation, I would say you'd probably enjoy this. It's still fun to wreak havoc in skirmish, watch the new, three story tall wolf (avaliable only to Agmar) dash across the battlefield, and generally have fun with the mythology of this fictional world. Oh yeah, and controlling Sauron himself NEVER gets old. EA has created another very pretty (the graphics are GORGEOUS), very good sounding, somewhat frustrating game that, despite it's major flaw of difficulty, still has great fun buried beneath it.

This Game Could Have Been Made Better

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 18
Date: December 08, 2006
Author: Amazon User

First of all, this game has great graphics. Some of the creatures and units in the game look real cool. Also, this game has the longest title I have ever seen for any game in gaming history. Try to say "The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle Earth II, Rise of the Witch King" over and over ten times has fast you can and see what happens.

This game had the potential to be a great game. But something is definitely missing in this game. I played this game and than I played the the first "Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle Earth" game which is still my favorite Lord the Rings game.

The first thing I noticed when comparing this game to the first Lord of the Rings game is the speed of the units. The units in this game move way too fast and a lot of the units just slide around rather than walk or run around on the terrain. When the units slide around on the terrain, it just doesn't look very real. Also, with all the units moving super fast, it doesn't really give you time to set up some kind of defense like you could in the first game. I wish you could slow the units down to a more manageable speed. I'm a little bit disappointed that this game didn't have some kind of speed control on the units in the game. In the first Lord of the Rings, all the units moved perfect in the game. In this game, they don't. The developers are definitely going to have to make a few patches for this game.

Second, I don't like the Living World map in the game. The first Lord of the Rings game had a Living World Map with very detailed terrain and living creatures. This map just shows very basic, bland colors for the territories and that's it.

Also, how come units cannot fight from the top of the walls you build for castles and fortresses? In the first game, units could fight on top of the walls and walls were a lot harder to destroy. The walls in this game get destroy way too easy and the walls are too costly to rebuild.

I feel the game developers made some changes for the better and some changes were made for the worse for this game. Hopefully, for the next Lord of the Rings game the developers will learn from their mistakes and make a lot better game.

LOTR: Witchking

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: February 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Just and add on, it's battle for middle earth 2 only you can play as angmar. a few extra option to customize the appearance your heroes but no new powers. Same game new campaign, buy this if you're hardcore about these games.

Insanely hard campaign highlights a mediocre expansion

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 11
Date: December 28, 2006
Author: Amazon User

BFM 2: Rise of the Witch-King is an expansion pack of mixed emotions on my part. This expansion focuses on the Witch King's rise to power just when everyone thought EA had covered all of middle earth. I get this game for christmas and begin to start the single player campaign. The first mission is alright in which you have to win over the trolls and the black numenoreans (evil men). At the end I am surprised with 2 minutes to prepare for a large army of black numenoreans attacking my ill-defended string of citadels. This surprises me but there is more to come in the 2nd mission. In this mission, after securing the aid of the wild men you are forced to attack two arnorian citadels armed to the tooth. The soldiers are fully armed and at rank 3 with tons of trebuchets. You have a wild band of wild men and are expected to attack 2 castles that often go on the offensive. You are forced to frantically defend your land in return. I find this campaign to be ridiculously hard even on easy. If you look at other modes of the game, the hero mode is very over-hyped. The price system and troll class are decent additions but don't make the game spectacular. If your a fan of the War of the Ring mode (unlike me) you'd get more enjoyment from this game as i've heard its very improved. The nice thing is the additions to each faction, making skirmish play more fun and the factions more complete. Despite good additions, a good chunk of this game is a disappointment in my eyes. If your a die-hard war of the ring player then buy this game. If not, you should take a pass on this one.

This game gave me anger problems

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 10
Date: January 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

this game could have been so much better, this game is SO umbalanced. the new faction Angmar is easily the most powerful faction in the game next to the drawrves which makes me so mad because, this is a pretty good game other than these problems, the other problem is the worst AI known to man, (next to superman 64) it will completely ignore your units and go for your resource buildings (espicialy on brutal) maybe... just maybe a patch will come out and fix the bugs and if so get this game

Good expansion for a classic game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 30 / 34
Date: December 18, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This is an expansion pack that does what all expansions should do: it improves upon the original game and adds new content. While RotWK does not revolutionize the basic gameplay of BFME2, it is a worthwhile addition.

Gameplay: The expansion simply adds more to the intense, visually stunning RTS that is BFME2. The single-player campaign introduces the story of the Witch-king's rise to power and allows you to play the bad guys, which is fun in this instance. There are 8 mission, plus an epilogue that allows you to play the kingdom of Arnor (a carbon copy of Men of the West). The campaign, at least on normal difficulty, can be quite hard in places, and you might be surprised to find yourself repeating a few of the missions. Overall, it is an adequate diversion, which will take about 5-6 hours to complete.

The create-a-hero system is much improved. Now, you can create your own in-game avatar using a power-purchasing system that makes sense and will allow for some diversity in the game. You can make a "cheap" hero, who can be afforded during the early game, or make an expensive one that will almost rival Sauron. A few new powers have been added, along with a troll class and some more clothing/armor options. Truthfully, the new power-purchasing system should have been added with a patch, so that people with the original game could receive this fix. In any event, the new system here is much welcomed and makes player-made heroes more balanced and interesting.

The best improvement of the original gameplay comes with the changes to the War of the Ring (WotR) mode. Now, the armies that you create in the RTS skirmishes carry over to the strategic map and can be moved around with your 4 heroes. There is an upkeep cost that keeps this army persistence feature from getting out of hand. Also, you can build more things from the strategic map, such as siege maps and unit upgrades. Finally, the AI plays a bit smarter. For example, it will retreat when it is losing a fight. Also, AI opponents put up a better fight than before and will build walls occasionally. The WotR mode also has about 10 new territories added to it.

The major addition to the game is the new Angmar faction, led by the Witch-king. It is a mixture of fallen men, trolls, and sorcerers. It's distinctive enough to be truly considered a separate race. The most fun unit is the thrallmaster, who can summon a squad of units on the fly to fit most any situation. The sorcerers are interesting too, but fragile and require some close micromanagement. Angmar's heroes are decent, with the Witch-king and Rogash (a powerful troll) being the best ones. Each of the existing races get a couple new units, including an elite "mini-hero" horde, which is not always worth the high cost (compared to just recruiting a new hero from the fortress).

Graphics: Basically the same as BFME2, which is to say that they are quite good. On a good computer, you'll be able to enjoy some beautiful textures, convincing unit animations, weather effects, and other nice graphics.

Sound: The music is based on the movie soundtrack, which is great. Voice acting is pretty decent. As with BFME2, the ambient sounds, unit acknowledgements, and combat audio are well done.

Stability/technical issues: The game has been quite stable on my machine. I used to get a crash or two on the WotR strategic map, but no more. The manual does a decent job explaining the new faction and improvements to gameplay.

Replayability/Value: With the improved create-a-hero system, more persistent armies in the War of the Ring Mode, new units for existing races, and the new Angmar faction, this expansion gives the original game even more longevity. The single-player campaign, though a challenge, is largely forgettable. However, it's the skirmishes and the WotR strategic game (finally fixed!) that will keep you coming back to this great game.

witch king expansion pack

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 10
Date: January 31, 2007
Author: Amazon User

the expansion pack doesn't offer much that's different from the original game.

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