The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

"Let's hunt some Orc!!!"

The Return of the King, sequel to last year's The Two Towers action game, more than lives up to gamer's expectations as easily the best Lord of the Rings game...ever. An improvement of the Two Towers in every way, Return of the King features classic hack-n-slash action with innovative elements, a crazy difficulty level, a brilliant co-op mode, and some great unlockable secrets. If only the game could last longer...

The Return of the King has you going about the levels in an innovative manner. After a tutorial bit at Helm's Deep with new player Gandalf, you'll be taken to the level select screen, which is split into three paths. The Path of the Wizard features levels where you play as the powerful Gandalf as he battles massive hordes of enemies in breathtaking action sequences; the Path of the Hobbit allows you to play as Samwise Gamgee, a tiny warrior who, since he possesses little strength, should focus on stealth and roundabout methods of killing enemies; and the Path of the King allows you to play as either Aragorn, Legolas, or Gimli through levels that require a balance of strength, skill, and smarts. Beating a level in a certain Path unlocks the next level in that path, and so on and so forth. You can unlock and tackle the levels in absolutely any order; however, the final levels can only be unlocked by completing all three paths.

The fact that you can do the levels in any order makes another innovation - the Fellowship upgrade - a stroke of genius. As you defeat enemies in a level, you gain experience points that can be used to purchase moves and upgrades only at the 'Level Complete' screen. However, for just a little more EXP cost, you can purchase the same move or upgrade for all characters, and for less than it would normally cost for each character to purchase individually. So while you can buy the Orc Hewer for Gandalf for 3000 EXP, you can pay 8000 EXP to buy it for the whole party. The best use of this is to make the parts of the game you play later easier; if you play Gandalf's levels first and buy lots of Fellowship upgrades, then you'll have an easier time in the Hobbit levels since you will already have the Fellowship upgrades without having to pay EXP for them.

Combos are, for the most part, taken from the previous game and given new names; you'll notice that the Orc Hewer combo is almost exactly like the Swift Terror combo from The Two Towers. there's some new stuff, but nothing drastically different. However, the combos in the first game were very useful, so that's not really a bad thing. A GREAT improvement is how the characters are now far more unique from each other; Aragorn, though he has great speed attacks, has an annoying slow killing move; Gimli moves slower than the others, and Legolas takes a high amount of damage. You'll definitely have to take a different approach when you play through a level with a new character.

Graphics and sound are, as expected, great, thanks to the characters who now look MUCH more like their movie counterparts and Howard Shore's excellent soundtrack. You will notice, however, that all music tracks were taken from either the previous game or from the Two Towers movie; this was obviously done to avoid spoiling the upcoming Return of the King movie. On that note, though there's some great movie footage from the ROTK movie, there's not a lot of it.

Two things gamers were eager to see in this game were the ability to play as Gandalf and the co-op mode. Gandalf is awesome; you play as him through hectic levels, but he's easily the toughest member of the Fellowship with perhaps the best set of combos and upgrades. And the co-op mode is perfect; play through any level with any two characters of your choice! It's pretty much all you could ask for in an LotR co-op mode, and greatly lengthens the lifespan of the game.

Yet still, the lifespan of the game can and will run out. It's fun to play through the levels with every character (doable once you've beaten the game), but you should be able to do so fairly quickly. The secret characters are not too difficult to unlock, as well. The co-op mode is the game's best chance for a long life, but you'll eventually tire of it while playing the same levels over and over.

Still, the Return of the King is an action game that shouldn't be missed. If you're a fan of LotR, get it; if you're a fan of action games, definitely give it a try! One last note, though; you may really hate the game at times due to the considerable difficulty, but make sure you stick with it - it's more than worth it!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/17/03