The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

"The sequel. Better? Yes!"

Story 9/10.

This is a game based on the Lord of the rings movies and the movies are based on the book. Seriously do you think the story could in anyway be bad? No it is incredibly good and really good, the only thing that holds me back from giving it a ten is that if you haven't seen the movie or readed the book sometimes you will be confused of some enemys example the bosses wich sometimes you got know idea who it is.

Graphics 8/10.

The graphics are nice and smooth but there are some problems. The camera angle really is annoying and can sometimes be confusing. The graphic is pretty detailed but the camera have been zoomed out pretty much since the last game and it's hard to notice some of the details.

Sound 10/10.

The sounds are really good. The soundtrack from the movies are excellent and when you block a sword attack you hear a nice *klink* sound just as it should be. Then if you block a arrow the sound will be different which is good. The voices are really good to this is a perfect score.

Gameplay 10/10.

Okay it have gotten great score to this point but if the gameplay is bad the game is bad too right? But since the gameplay is marvelous we don't need to worry about that. The controls are good and easy to learn. The kind of Rpg inspiring level up makes this game really good. Lets take a little closer look to that. Well as you kill enemies you will get experience points. There are 4 different ratings that gives you different much experience points. It is fair, good, excellent and perfect in the order lowest score to highest score. The way this games figure out which rating to give you is good. There is a little circle bar that you can see next to your health bar. Every time you parry a attack or hurt a enemy it will raise a little. When you kill a enemie you will get different ratings depending on how much the bar is filled. But if you do nothing your bar will slowly go down which means something like this. If you are fighting a orc and uses three attacks and your bar gets up to good and you then kill the orc with a final attack you will get the good rating. But if you then wait a while until you keep on attacking enemies the bar will go down and you get to fair again. That means the best thing to do when you attacked an enemy is to fast attack another enemy so that the bar will keep raising and not going down. When the bar is full you will be in perfect mode a while which means everyone you kill at that time will be in the perfect rating. Then with the experience you get you can buy upgrades like combo hits and increase your health and more. The gameplay is really good but now lets proceed.

Replay Value 9/10.

This is game is kind of short but it is harder then the most games out there so this game will at least take a little while. You will also want to replay missions just for fun and to get all upgrades and level 20 with everyone is hard work. The replay value would get 8/10 if it wasn't for the co-op mode. Just to play through the game and getting level 20 together is great. Then when that is done you can play levels where enemies just poor in and play the Gimli and Legolas game (where you contest who kills most enemies).

Overall 9/10.

Great game this is a must buy for any gamer.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 12/28/03