Overall, I rate this game a 4. It is an action/strategy game in the vein of Star Wars: Battlefront. You take on the role of a warrior, archer, scout, or mage in some of the famous battles of LOTR history. If you play well enough, you may get the opportunity to play a "hero" character, which is essentially a buffed up counterpart to the "grunts" that you normally play and can turn the tide of battle. Playable heroes include Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli in the War of the Ring campaign. It has the film license and therefore uses scenes and voices from Peter Jackson's trilogy. However, it only loosely follows the story, as the focus in LOTR:C is on conquering certain areas or accomplishing objectives which may or may not jive with the original story.
It is a great improvement over the last gen contributions allowing for a little more strategy and replayability. The "alternate history" campaign is a clever addition that may irritate Tolkien purists but allows for a sense of anticipation and mystery to see how the designers have imagined a world overrun by the forces of Sauron.
Graphics = 3.5
Not top notch by any stretch, but when you consider (as other reviewers have mentioned) that the game has been designed to allow for 150 characters on-screen at once acting independently, they look pretty good. I was a little disappointed at the panoramic/overhead shots of the battlefields and fortresses leading into each mission. Although they capture the essence of the films, they seem blocky and not as detailed as I would have expected for a next-gen game. Character models look good, though I had difficulty in some missions identifying orcs/evil humans from further away. Movement and combat animations are nice but it is noticeable early on that characters of the same class always move in the same way (Grima Wormtongue is a buffed up scout, Aragorn is a buffed up warrior, etc.). In general, the battlefields are beautiful and relatively expansive, especially Pelennor Fields, and are literally full of activity, giving the impression of an epic battle happening around you.
Sound = 4
Don't spend much time appreciating sound but it seemed appropriate. The soundtrack is straight from the films which is nice. The voice of Elrond telling me the objective every 30 seconds was a little annoying at times, but actually did serve well when I got holed up the first time through the campaign and needed to redirect my efforts.
Gameplay = 4
This game is fun. Each class has its own set of strengths and weaknesses and seem to be balanced fairly well. A mage is deadly from a distance and can heal his comrades but won't last long if confronted by a warrior with a flaming sword. An archer has powerful arrows with area affects that are very useful, but become limited and quickly overwhelmed if enemies get too close. Warriors are sufficiently powered for up close combat and have several devastating moves that can eliminate multiple foes at once. They can also take more hits and are in general harder to stumble and kill. Scouts are a little more specialized. They have good melee skills and can string 8 moves together into a fairly effective combo but their real beauty is the ability to become invisible and "backstab", resulting in a one-hit kill. They are more fragile than warriors, however, and cannot take as many direct hits.
The game is essentially objective based. The player is presented with a wide open battlefield where enemies and allies will continue to respawn until objectives are completed. The player has a limited number of "lives" or respawns, before the game will register a defeat; these lives are gradually replenished as major objectives are completed. Exhausting all of your respawns is not the only way to lose a scenario, however. There are also times when a particular area needs to be "held" as a counter ticks down to the arrival of reinforcements or some other in-game event. The failure to hold this area and getting overrun will also end the scenario in defeat.
Winning a scenario involves completing objectives which may include conquests (capturing certain areas on the map), assassinations (eliminating a particularly nasty enemy hero), or sabotage (destroying enemy fortifications or siege engines). These objectives must be completed by the player, as the AI controlled allies will fight and support fairly well but do little else.
One bug that I noticed involved the siege of Isengard. At one point in the mission, you are given the opportunity to control Ents. It just so happened that my Ent was on the receiving end of a couple of flaming arrows and went down fairly quickly. I respawned as a warrior and noticed that all the Ents had been activated but only one or two were actively fighting in the battle zone. The others were either motionless or on the outskirts of the battle fighting with no apparent contribution to the objective, which was to capture a particular area. Without the Ent support, the area to capture was completely overrun. I tried through about five lives to clear the area sufficiently to capture and could never do so. This only happened once, however. Related to this, you will sometimes find that the AI will send a surge of support to the wrong area, leaving you solo to accomplish an objective. This led to my defeat more than once, but I found that the AI would behave differently when I started over and I would find repeat attempts easier to complete.
I spent little time in multiplayer but found it to be fun. It would be nice to have more than 8 vs. 8 to give the battles a more epic feel. No lag, and the battles seem fairly balanced when the characters involved are the standard picks. However, there are no ranking or matchmaking systems to speak of and I'm still at a loss as to how you can play as a hero character. I recall that my buddy and I entered a multiplayer match to find that we were only given the option to select the typical grunts but were fighting against heroes. Of course we lost badly and I couldn't figure out how the game would allow for this type of matchup. Maybe a question that another reviewer can answer.
