The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth II

"EA try and improve on the critically acclaimed Battle for Middle Earth. And succeed admirably."

In 2004, EA Games released an RTS that had been a long time in the making. Considering that Lord of the Rings is a series of books/films based on battles and war, it's a wonder that Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth wasn't developed sooner. It was developed though, and it was good.

Flash forward to 2006 and we've got the sequel. The (not-so) creatively named Battle for Middle-Earth II. It's been developed, and it's even better.

Stunning visuals are complimented by fantastic gameplay. A nice soundtrack is met by admittedly average voice acting. The overall presentation and core of the game is a blend of the key elements needed. Aye, this is a game to play indeed.

There are six playable races in the game, increasing on the two from Battle for Middle-Earth. Six isn't a whole lot, but they get the job done. The majority of people seem to pick a favourite within the first couple of hours of playing anyway.

Campaign mode has been radically changed from the Rome: Total War style of play in BFME to a more Age of Empires ish campaign. Rather than traveling around Middle-Earth conquering every piece of land in sight with the occasional battle from the films thrown in, EA have instead created a “What was going on in the meantime while the events of the film were happening?” story. Both the Good and Evil campaigns have eight missions each. Fortunately, the missions between the two differ greatly. So once you've finished the Good campaign, you'll find that the Evil missions aren't just the same but playing with a different race.

Just because the campaign doesn't see you trying to conquer Middle-Earth it doesn't mean that you aren't able to. New to BFME II is “War of the Ring” mode. For those who've played the Total War games, I suggest you to skip past this paragraph, as I can sum it up for you right now: War of the Ring is the same as the campaigns on those games. For those who aren't familiar with the concept, read on. You'll start with three heroes, which are decided by what race you choose to play as. These three heroes are the generals of armies. Your goal is to basically conquer the lands of Middle-Earth. How many lands you have to conquer depends on what style of WOTR mode you choose. You might have to make sure that your opponent(s) have no territories left, or you might just have to capture their capital. As you move from territory to territory, you will claim it. If the enemy moves into your territory though, they'll take it. If you've built a fortress in that territory or currently have an army inside it, you'll have a chance to defend it through battle, which can be played in real-time or can be auto-resolved. There are other buildings to place in territories, such as barracks to create new units for your army, or armories to upgrade your units.

As you would expect, there is your basic skirmish mode, as well as online play.

Now that I've finished rambling on about the different modes in the game, it's time to actually talk about how the game plays.

Graphics are, as already mentioned, stunning. The lowest settings of the game need fairly low-spec PCs to play by today's standard, and yet still look great. The highest settings of the game, which still don't even need amazingly high specs to play smoothly, look fantastic. Terrain looks gritty and realistic, while units feature lifelike animation and true-to-life visual features. Jaggies seem non-existant and the game as a whole is very very pretty.

Gameplay, as was with the first game, is impressive. Each race has a ‘resource gaining' building. An invisible circle is placed around these buildings, from which it gathers resources. Some places on the map gather more resources than others, and a percentage meter while you're placing said buildings show you this. If the circles of two these buildings intersect, then obviously they will be able to gather fewer resources. These buildings also increase your command point limit by fifty. When building units, they take up ‘command points.' Your standard unit requires sixty command points. Siege weapons require fifty and heroes require other numbers. The fact that you can have more than one thousand available command points at one time shows that you can build some bloody big armies on this game.

Unlike BFME, you can place buildings anywhere on the map in Battle for Middle-Earth II. It's not a huge improvement, but it does better the quality of the game. At the start of each battle, you're given a fortress and two builders. As you'd expect, you use builders to build things. The fortress is the key of your base. You recruit heroes from your fortress, and you can purchase some great defensive enhancements for your base from there. If your fortress is destroyed you can no longer recruit heroes, or cast spells.

Speaking of heroes, there are a lot of them. While you'd only get about three or four heroes per race in BFME, it's closer to nine or ten per race in BFME II. Heroes are ‘super characters' of sorts. They have their own special abilities and generally dish out a lot of damage, while taking little. The sort of people whom you'd expect –Aragorn, Legolas, etc…- appear as heroes, but some of the more obscure characters in the series are playable as well. Also new to BFME II is the ability to create your own hero. Unfortunately, these aren't amazingly customizable, but the mode gets the job done and is a pretty good feature.

All in all, the gameplay in Battle for Middle-Earth II is very smooth to handle, features good controls, and is a joy to use.

The soundtrack is… reasonably good. There are moments where you'll find yourself thinking “Hmm, this music is great!”, but generally it doesn't impress me a whole lot. As said earlier, the game features average voice acting which isn't anything particularly special.

I struggle to find any flaws with this game, but they're definitely there. The awesomeness (and yes, that is a word) which EA has created with this game delivers a resounding ‘Screw you!' to any negative points of the game, thus creating a brilliant and spectacular game worthy of recognition with the greats. I really am going too far now, but the game deserves.

In conclusion, buy this game. Or at least play the demo.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 09/05/06