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Really Great RTS conversion of the Lord of the Rings

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 12
Date: March 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I'm surprised that the only two reviews for this game rip it. This is a really great game. First I'll give you my specs. I'm running it on a custom built pc but its nothing fancy:

Athlon 2800 xp
1 gig of ram
ATI Radeon 9600XT

The game would not run initally when I installed it. Which worried and still bothers me. It obviously shows that they didn't test it well because I have seen that I'm not the only one who has had problems. After I patched it the game ran and I started my first skirmish to get a good feel for the game before I started the campaigns. The game ran ok but a little slow on 1024 x 768 with the detail level set at high. It wasn't really choppy but the units seemed to move in slow motion. So I decided to bump my detail level down to medium and the game runs good. I've never played the first version of the game but I have played a ton of RTS titles.(all the command and conquer titles, all the warcraft games, Age of empires 1,2,3, age of mythology, empire earth, warhammer 40k, Rise of nations, etc... So I know my way around an RTS. I really enjoyed some of the small touches with this game. Such as haveing a percentage meter for my farms because they need a large amount of land in order to produce crops so you can't just pile a bunch of them next to each other and I liked being about to build walls for my fortress and adding defenses. After playing a few matches I'll have to say that its a really fun game. The graphics are good and I love the animations. I liked the build your own hero feature but it really lacks in options. I couldn't believe how few options you have to customize your hero! Overall this game is a good game and worth purchasing. Especially if you like lord of the rings or you like building a base and defending it. Some RTS's focus on attacking and although this game isn't lacking in offensive power it really does shine in giving you defensive options which I find is one of my favorite parts of RTS games. I like building a base and trying to make it as inpenetrable as possible. Some games give you one turret or tower type to protect your base. This game allows you to build walls and then add in trebucets, arrow towers, different gates, and special creatures that will help to protect your base. You really care about your base after you're finished and can enjoy what you've built. I really liked this game and will continue to play it for a while, at least until elder scrolls oblivion comes out and I get addicted to that.

crazy sweet game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: August 28, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game rocks! It's got some major pros but it also has a small amount of cons. I'm a big fan of RTS games, like the age of empires series. This game has all the awsome traits of most great RTS games, but it adds a whole other level of gameplay from the lord of the rings additions. It has all the major factions, men, elves, dwarves, mordor, isengard, and the goblins. The men are basically rohan and gondor combined. i havent played as them other than the tutoriul so i dont know a lot about them. the elves rock out loud as archers (plus they have ents) and they have fair swordsman. the dwarves are definitly close range and seige,they dont even have calvary.
mordor is mainly military all around. they have little inexpensive orcs and haradrim, but they also have huge trolls and mumikils.isengard i havent played but as far as i can tell they're pretty similar to mordor. the goblins have an insane ability to climb walls and like the dwarves can use they're mines as transportation.
I think that having forts instead of town centers is wayyyyyyy cooler. Instead of one wimpy arrow every 5 seconds you can now have almost 7 trebuchets all attacking the enemy! Also instead of having to tell your whole army to attack one guy you can now spread an invasion out because you create units in groups of about 15. Plus that makes the battle look soooo much cooler. only huge units and heros are created in ones. oh yah heros they rock! you can use gandalf to wipe out almost a whole battalion with one magic blast! you can even create your own hero. he/she can be an elf, dwarf, man, wizard, servent of sauroman, or corrupted man. each class has different abilities.
on levels like minis tirith you can actually mount archers on the walls and have them take out nearly all they're units. the gates even open and close.
the only bad thing is the fact that it's so darn hi-tech it crashes sometimes, but other than that it's fine.
so basically THIS GAME ROCKS.

Very detailed, Lots of hours to play!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: March 11, 2006
Author: Amazon User

If you love to play strategy games that have quality and content then you will love this as much as i do. I am just a little bit dissapointed because personally i found it too easy for a very advanced strategy game player, even in difficult mode. (since Warcraft I and Conmand and Conquer 1 i have played all strategy games that exist!!)So, even if your are Battle Realms generation or Rome Total War this game is not very hard.
Another point that has me hooked is that due to the new "War of the Ring" Risk type game i have more reason to come back and play, even if it is easy for me.
AS far as the online matters are conserned, i do not tend to play online so i do not know if those issues exist (or not) in my disk of the game.

