Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II

Each type of unit has a strength against another type of unit and a weakness against another type of unit. While this is fine from a design standpoint, I wished it was possible as in other games, to set a default disposition as to the units attack type. This would reduce some of the frustration of creating an attack force that would in the end be crushed in its attack because the units attacked the wrong unit types. A similar type of micromanagement could have been avoided in the method in which upgrades are purchased. Unit upgrades are at first purchased through the research at buildings. They then must be purchased for each individual unit that is created. This may have been a design decision to force players to budget their resources wisely, however it leads to quite a bit of micromanagement. It would have been nice to be able to set a default option that would allow you to automatically create upgraded units right out of the barracks rather than have to upgrade each unit that was created, after the fact. In some cases, different upgrades may not necessarily provide an improvement to the unit, rather it may modify that unit's strength and focus. Here it is obvious that a player may not want all of their new units to have that upgrade. However in cases such as where you have researched better armour, or better weapons, I don't see how you wouldn't want those upgrades for all of your units.

The game is also quite focused on the actual characters of Middle Earth and this manifests itself with the inclusion of hero units. Gamers are even able to create their own custom hero units that can be used in the War of the Ring game mode. I wished that the custom hero aspect of the game was more of a focus. It would have been nice to be able to build your custom hero's powers as you completed missions and have a storyline that really followed a given custom hero's journey through the battle for the One Ring. However, there is absolutely no denying the effects of the Hero units and their ability to influence battles. Properly managed, a smaller force led by a Hero such as Boromir can still take down a much larger force of enemy units. This is the way it should be and I'm glad that the Hero units in the game were given their proper strength. This doesn't mean that the heroes of the game are invincible though as they can be taken down if they are set against overwhelming odds. Lord of the Rings buffs will be glad to know that all of the main characters are here; Eowyn, Arwen, Boromir, Shelob, The Mouth of Sauron, Gandalf, Aragorn, and many other main characters of the movies make their appearance in the game as hero units.

The game also allows gamers to make use of Powers. These powers can grant bonuses to units in a selected area, damage enemy units in a selected area, or call upon a powerful ally unit for a limited period of time. While early on, the powers available are a bit uninspired and not the greatest bonus, later in the game, the powers are a huge bonus and are incredibly fun to employ. For instance, summoning the Balrog must be the single most satisfying power in the game. The Balrog is an incredibly powerful unit and its sheer size dominates the battlefield. The Balrog is the culmination of the powers available and the fun factor ramps up towards that climax as you gain available powers.

The campaign mode is narrated by the recent Lord of the Rings films' stars and the voice acting of the main characters is also voiced by Hollywood film talent. The cut scenes are performed in engine at a low resolution and are integrated with still pictures. The campaigns play out fairly routinely and they don't offer much originality or unexpected excitement. All in all, the campaigns are serviceable but not much more. The War of the Ring game mode doesn't much more in the way of a storyline or in the way of gripping game play. The game mode amounts to what is essentially a series of real time battles broken up by some basic turn based activity. I can appreciate the content that this offered here in this mode, however, having played other much more involving executions of this type of hybrid game mode, I was underwhelmed by what should have been a sprawling and expansive quest of Middle Earth dominance.

Aside from some minor issues, the Battle for Middle Earth 2 joins a crowded arena of decent real time strategy games. It doesn't stick out much from the crowd, except for its license. The gorgeous visuals add to the enjoyment level of playing the game as do the addition of the great powers available. Although the game offers a lot of content, I wasn't drawn into the game to the level where I felt I could have been, given the content. The laclustre War of the Ring game mode is disappointing and the campaign is only serviceable. The best hope for replay value will be through the multiplayer mode as the AI is lacking. As the pickings for RTS games are a little bit thin right now, you still can't really go wrong for BFME2. However as the PC die hards know, the game you should be playing right now isn't an RTS.

- Mark Leung

(April 27, 2006)