J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings Volume 1

"One Hand to toss them all, and in the trash heap bind them... In the city landfill where games like this lie."

I just don't understand... A story like ''The Lord of the Rings'' could give a game company so much potential to work with. And yet, instead of what could have been a deep and excellent gaming experience, we have this...

Graphics: 10/10
The graphics are excellent for an old SNES title. The caves are dark and gloomy, the forests are lush and wonderfully detailed, and the water is clear and blue. Wonderful graphics. My only complaint on them is that many of the areas begin to look exactly the same, but this is more of a design flaw than a graphic flaw (more on this game's many design flaws later).

Music: 8/10
I give this game's music an 8 because of two particularly excellent songs in its soundtrack. The first is the opening theme of the game that plays from the moment you turn it on. The second is the song playing in the Shire and in some of the forests. The music sounds wonderfully orchestrated with real instruments, and it truly fits the situations in which it is used. Some of the music, though, is simply bland, such as the song playing out in the wilderness areas near Hobbiton.

Story: 1/10
Don't get me wrong, I am not dissing the Lord of the Rings itself. I love that series, and the Hobbit. However, my appreciation for the books is exactly why I hate this game's storyline. They have completely butchered it. There is WAY too much dungeon crawling! What is this crap about having to find Gaffer Gamgee's glasses in a DUNGEON (a dungeon smack in the middle of the SHIRE, mind you!) before you can leave Hobbiton? And rescuing Pippin from a pack of wild wolves before he joins? And, where did these ''Gateway Gems'' come from (which you must, of course, find in dungeons)? This game adds all sorts of lame intrusions into Tolkien's original plot just to make excuses to stick you into dungeons. I can understand using some minor changes to the plot for the sake of playability, but they have completely ruined it, and for no other reason than to force you into more pointless dungeon crawling. Completely unacceptable.

Gameplay: 1/10
After the utterly foolish storyline, we are left to deal with the gameplay... This is the part that really sends this game straight to ''the land of Mordor where the shadows lie.'' First of all, there is no variation to the fighting. You have one generic attack, and one generic defense. Now, I could deal with this, except that your defense often does not work. Also, there are the items: it seems you may only carry one of each given item at a time. There is no chance of stocking up your healing items. Add to this the problem of permanent death (characters are dead for good if they fall in battle), and you have a real mess.

Now, by far the worst aspect of the gameplay is the multiplayer. You have a very large party, and unless you have some extra hardware and a whole lot of friends, there is no way for you to be able to control them all. Well, that's what the computer AI is for, right? Ha! Forget it. No Secret of Mana or Star Ocean AI here. Your CPU allies have the collective mental capacity of a cabbage in a hobbit's garden. Worst of all, for some stupid reason (perhaps smoking WAY too much ''pipe-weed?''), they go wandering off into some odd area and get themselves killed.

So, what happens then? You end up losing a key character, and the story cannot advance. So, you obviously just need to restart from your last save, right? Wrong again. There is no save feature. You must use passwords. Passwords! Password saves were supposed to have died out in the ''First Age'' of video gaming. And they must truly have been under the influence of Sauron to use password saves on an RPG, of all things.

Alright, I will stop now. I really don't think I need to say anymore (and have probably already ranted too much--sorry!). This could have been a truly good game (could you imagine if it had Secret of Mana's multiplay capabilities?), but instead it is ruined by horrible design flaws and too much alteration of the story. I give it a rating of 3 out of 10, starting from 0 and adding 1 point for each of the two good songs it has, and 2 more for the graphics.

Buy or Rent-- Neither. Don't bother.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 09/10/01, Updated 09/10/01