Very Good

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: July 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

First of all Ive played a few strategy games and I have to say none of them come even close to this game. Now if your looking for a good campaign mode I couldnt tell you because im not too into strategy campaign modes too much. As of what I have played of it which is only the first level of the good and evil campaign I could say that its pretty decent but not my type of thing.

There is also the War of the ring mode which I dont even have a clue about because theres so many choices to choose in how to play it that I dont even want to get into that but its basecly take control of territories.
Then theres Skirmish which is the reason why I bought the game. Now that I can tell you about below.

There are levels you can gain in skirmish. For instance you start out at level one and gain levels. I dont understand it yet but I think it has an effect on your in game units because I have heard of putting handicap on the computers to make them even because of their levels but I just play with out it.

There are plenty of maps to choose from and there is a complaint about the size of the levels in this review section. The solution to that is simply, if your playing 1 on 1 and you want a bigger map then dont select a 2 player map select a bigger one and that solves that. There is only one 8 player map though and I do admit with 8 players it would be pretty cramped and thats wear the only plroblem I see with the complaint of small maps.
There is also maps like isenguard or helms deep and minus tereth or how ever you spell that. These allow you to choose to start inside with the protection of walls and a gate that the computer has to destroy to get in. This adds a lot of fun to the skirmish modes although if you wanted the computer to start in the walls and try to have the fun of breaking in you really cant because the computer will constantly send units to you as if they werent protected by the walls which I dont like.

There are levels on the computer from easy to ultra hard which will satisfy new or experienced players.

Although they do have things to upgrade your fortress or build walls you really cant because the computer will rush you and you need units and cant spend your resources on walls. By the time you do get the time for walls then your really just playing too long into the game and its pretty much over so the need for walls is over. You can although start with more resourses to build walls but that might just make the computer send more guys to you.

There is only one type of resourse and its an auto gathering building which I think ruins the game because the ability to gather resources and more of them adds more strategy to the game. You can however have a building in which units will actually gather them but is only available to the evil sides.

For every unit there is a counter which is pretty cool. For instance horses can run over units with swords or bows but if its against pikmen then your horses are done with.

After playing with all of the different sides you realize the choices in units get old. Each side has something thats usualy the strong type for that side so you find yourself getting the same things over and over when playing as the sides and I think more units could have been put into the game.

Not enough population cap. The max ive seen is 1000 which doesnt mean 1000 units because you get battalions instead of training one at a time and battalions cost a sertant ammount of population but dont actualy have that much in them.

You will need a pretty good computer to play it without the lag of when you have a lot of units on the screen which gets annoying but its not too bad.

I hope that somewhat helped you in your choice of buying it as I tried to add as much info as I could about it but im still learning. Definately will keep you entertained and is worth the buy.

Could've been 5 stars...but rather feels like a poor beta version.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 13
Date: March 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

In short, I cannot even recommend this game to someone I dislike unless they update it significantly or until it hits the bargin bin.

There are a lot of good points about this game: Excellent graphics & controls, nice single-player campaign modes, it is also multiplayer (though I haven't test that yet), and nice inbetween mission movies. From many standpoints it is a good RTS game. But...

However, it gets a rating of 3 stars from me. This "final" version feels much more like a poor beta version where little to no actual playtesting has been done. Response from EA in their forums regarding the various problems has been nil.

The AI: non-existant. Playing EASY level the CPU will send the same units to be slaughtered in the same manner over and over again. There are tons of ways to out-wit your defenses, yet the CPU does nothing in that regard. Playing the next level up and you're attacked on a huge map within 90 seconds by overwhelming forces (which come out of nowhere). So far it seems they use the sad and pathetic difficulty level method of give the CPU more units at start, make it easier & quicker to build such units, and that's it. This has been discussed extensively on their forums with no response despite their advertising a New AI system built from the ground up. At this point it's subterranean if you ask me.

Base-Building: They spent a lot of effort and thought into this aspect of the game. However, given that its a very FAST paced RTS which falls down into build units & engage ASAP I've found little need for such base-building even though I enjoy building massive fortresses in each scenario anyway.

No useful pause in Single Player mode. I'll admit I'm a greybeard and not much of a fan for fast-paced RTS games. I prefer sitting back and planning each attack out. Having a simple pause when things get too hectic to allow you to jump to the various battles and issue commands, then jump back to your base and build simultaneously is essential to me. It's also common sense to have it in any RTS game for single player missions. Missing this feature is "alright" at the lower levels, but as soon as I hit level 7 I was being attacked in three different places at the same time, and given a time limit to build my base. Sorry EA, but I play a game to relax not get annoyed.

