Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II

Lord of the Rings Battle for Middle Earth II

Over View:
This is a movie based Real Time Strategy or RTS. I say based instead of tie-in, as you will see characters form the movie in the game but the game it self is actually derived from the books. Most people (now days) know the wonderful world J.R.R. Tolkien gave to us, even if they don’t know who Tolkien was, They at least should know the epic blockbuster movies so you should have some inkling as to what The Lord of the Rings (Lotr) is. If not (in short) it’s an epic fantasy world told through generations of the war torn races known as Man, Elves, Dwarves and Orks. If you don’t know the stories I encourage you to take the time to read and enjoy the books or at the very least watch the movies, because the game’s storyline and characters are taken directly from the events of the books, which are pretty accurately portrayed in the movies. If you haven’t read the books or seen the movies or even care what (LortR) is about, don’t worry you’ll still be able to easily follow and enjoy this games story.

Graphics:
Graphically this title is sound, but most RTS titles are. The over head God type viewing doesn’t lend much to high definition graphics and minute details, but that’s not to say they are not in there. As you upgrade your buildings they do show a marked difference in appearance and the world round you is rich if not small. You probably won’t be overly wowed with the graphics, but you won’t be disgusted with them either.
You also get cut scenes between missions. These cut scenes are combination of CGI that fade into standing art. There is really not much to them, they are just here to move the missions along and if you choose to skip them, you really won’t be missing much.

Sound:
To be honest I don’t care for the sound bites of RTS titles, they seem to loop over and over and this title is no exception. If you get an objective and don’t immediately start on that objective and in most cases even if you do start on them immediately you’ll still here the same sound loops over and over. The good thing is the voice acting on this title is above par and in most cases they use the real actors or people who sound very much like them.

Playability:
Fun, the control scheme is not hard to manage. Bare in mind there are many races to help you thru each side of the campaign, but you will primarily be playing as one or another and with two others being secondary. (see Good/Evil campaigns) These races each have their strengths and weaknesses. You usually start with a builder and/or heroes along with some standard troops. As you progress options open to build more structures, then you can upgrade each structure. Some structures require you to have another opened up before you can build or use said structure. You can also upgrade your troops thru the upgrading of your structures.
Your troops are pretty standard for any RTS title you’ll get your ranged attackers such as; archers and artillery (catapults), your infantry troops, which break down into; fast movers (cavalry and siege troops. Slower moving but a lot tougher. Both sides are pretty equal and you do have to play on the strengths of your troops to the weakness of the enemy. Don’t send archers in to kill infantry troops by themselves, but archers against siege machines work wonderfully. Your troops also have a default setting where they will stand around until they see an enemy, whence they will attack said enemy without you having to tell them to do so. This can be toggled on or off, but toggling it off could have your troops just standing there as arrows or worse barrages them. On the other hand your troops can find themselves moving into enemy territory setting off timed events at certain check points that your not ready for and even provoking a larger invasion your not ready for.
There is also an extra powers menu, which can be very useful in the later missions of the campaigns, this menu grants you certain powers based on battle points you earn thru missions. The only real draw back is that you don’t have a “snap back” option which would allow you to snap back to a certain home base or area quickly you have to monitor the battle filed thru a small map which will flash red if any area is under attack. I found this a little disorienting at times and could not find my fights on larger maps too quickly. The speed of troops and making troops depend on upgrades and resources, I didn’t find this too debilitating but the use of the extra powers recharge is a little long for my taste and I didn’t find much use for them save in the evil campaign.
One of the drawbacks to this game is a thing called Command Points. Command points are the set number of troops that you can have during any mission. You can upgrade command points with certain structures, but if you reach the command point limit then you will not be able to make any more troops of any kind and this could prove fatal in achievement hunting.
I’d say one of the best features for this game is the save function. As with most every video game these days there is an auto save function, but this only auto saves the beginning of every mission. Lucky you can save the game anytime you want thru use of the menus and I would highly suggest you do that. There are certain times when time is of the essence and a well placed save point may be the difference between swift victory or hours of replay.

