The Lord of the Rings, The Third Age

"Join us on our Quest! Oh brother..."

Right, well it would be a mistake if I didn't begin this review by saying that I had a very good time playing this game. I thought it was very fun. The battle system was enjoyable, assuming you like RPG battle systems, and you got to go to some interesting places. Plus it did do one or two interesting things. That being said, those one or two interesting things are what keeps it as simply average when its flaws otherwise deserve it as being described as the worst of the worst.

The battle system? Fun, as I said. There's a very good reason for that. You can tell that the developers played Final Fantasy X. Oh, you can tell that indeed. I can only imagine what it must have been like down at EA.

EA Guy 1: So...RPG
EA Guy 2: Yep
EA Guy 1: What's an RPG like exactly?
EA Guy 2: Uhh, what about that Final Fantasy game?
EA Guy 1: Oh, I never played any of those. I was too busy playing Madden NFL
EA Guy 2: Oh, well, maybe we should go rent one or something
EA Guy 1: Guess so...

The battle system is LITERALLY a carbon copy of FFX. Along the side lists the order in which each character, enemy as well as ally, gets to move and during their turn they get as much time to do whatever they want. Things can obviously effect this like a haste spell that one of your characters has. Plus, if you don't have the right character, you can swap them out for someone else in your party - just like FFX. There are only a few very minor differences - one being that swapping out is pretty much pointless since situations where you need ranged attacks instead of melee ones are VERY rare and besides only one or two characters don't have any ranged attacks. Still, it would be wrong of me to say I didn't like it. One of the things I loved about FFX was how you had the entire party at your disposal instead of just the few you took with you. But these guys don't get any originality points for this at all. Suffice to say - if your a fan of Final Fantasy style combat you should enjoy this.

The skill system seems heavily influenced from Final Fantasy as well - in this case Final Fantasy X-2. You collect points and when you have filled up a meter you get a new skill and typically you have a couple of skills you can pick from to learn. Thankfully this is not nearly as blatantly ripped off as the battle system was. The nice thing is that each character possesses their own unique set of skills which theoretically makes each character useful. I would make the case that a couple of the characters are clearly better then others but the level up system should allow you to use whoever you want ably.

As for the level up system - when you level up your stats grow but you also get a few points to distribute yourself. This is actually one of the game's finer points as it helps you design your characters strengths.

And the equipment system - Ahh, now here is the game's CROWNING achievement. It has done something I have never seen before in this style of RPG and for that it has my respect, even for all the other things it has done so horribly wrong. Each piece of equipment you equip shows up on your character. This is a wonderful idea that has been employed in Western RPGs for ages, but to see it in this type of game (to be fair it IS a Western RPG but it is in the Japanese style) is great. I doubt that it'll be the one to influence our friends across the sea into changing their ways though ;) - This is the one thing about this game that I think is very cool -

Now as for the game's other "gimmick" or that is to say supposedly unique feature that makes it different from other RPGs. The unlockable FMVs. I'm sure the EA guys were just all excited when they came up with the idea of having Ian McKellen record new voiceovers for their movie sequences. For the most part this is terrible. Basically at certain points in the game you unlock "optional" movies. These optional movies range from reciting Middle-Earth lore to discussing the backgrounds of your characters. They are all narrated by Ian McKellen - excuse me "Gandalf" as if he were speaking to the main character. Most of the time these sequences are absolutely preposterous though. They use scenes from the films - including the scenes from the extended editions - re-edited and alot of the times with the narration not fitting what is happening in the clip and justify this as a way of eliminating other cutscenes in the game. There is literally no character development at all. The one major plot twist with the hero is absolutely shameful. Sometimes they just feel preachy, as if they're helping the unenlightened masses no more about Middle-Earth, which as a fan of Tolkien I just find insulting. I suppose they might be of interest to only a casual fan. But then that's the real problem. The story is so wretched and dull that surely it could only appeal to the casual fan, but even then it's insulting to said casual fan.

Basically, your main guy - Berethor of Gondor is looking for Boromir. The game starts after the Fellowship leaves Rivendell but before they make it into Moria. You follow them throughout the course of the game to most of the places they go. And just in case you get confused about where you are in the game the optional film clips will tell you "You stand now at our campsite blah blah blah!" It's remarkable only in how contrived it is. All of a sudden you're doing all these things to help the Fellowship out - as if they couldn't have made it that far unless you just happened to be behind them. And even then you never do catch up to them - not until Helm's Deep. Between the short film clips and some terrible absolutely terrible cutscenes where the devs seem to have vainly tried to craft a story you're just barely strung along. There really isn't even any reason why you're doing the things your doing, you simply just move along. The characters never explain themselves. You're never told WHY in the beginning of the game you're attacked by Ringwraiths (I guess they just like passing the time by attacking random people - instead of looking for the Ring) or why an elf just happens to be there to help you.

