"The Battle for Helm's Deep is over: The Battle for Middle Earth is just beginning"

For all of you that do not know, this game is an RTS(Real Time Strategy). That is where the fun or challenge lies. I find it rather exciting that you can send a raiding party over to your opponent's Castle/Outpost/Camp while you are guarding against a few batallions at your own base. It can also be a hassle to have to be constantly aware of all your forces, but that is what you had to do during the Crusades, 100 year war, the Revolution, etc.

Gameplay9/10
You select battalions and you can have 4 strategies: Raiding, Rushing, Turtling, and Conquoring. With Raiding, you build up a few calvary batallions and have them destroy a building and run back to your base. Rushing is taking your army you already have and go attack their base as fast as possible. Turtling is having all your troops chill in your base while you upgrade them and wait for an attack from the opponent(s). Conquoring is taking each Outpost and Camp along the way so that your opponent gets distracted. The best strat is a mix of Raiding and Rushing while the worst is Turtling. There are also 4 factions:Rohan, Isengard, Gondor, and Mordor. They have their own strengths. But in big battles, sometimes the game slows a bit, so that is why I give this a 9.

Sound10/10
The sound in this game is great. There are ambiences of birds and different animals. The game also has a feature that when a battalion sees an enemy you can hear "I think that's the enemy!". And the kills sound real. That is why the sound gets a perfect score of 10.

Graphics9/10
The graphics for this game are stunning. The only thing that isn't stunning are the heroes's faces in the game. If you zoom in, you can see their faces aren't really great. But everything else is okay. This category recieves a 9.

Replay Value9/10
The replay value is excellent because it has 2 paths, each with 3 levels of difficulty. It has good and evil, and it has easy, medium, and hard for both. Try to save Middle Earth when it takes forever to kill a troll. Or try to wipe out the world of men when they give death that is equal to you. It might lose it's lust when you try to attack the Black Gate on your second or third playthrough. It also has Skirmish mode and Online mode when you get bored of the story. 9 out of 10.

Overall9/10
I just averaged it and got 9.25, so I rounded down. This game is a game you should definitely get. I have had fun with it for almost 2 years now and it hasn't done me any wrong.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/21/06