Replay value = 3.5
The good and evil campaigns will give most gamers a total play time of 8-10 hours. I can't imagine wanting to replay the single player campaigns more than once or twice, but maybe to unlock achievements or conquer the game at a higher difficulty level. The multiplayer could definitely present additional replay value, but based on my experience there would need to be the addition of a matchmaking system and quality downloaded content to keep the game fresh and entertaining.
Bottom line: Rent it or try the demo on Live. You definitely won't regret that. If you're looking for a quality game in the LOTR franchise with some promising multiplayer potential, go ahead and pick it up. Just keep in mind that the campaigns alone are probably not worth the $60 price tag.
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I will give Evil Arts some credit. LotR is one of the very few movie licensed games that do rather well and just doesn't suck because it's a movie tie in. As far as LotR:C is concerned, it's a good winter game that came out after all the great titles came within the last 2 months.Is it as memorable as the movie based games that came out on the last gen systems?
No.
And sadly to say, this almost has a twinge of too little too late.
Meaning that had this game had been released around the same time the movie titles had come out or around the same time when BF:1942 was popular this title would easily had been a 4 start title but now that these types of games have advanced so much in game mechanics, it's hard to play this game without feeling like you want more.
The game is pretty much a button masher with some elements of capture and defend a point.
You can change your character at will and use lots of combos.
And when you have done enough of the primary tasks, you get to use a hero like Aragorn, Gimily etc...you get the idea.
Graphically speaking the game looks pretty good, the character designs are done pretty well altho there can be some issues with the framerate when a whole lot going on onscreen. All of the backdrops are done wonderfully as if you are playing those scenes from the movies.
The control is pretty straightforward as I stated, this is a button masher so once you go thru the tutorial you should have the conrol downpat.
Soundwise, it's almost a dream...from Helm's Deep to the Pellenor Fields, with the sound of battle and Howard Shore's soundtrack, you almost feel as if you are there.
SO where does it all go wrong?
"been there done that" feel...and some of this gets repetitive after a while and when you get the Hero Character, it's a buffed up version of your grunt.
Still buggy I had to reload the Helm's Deep stage because after I killed a certain group of creatures, the game didn't move to the next objective and after killing hordes of Uruks for 15 mins I realized that I had to start over because...
Lack of clear directions the game is not all that great at always telling you when you have completed objective A or where exactly at Point B you need to be and I think this may have been a bug or something Pandemic overlooked when putting this game together which also leads to
Faulty multiplayer modes getting into a game is easy but not all games are....I was playing mode where you had to move the Ring from one side of the battle area to the other. One thing I did not like and I am not sure if this was a bug or if this was intentional (since sometimes the ring wants to get lost) if a character dies while carrying the ring, you can't find on the map where it is.
Another issue that may not be good for multiplayer is since a lot of games have hopped on to that bandwagon, there is no way (as far as I have seen) to level your character up as CoD has spoiled many gamers with being able to do this...without this mode, this game may leave some gamers wanting more.
Overall if you a fan of LotR, it's a no brainer game but playing this almost makes me wish that another RPG (and not an MMORPG) or something with more substance was released. Not that this game isn't any fun, but it may not capture mine or anyone's attention for too long besides completing it.
3 out of 5 stars.-
Best Deals for The Lord Of The Rings: Conquest - Xbox 360
The Lord of the Rings Conquest is shaping up to have the ability to be the best lord of the rings game ever. Made by the studio behind Star Wars Battlefront 1 & 2, Conquest already has a well designed system as its starting point. Four classes are playable: Mage, Warrior, Scout and Archer. Each class provides a unique fighting style that sure to fit everyone. Add in a Co-op campaign, the ability to play a evil campaign where evil reclaims the ring from frodo, and several Instant action modes and it forms a great combination with a lot of replaybility. In Single-Player modes up to 150 AI will fight alongside you. In online you face off on a wide variety of maps in intense 8 player vs 8 player battles. Playing as a troll or ent is tons of fun as you run across the battlefield slamming your foes around. You can even pick enemies up and throw them! There are quite a few heros from the books and movies that are all fun to play as. Following is the good and evil campaigns.War of the Ring (good campaign)
1. The Last Alliance (Mount Doom)
2. Helms Deep
3. Isengard
4. The Mines of Moria
5. Minas Tirith
6. Pelennor Fields
7. Osgiliath
8. Minas Morgul
9. Black Gate
Rise of Sauron (evil campaign)
1. Mount Doom
2. Osgiliath
3. Minas Tirith
4. Weathertop
5. Moria
6. Rivendell
7. the Shire