Single Player:
This is broken into two campaigns the Good and the Evil. As you may guess the first mission is not really that hard for either campaign, it’s sort of a warm up, but if you want a true tutorial you will need to actually play the two tutorials the game has, which are good for an achievement. In the Good side of the campaign you will be playing as Elves and Dwarves and sometime humans. You begin at Rivendell and as you progress you fight your way to Mordor and the epic final battle. In the Evil side of the campaign you will be playing as Orks and Goblins and begin at Mordor and you guessed it fight your way to Rivendell. Your missions on either side are just about the same type of missions as you progress, search and destroy, defend and even capture certain areas. Mostly though it’s search and destroy. During your missions your main objectives are given to you at pace and will show up in yellow (or gold) letters. Here is an example: Mission one (Good)
As the game starts your first objective is to:
. Bring Glorfindel and his Elves to Rivendell.
As most RTS games go your map will be blacked out and you have to explore the area in which you will find enemy encampments or roaming patrols. However the game does give you a small-uncovered area normally your main objective in which you then have to cross the blacked out map to get to. There are a few ways to get there go slow and fight your way thru what ever you encounter, or simply click on your destination and run as fast as you can to it. Both are viable scenario but also have their pros and cons, for instance some troops move a lot slower than others and in the running scenario those troops can be left behind and quickly over come by enemy forces. Then again some troops are not that battle effective and if you stand and fight you may loose more troops then wanted. You also have to be very aware that your builders will not participate in any battles and thus you cannot select all with them. (Selecting all, selects all your troops in the area for a quick movements, you learn this in the tutorials) After you reach the gates of Rivendell you get another objective:
. Warn Elrond of the approaching goblin army.
Easy enough just ride up to your original destination and Elrond comes out to speak with you. (If you ever forget what your next objective is or a bonus objective is then you can always see these in the menus). He will then give you the next objective:
. Defend Rivendell from attack.
Here you will have your first taste of using structures and building troops. This will also give you a bonus objective. Bonus objectives are shown in green letters and must be accomplished for most achievements, (See Achievements) Bonus objectives are also sort of tricky because they won’t always appear on screen as with regular objectives, nor will they always be mentioned/spoken during your always check your objectives. Partially thru defending Rivendell you will get the next objective:
. Destroy the goblins base to the south.
Here you will have to train some troops which plays in to the next bonus objective:
. Train a battalion of Lorien Warriors from your barracks.
By this time the next bonus objective should have already popped up during this level.
. Gloin must reach level 2.
Again very easy, but also very easily missed. This being a review I will not go in to detail on how to do this.

This is how the rest of the missions will go on either side. Objectives of course get harder and depending on how you play it, this could be a very long game or a very quick one. Some missions go a lot faster then others but I’ll have to say the final mission on either side will take you some time.


Achievements:

There are 35 total achievements for this game, which total 705 gamer score.
What? Yup right from the get go…and it gets worse.

13 of the 35 achievements have been discontinued and are no longer obtainable.
The servers were shut down due to EA loosing the licensing. They shut down the servers to the Multi Player in 2011.

Not to overly hard, but they can get time consuming depending on how you play.

Most of the campaign achievements for this game require you to complete every objective including bonus objectives. (Use the save feature and this will be easy) I actually completed the Good campaign only using the auto save features, I didn’t know about the manual save.

There are two achievements for both sides Good and Evil, which require you to complete the campaigns without loosing a hero. (Very easily done)

Multi Player: N/A these are the 13 unobtainable achievements.

Misc.:
There was a planed DLC called The Rise of the Witch-King, which presumably would have given the rest of the 295 gamer score and delta with the rise of the Witch-King a prequel so to say it would have also given more and diversified units to control.