"A great RTS game ruined by a bad development team."

The Battle For Middle Earth 2 had everything to succeed; The best fantasy source material, A great license that allows the use of the designs, voices and music from the movies. and a solid engine with awesome graphics.

This is in fact one of the most intense RTS I have ever played. It never gets boring.

What is wrong then?

Poor Balance. Bad patches and an expensive, idiotic expansion pack.

Since its release, BFME2 has never been really balanced. Some units were too strong, others too weak. At first, the buildings were too weak, and walls too expensive. Customs heroes were overpowered opposed to regular, more expensive heroes.

In order to fix the problems, EA patched the game 6 times, and never got it right. Each patches solved some problems, while creating bigger ones. Many things such as walls and towers keeps getting "yoyo-ed". In one patch they are buffed, in the next they are weakened, then buffed again in the following patch. It's ridiculous.

The 1.05 patch was the worst, it changed nearly every single unit of the game. The gameplay became dramatically different and certainly not better. There were many absurdities such as Aragorn becoming nearly invincible and capable of slicing thru dozens of orc battalions. Or Isengard getting Corsairs of Umbar while Goblins get Wildmen of Dunland from Inns.

Then when the expansion, Rise of the Witch King, was released, it reverted back all changes to 1.04.

In the end, this caused a lot of discontentment among players who now have played at least 3 different versions of the game. Those who don't have the expansion are stuck with poor 1.05 gameplay if they want to play online. Those who have the expansion are left without the few good changes brought by 1.05. Players are divided depending on which versions they like and online play has greatly suffered.

At least, the game AI offers a pretty good challenge on "brutal" setting which makes singleplayer games quite enjoyable.

AE should have tested the game better and stuck to the decisions they made about certain units instead of changing their mind all the time.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/12/07