Play Time: 10 hours
Progress: Good and Evil Campaign Completed
Oh Snap! It’s a LOTR BFME II REVIEW! Lord of The Rings BFME II seems to have slipped through the cracks a little bit in the whole “good game” section, but luckily you have Seraph to search these horrible game piles for the golden disc. This may not be a golden disc, but it’s keeping me entertained.
Lord of The Rings: Battle For Middle-Earth II is a fantasy-style RTS (real-time strategy). It’s your job to build, manage and control your army in this LOTR title. I’m not really one for LOTR but I do enjoy my RTS’, and this one delivers.
Visuals & Audio
The visuals are decent, things become a little pixelated when you zoom in, but it’s nothing to be overly dramatic about. The levels are colourful usually, with the exception of the snow levels which are sort of bland and dull with only a few houses and some trees to look at. The audio for this game is sort of lame. It has the whole LOTR drum beats and what-not every now and again, but chances are you are not going to even notice it when you’re playing the actual game. The sound effects are cool… at first, if you’re anything like me you will soon be getting a little tired of the goblins repeating every 5 seconds “WE’RE OUTTA RESOURCES” when I can clearly see that I do not have resources because I just finished building something only 3 seconds ago. This becomes helpful in some situations though, for instance, if anything of yours is being killed or your army has spotted an army in range then they will call it out. Other sound effects like clanking swords and *swishing* arrows have also been done quite well.
Gameplay
The gameplay is overall quite fun. There may be some things you will need to look past to see this fun, though. When first popping this disc into your Xbox, you will find that you can either choose to follow the path of the good campaign or the evil campaign. Both campaigns are fairly short and should done within a 2-3 hour time span apiece. Even though these campaigns are short, they are still entertaining considering that in each mission you have the option to complete bonus objectives that, in the end, will give you those fancy achievements for which you have been working so hard to receive. Plus in the campaign you will be playing as different races for a good deal of the missions. For one mission you might be the elves, and the next mission you will be the dwarves.
If the campaign isn’t for you, then you have the option to have yourself a skirmish. A skirmish is a game mode where it lets you decide who you are going to fight against, what level this opponent will be and the map that you will be fighting on. You’re given four different difficulties to from which to choose: easy, medium, hard and brutal. You may also use an AI to do your bidding by putting one on your team.
When starting any skirmish you are given one fortress and two builders, and then from there you can do whatever you like, be it making a farm to bring in resources (resources are what allow you to make armies, buildings and heroes), or making an army so that you may rush the shenanigans right out of your opponent. LOTR gives you a wide selection of strategies and the best thing is that you can make up your own. When playing, though, watch that you don’t misplace your army. This can often prove to be an enormous loss, simply because you can’t find them on the map.
Online
You might need some tissues for this next section because online may be one of the most brutal things you will ever see if you are not sure what you’re doing. Online can be played with up to 4 players, these players must be humans and cannot be AI. You can play ranked or player matches, either way you are going to be put up against the elite. Private matches are a good idea if you’re looking to just try out new strategies with your friends. Lag will sometimes be an issue with online, like when you find that your armies are not fleeing from an obvious ambush and you end up losing your entire army because your horsemen could not figure how to get around a house.
Tips for Online
Grab a case of pop and a big bucket of popcorn, because if you or your opponent are not taken out within the first 5 minutes of the game, you could be looking at an entire night of stalemates.
Pros
+Easy to navigate RTS menu
+Evil and Good Campaigns
+Online for a Challange
Cons
-Short Campaigns
-Online is Brutal
-AI Aren’t Skilled in Movement
7/10
