Electronic Arts Lord Of The Rings: Battle For Middle-Earth

Full Product - MPN: 14633149128

Description: Experience Middle-earth like never before in The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth, the first The Lord of the Rings game that puts you in command of a real-time, open world. Control the legendary heroes, massive armies, and epic campaigns of Middle-earth in over... read more

Experience Middle-earth like never before in The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth, the first The Lord of the Rings game that puts you in command of a real-time, open world. Control the legendary heroes, massive armies, and epic campaigns of Middle-earth in over 25 missions based on all three films of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. From waging all-out combat among the vast forces of good and evil to controlling your favorite heroes and characters to managing the troops and resources of your side, the fate of a living, breathing Middle-earth is in your hands. minimize

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SqueeMK2 from IA

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Apr 2005

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User has 2 Months of experience with this product

Battle for Middle Earth

Strengths:

Excellent graphics and sound, great use of the franchise.

Weaknesses:

Spotty AI, balance issues.

Posted Jul 16, 2005 - This is a tricky one. Battle for Middle Earth isn't really a well balanced RTS, and yet... I still have more fun playing it than other games. True, I'm a big Lord of the Rings fan/geek and watching a troll pick up a tree and smack a bunch of Gondor infantry away gets me all tingly, but it still seems to have a high fun factor. The game looks and sounds great, and the units look like they were all torn from the movie, and the sound of battle is very nicely done. Apart from that, there are some flaws. Namely, the balance. Heroes (Mostly for Rohan, who get the lion's share of the heroes) are insanely powerful if they level up a bit. To the point where you can practically play with just your heroes and leave the armies at home. Also, the fire arrows upgrade for archers lets them take down most anything easily. Also, the campaign (And game itself) aren't based on "Realism" to the LotR universe. Namely, if you're playing the good campaign, you use Gandalf and defeat the balrog. Plus Gandalf has moves like shooting bolts of lightning or some sort of force push abilitiy. If you can overlook those, you're set. I'd say add another two stars if you're a big fan of Lord of the Rings. Otherwise, I would suggest mostly ignoring it as it isn't a very special RTS game by itself.

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snide23 from WI

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Apr 2004

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User has 1 Months of experience with this product

Ultimately, the game is fun for a while. If you re ...

Strengths:

Middle Earth franchise, good representation of large battles (and middle earth), good graphics, good sound

Weaknesses:

repetitive after a very short while, install problems, pointless resource gathering, poor tutorial

Posted Jun 25, 2005 - Ultimately, the game is fun for a while. If you really liked the movie and really like RTS's, than you will really like this game. Otherwise, you'll probably find it fun for a short while and then move on to something else. This review is based on the single player campaign only; I have not played multiplayer. Installing this game was a nightmare. It took me a period of about 8 hours over a span of 3 days to get the game running correctly. In essence, I had to manually copy the files from the DVD to the HDD and then run the installer, and then manually recopy all of the movie files from the DVD to the appropriate install directory. But once I figured out that, it ran well and fairly stable for an EA game. The graphics are good, but for the large battles (and there are many), a high end system is needed to avoid sluggishness at high resolutions. I liked how the campaign follows the movie; I didn't like that it didn't really give you much freedom to stray from the story and attack different places at different times - very linear. The character animations are good, sound effects are good, and the music comes from the movie and has a decent variety. If you liked the movie orchestration you will like the music in the game. A nice little touch is the playing of short movie clips in one corner of the screen whenever you click on an object, but you fail to notice it after a while. It doesn't take that long to get into the game, but don't count on the tutorial to help much, as there aren't any tutorial levels to actually play. You just have to sit and watch and try to remember what the tutorial movies tell you. Unfortunately, the simplicity of the system may be this game's biggest weakness, as you pretty much have to follow the same strategy time and again which leads to a quick tiring of the game. Halfway through the scenario I was playing I really didn't have much motivation to continue since the challenge lacked. And the resource gathering could just as well have been eliminated as it ends up playing such a minor part in the game: setup your building and then forget about it. I guess I like a little more micromanagement to draw me into the game more. Other than that the battles are pretty standard fare when it comes to RTS's: figure which unit does well against which unit and try to make sure that you get the correct units against the enemy. Fairly straight forward. But the game does do a great job of getting lots of units on the battlefield at once and nearly creating those epic battles from the movie.