The characters themselves all seem to be lifted from the personalities of the characters from the books (Or films I should say - apparently EA didn't have the rights to the books, their excuse as to why they couldn't craft a more original story - Im not buying it). A Gondorian, A Ranger, an Elf, a Dwarf, ahh yes you hit the full range of clones.

I will say this for the story however - it is pretty funny at times. Not funny as in "haha that was a good joke" funny or "haha that was a brilliant bit of witticism" funny but funny as in "haha, this dialogue is so terrible! How could the voice actors stomach spitting it out!" funny. It's absolutely atrocious. Example, after your party first meets up with Gandalf the White outside of Moria, Idrial - the elf - proclaims, "You are transformed!!!!!!" I'd love to give further examples but heaven forbid I inadvertently slip in a "spoiler" for what passes as a plot. There's apparently some sort of love triangle between the elf, the main guy, and the dual-axe wielding girl you pick up in Rohan but I never quite got that since there isn't really any character interaction between the three - Gandalf just explains things in one of his little cutscenes.

Meeting movie characters is exciting as well. "Exciting" in quotation marks that is. Now, you'll be happy to hear that all of the characters from the films have their original actors doing the voices. Considering the fact that the characters from the films only speak in movie lines. Such as Eomer, "What business do a man, an elf, and a dwarf have on the Riddermark?" (I guess he didn't see the other member of my party) This can actually be pretty funny since usually what they say doesn't match up with what's going on in the game. But other then that, absolutely dreadful. It's amateur in the extreme, I feel like I'm playing a poorly voice-acted mod for some game where they took dialogue from the game and re-edited it so that characters from the game could say "new" things. Seriously EA - hire voice actors. We don't care if they're the people from the movies, not as long as they did a good job. Hell, if anything good can be said of the Revenge of the Sith game, it was that the voice actors did a pretty decent job (I'd argue that video game Anakin was better then real Anakin, but this isn't a Revenge of the Sith review...) But I'm not sure what that came off of as in a commercial game. Sloppiness? Laziness? Did they really thing that was a clever idea? I mean really did they? If that's the case then I'd have to dismiss the developers as idiots, and I have a hard time doing that.

Now not all is bad - I did enjoy the depiction of Helm's Deep very much. In fact - I liked doing Helm's Deep MORE in this game then I ever did in The Two Towers video game. The story is still abominable. Suffice to say if it hadn't been for your party - Aragorn and co never could have held the fortress on their own. But it is fairly exciting in its own way and you actually get to walk the entirety of the fortress before the battle so you can explore it. That's pretty cool. Some of the battles are fairly intense, and getting to use the movie characters can be fun. And I will say that as contrived as the battle with the Balrog in Moria is (The game simply spits on what happened in the movie here) it is pretty cool.

So it probably sounds like, despite what I said at the beginning of the review, I absolutely hated this game. That is not true at all. There were some interesting things as I have mentioned. But this is an RPG! I thought RPGs were supposed to at least attempt to have a story of some sort. I guess I was wrong. Now as I mentioned, apparently EA didn't have the rights to the books, only the movies. So that's why the game's plot had to mirror the films so closely. Fine, alright, I can accept that. What I can't accept is the complete lack of any character interaction at all besides a few short scenes were one or two lines of dialogue are exchanged. It's really too bad too because some of the characters have interesting backgrounds but you never get to see any of this, it's just told to you. And that's a real shame. EA really just used the rights issue as an excuse to have a bad story and that's too bad. If they didn't want to go all out in making an RPG, why did they attempt to make one at all? I can't forgive a badly implemented story in an RPG for any reason. The story is the reason we play this genre! Not liking it is one thing - I didn't care for the plots of games like Grandia and so forth - but at least they had plots!

As you see this is where I've directed most of my bile since in other ways I found the games fun. And this is why I score it so low. So - if you're looking for a great Middle-Earth experience that doesn't recant what happened in the books/movies - look somewhere else. If you're looking for a game to pass a few days with and don't really care about the plot then this isn't too bad of a choice. It is fun - though avoid if you disliked FFX's battle system. Buy it? Goodness not for $50, If I'd have bought this new when it first came out I might have been even more bitter. But for the $10 I paid for it used it wasn't so bad. And as I mentioned before ranting about the hideous story - it does do some interesting things. Some interesting things that raise it from being a 1 or a 2 - gutter trash to a perfectly average 5. Actually, if you're anything like me, it might be good for a few laughs MST3k style. Just don't say I didn't warn you if you do go buy it.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 03/20/06