The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth II

"I Finally Found the RTS Game I Was Looking For!"

By far the best real time strategy game to date for the Xbox 360, Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II takes you for one heck of a ride featuring phenomenal yet basic RTS game play and well developed plots, graphics, and the epic music from the movie series. Battle for Middle-earth 2 is just one of those games that coast under the radar of great titles for the 360 and even though this game is going on three years old it remains a very strong game with a large and dedicated online community for online multiplayer battles as well as giving you the great experience of controlling some of the biggest, baddest, and most wacky characters from the Lord of the Rings universe. For some time I have been trying to look for a decent real time strategy game for the 360 in the hopes that one would come out that at least does the genre a justifcation. However, that game has already come out and was just sitting and waiting on me to find it.

Story

When a game comes from such a strong plot source as the high fantasy Lord of the Rings universe created by J.R.R Tolkien, you know nothing can go wrong about the game's plot. Batlle for Middle-earth 2 is kind of a side plot of what you got out of the last movie in the trilogy. I am absolutely horrible with the names and characters and plots of the series so bear with me when I say the overall objective of the Good Campaign in this game is to bring down the tower with the eyeball. Mordur right? Anyway, the gist of the plot is that the elves and dwarves have to team up together along with the humans to take out this big evil thing and while Frodo and his gang go running off to do the thing they do in the movies you get to take on the role of uniting the forces of Good to vanquish the orcs and goblins and raging elephants.

But wait there's more!!

You can also choose to do an Evil Campaign and do the exact opposite in which you will be fighting to unite the goblins, trolls, and orcs to make the Evil side win. Each mission has its own introduction and conclusion videos to keep you up to do date with what is going on and how it relates to the series. There are under ten missions in each campaign and the length of these are determined by the difficulty you play on. This game is all about strategy of course!

Game Play

Love it! Love it! Love it! Battle for Middle-earth 2 has an optional tutorial that you can take and the only time I felt that this game dragged was when I took this tutorial. A game like this has very complex controls and takes time for beginners to get into and so the tutorial may make you want to give up early because you go through a lot of stuff to learn. Being a real time strategy nut, I actually bypassed the whole tutorial thing when my brother told me he started playing it without touching the tutorial and he was right. The tutorial drags, and it is not necessary. You have hints anway throughout the game to tell you what buttons to push in case you are stuck. After the first mission though, I was completely hooked. The layout is very easy in getting things built. You have some builders who will construct your fortress, then go to resource structures, and then on to barracks and archeries to get your soldiers on the field. Battle for Middle-earth 2 has all of the basic needs easily filled for this type of gaming. You also get a special options menu to access power upgrades and a quick button option to access builders, heroes, and units you hot buttoned. Units can be purchased and upgraded and each unit has an advantage and disadvantage towards different other units in the game. However, all of the major players from the movies make their way into this game as a unit to control. My favorites being first and foremost the Ents (Treebeard is the freaking man...er tree) and of course he is not exactly a unit, but you can summon Tom Bombadil who will merrily dish out the mayhem on your foes.

A skirmish mode allows you to do some split screen custom battles with up to four players or to battle up to three computer players. You can even team up in this game to make it more interesting. There are some heroes to unlock as you play in the campaign mode so you can view these guys in a special gallery as well as use them and more notable heroes in the skirmish mode. What I like about the multiplayer is that the game is hosted on EA's servers and this is not a host-match type of multiplayer. You will not have any lag or connection problems online. The downside is that the online community is rather small, so at times you will be able to hop right into a match and then other times you may be waiting for awhile.

Sound/Graphics

The graphics are very amazing on Battle for Middle-earth 2. The environments are scaled and are very scenic. A lot of the detailed goodies do not come necessarily from the environments of the maps you battle on (although they are astoundingly beautiful), but from the movements of the sprites you control. The individual characters will battle their hearts out and they have many unique movements. Heroes are very close to the real representation in the movies right down to the voice. After defeating a foe the soldiers will celebrate on the ground and it is just the little things like this that make this game so great.

The music is very inspiring while playing this game. Somehow the type of music playing will change to fit the mood of how well your battle is going and it adds tremendously to the excellent graphics in this game.

Replay Value

Battle for Middle-earth 2 still maintains a decent online community so you can enjoy this game's multiplayer. With the online multiplayer you get your own stats page, leaderboards, and several different game types to play. For the replay value, you also play the campaign to unlock the heroes that you can use for the skirmish battles. Depending on the difficulty, you can get through both campaigns in a about a week's time. You can enjoy extended capabilities of your units and your enemy with morale and other factors playing into a battle.

As for the achievements you end up with a very decent game. Most of the achievements are geared towards multiplayer awards such as winning ten games of each game type. The most difficult you will run into are the ones in single player that demand you keep your heroes alive through the whole campaign and the ridiculous online achievements of beating or being beat by someone that is 20 levels above you or below. Beyond that, the rest are easy to grab and difficulty options do not factor in at all with the single player campaigns.

Final Recommendation 9/10

Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-earth 2 is at the very top of my list of Xbox 360 real time strategy games. I contended with my friend that even though Halo Wars is a highly anticipated RTS release, it still will not feature trees that can toss rocks at enemies, pirates, flaming arrow archers, dramatic battles. And it won't have Gandalf or axe throwing dwarves. Yeah this game is very hard to beat. So, if you are like me and have been looking for a great RTS game for the console then you definitely do not need to wait on any game to come out because it is already here. Battle for Middle-earth takes some getting used to as it is high fantasy, but the game play pays off big time. Definite buy for the RTS and Lord of the Rings fan, excellent rental for anybody else.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/26/09

Game Release: The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth II (US, 07/05/06)