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Steelpen2

Member Since
Aug 2006

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User has 1 Days of experience with this product

Battle for Middle Earth

Strengths:

Based on the LOTR movies Replay key battles from the movies. The whole map of Middle Earth is available. Graphics and Sounds are excellent.

Weaknesses:

Real-Time Strategy game, which is not my preference of a game. Not a lot of units to play with. Have to stick to the timeline of the Lord of the Rings movies.

Posted Aug 15, 2006 - I am not a Real Time Strategy fan, but I am a fan of the Lord of the Rings series. Therefore, that is why I bought this game. I like the sound and graphics of this game. They are spot on from all three movies. However, since this game is an RTS, I am not really thrilled by playing it. There is not a whole lot of units to play with, and one has to stick to the timeline of the Lord of the Rings movies, cannot play any custom scenarios or what not. Doing basically the same thing became boring and repetitive.

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Bryar

Member Since
Aug 2006

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User has 4 Days of experience with this product

Battle for Middle Earth

Strengths:

Looks great. Sounds great. Long campaign.

Weaknesses:

AI sometimes dumb.

Posted Aug 15, 2006 - Awesome. I have played games like the warcraft series, age of empires, total annhilation, etc. And this one is just as good as those in gameplay and in so many ways better. The fact that it's set in Middle-earth is perfect. How could an RTS game not be made in that universe? It's perfect for all those giant battles. The graphics are awesome and thanks to the movie deals are pretty faithful to the look and design of the movies. The music is from Howard Shore's with some extra that I think only adds to the experience. The sound is great. When a hero charges pass a battallion of horsemen they cheer and follow the hero into battle. I love the ability to be able to trample foot soldiers when riding horses. At first I was a little skeptical of not being able to control each individual unit. Instead you have battalions or hordes of 5 units. I quickly warmed up to it. Another thing I really did not like was the fact that you couldn't build anywhere on the map. Instead you build on plots. You have the choice of which buildings to build on those plots. I guess it's ok. I've gotten use to it and am enjoying the way it all works. Be sure to download the latest patch so you can get new maps and have the units better balanced along with a slew of other updates. The game looks beautiful. The sounds & music draw you right in. After playing through the single player evil/good campaign there looks to be a lot of re-playability with skirmish and multi-player. It's not the perfect RTS but it sure is fun, especially for LOTR fans.

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surferkev from CA

Member Since
Jan 2005

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User has 4 Days of experience with this product

Warcraft 3 and Rise of Nations... A little bit from column A, a lot from column B

Strengths:

Very much like Peter Jackson's movies with voices provided by the cast, Troops level along with your heroes and you can take them with you throughout the campaign, good gameplay, graphics, and sound

Weaknesses:

Troop movement and controls a little awkward, not as refined like Warcraft 3 but almost as responsive as Rise of Nations

Posted Mar 31, 2006 - This game is a blast to play and easy to install. It's like reliving the movies' big battles (particularly if you are playing the good campaign). You play the length of the Middle Earth map covered in the movies, selecting territory to attack/defend in the style of Risk (and RoN). The troops are grouped in battalions (like RoN), but they level up and you can assign them group names to help you recognize them in the midst of battle. Sometimes the mass battles can fill the screen with troops so it is difficult to see what's happening with a particular group. Even on a fast computer with lots of memory, running this game at the highest settings during these mass battles can cause stuttering on occasion. The heroes are powerful and fun to use but a bit uneven. There are many powers to focus on and change your strategy of the game, such as mass healing, summoning archers or an elven forest. This game is a great entertaining experience, regardless of if you enjoyed the movie or not. Definitely recommended prior to playing LOTR Battle for Middle-Earth II.

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