Overall this game could and should have been a 5. However, it just feels like it was rushed out the doors and is sadly lacking a lot to make it worthy of its pricetag. There's a lot of other gripes from Tolkien fans regarding odd units not in the books (scorpion riding goblin king?!?) & a number of unbalanced units from RTS gamers. From what I've read in the EA forums there's something in this game that seems to bother everyone. What bothers me the most is that EA came so close to making this great, but flopped it (IMO) due to poor playtesting and lack of common sense.

BTW: It installed fine & runs well even with many units on the screen at the same time. I have a 2.4GHz 1GB mem and Radeon 9600 w/256MB. The only occasional lag I see is when a building gets destroyed.

A real shocker in a good and bad way

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: December 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The greatest strategy on earth and i own it. now i'm going to give you read out why you should by this game. i will also tell you the features.
first of my favorite ting is creating your own hero with swords, axes, shields, armour, pads, stats(such as power and health), and powers. i like using the wizard class the best because of their awesome powers like fire balls and evens the hero gandalf's word of power spell. don't worry about getting the first game before the second because the first sucks. in this game you can customize your central fortress with catapaults, towers, and walls. you can build anywhere and command large armys. the factions you can play as are,Men, Elves, Dwarves, Isengard, Mordor, and Goblins. you can controls a navy and the spell that you can choose are so darn cool it's unbelievable. (Whew!) and i'm just getting started, there are new maps, a story driven campaign, and a risk style war of the ring mode. i say if you have the cash (which is not alot) then get this game NOW!!!!!! thank you for reading this review.

Great Game, But The Campaign Is Way Too Short

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: July 28, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Like it says above,love the game...don't love the campaign.IT'S WAY TOO SHORT! If you've played LOTR BFME 1,you probably loved the loooooooooong campaign.The shirmishes(open play battles)on it were
pretty fun,but the campaign was great.Anyway, the game has lots of great things too,first the new factions.The factions are...Elves,Men of the West,Dwarves,Mordor,Isengard,and Goblins.
as well as adding 3 new factions,The old Rohan and Gondor factions have been combined into one, Men of the West
One of the new things to do is a thing Called Hero Builder as well as using the old LOTR Heros you can build your own heros.
First you pick their class, you choose from...Heros of the West
(Good Men),Elves,Dwarves,Wizards,Servants of Sauron,(orcs,uruks and trolls)and Corrupted Men(Evil Men).

The gameplay is almost the same as BFME 1, only instead of having
build plots you start out with two laborers that can build structures almost anywhere. Resource collecting buildings
can be built almost anywhere , they have a large circle around them. The buildings circle must be clear of cliffs,water bodies,and other resource collecting buildings circles to have 100% resource output. if they have any of those the output percent will be measured by how much clear land it does have.
if 2 resource collecting buildings circles overlap the one that was finished first will own the overlap area.
Okay one last thing, their is one other feature.its called
War of the Ring, it plays out almost exactly like the board game
RISK only when you come to a battle you can play it just like a skirmish.

Anyway if you like a fun game with some great stuff buy this game,
If you like long campaign don't.

Outstanding recreation of middle earth battles

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: March 08, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The developers did a great job of recreating the atmosphere and essence of Middle Earth battles. My sons and I all enjoy the game immensely. I dumped Age of Empires III for this.

Good Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: May 13, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is very fun to play. The graphics are amazing. But unlike Battle for Middle Earth 1, The campain is very short. It also takes place in the the north of Middle Earth. All of the Big Battles, like the battle for Minas Tirith, in the movie and the book take place in the South. The war of the north is Only said once in the book.
But if you're looking for good graphics, this is the place to go. But you need a very powerful computer to run it on the ultra high setting(1gb of ram).
All and all, it's a pretty good game.

A Pretty Good Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: November 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The second BFME is pretty cool. Unlike its counter-part, it takes place in northern Middle Earth. There are all new factions, new environments, and an awesome new feature that allows you to create your own hero. You can be the elves, men of the west (which is a combination of Rohan and Gondor), dwarves, goblins, Isengard, Mordor, and Corrupted men (Easterlings, and Corsairs of Umbar). The goblins are my favorite because they have all these cool monsters like giant spiders, Mountain giants, and fire drakes, which is a sort of flightless fire-breathing dragons. The only problem with this game is that it is too short.

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