"An excellent game, if you can accept it for what it is."

At first glance, the world of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth seems both ripe for an RPG-styled game, and also completely wrong for it. The former because Tolkien created a vast canvas, peopled with numerous interesting races and creatures and places. That sort of setting usually lends itself well to an RPG. The latter because the journey of the Fellowship itself is well-chronicled, and it's difficult to picture anything as important happening in the same world.

EA, I think, struck a relatively good balance with The Third Age. The setting is interesting enough for casual fans, though some of the events that take place clearly do not match what happened in either the books or the movies. This, I think, is unavoidable if you want to create a good game based on such a well-established franchise.

Gameplay consists of essentially two modes, adventure mode and battle mode. In adventure mode, you move your character around the game world, locating important items and generally progressing forward, following in the general footsteps of the Fellowship of the Ring. This can be very entertaining, because some of the places you explore are recreated almost exactly from the movies, or from Tolkien's description of them in the novels. Exploring Moria, or the cities of Osgiliath or Minas Tirith is more enjoyable because you're immersed in a world you already have a conception of, but you're seeing aspects of it you've not encountered before.

Battle mode is where you do all combat, learning skills, etc. This area of the game shines for me because of the variety you have in the six characters you control. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses, their own styles of attacks, and their own special abilities. Idrial is the strongest healer and has some of the most powerful spirit attacks. Berethor possesses various leadership skills that enhance the abilities of his allies, and has the strongest physical attacks. Elegost excels at ranged attacks and inflicting various kinds of status injuries (such as sleep) on enemies. Hadhod has excellent armor and defense, and can be very dangerous with his axe or hammer, though he tends to be slower. Morwen has several types of continuing damage attacks (such as poison), and is capable of stealing items from the enemy, including some not found elsewhere. And Eaoden seems like a blend of Idrial and Berethor, with strong physical attacks as well as some powerful Spirit abilities. In combat, utilizing the various skills helps each character learn new, more advanced abilities, some of which can become quite important by the end of the game.

Players expecting a typical RPG, however, are likely to be disappointed. There is no currency system in the game, and no shops from which to buy items or weapons. Every item, weapon, or piece of armor your characters can use will be found along the way, or won in battle. In an effort to make this game friendly to more players, EA "dumbed down" some of the standard RPG elements. Early on, for instance, your characters will be leveling up after nearly every battle, making it seem almost too easy. Some of the major boss battles don't seem as challenging as you would expect, even on the hardest difficulty. Conversely, there are a few that seem almost ridiculously difficult.

The controls are easy to learn, and virtually everything you might want to do is easily accessed from the in-game menus and the pause menu. Being an RPG, there aren't really any aspects dependent on extremely precise control, so there aren't any places where the controls feel difficult to master. The worst part of the controls is the way the camera angle changes unexpectedly in some locations in the game world.

The storyline, unfortunately, is not one of the places in which the game shines. The story is very basic, almost nonexistent in terms of the characters themselves. Indeed, the majority of the plot is revealed through narration of various Epic Scenes by Gandalf. There are only a handful of cutscenes that involve any interaction between your characters, and the voice acting for some of them can seem rather wooden. With that said, there are a few surprises in store. Overall, while it is not nearly as engrossing as similarly-styled games, I find that there is enough to keep you interested.

One of the places in which the game DOES shine is the look of the world. The areas you're exploring are quite masterfully recreated, from the dark depths of Moria to the towers and walls of Minas Tirith. I'm particularly fond of the Plains of Rohan, with the wide open sky and distant snow-capped mountains. In battles, the special effects for most attacks are pretty good, which is important since you will see some of them hundreds of times by the end of the game.

I also love the fact that the characters' appearances change based on what weapons or armor they have equipped. The level of detail here is tremendous; as an example, even Berethor's rings change based on what's equipped, though they're not even visible during most of the game. There are often complete sets of armor for each character, and they look great. Even better, pieces from different sets usually look good together as well, so if you haven't found everything yet, it's not visually jarring.

Similarly, the music and most of the sound is superb. Just about everything is taken right from the movies. The music creates the proper feeling, and the sounds of Orcs and other creatures are just as they should be. In some areas, you can hear the constant clang of weapons on armor, men shouting in the background, burning building, etc. In others, there is nothing but the wind and wildlife.

The narration by Ian McKellen reprising his role as Gandalf really adds to the experience, but unfortunately most of the other characters from the movies have lines created out of dialogue taken directly from the films - not newly recorded for the game like Gandalf's. Sometimes it works, but sometimes it just seems odd. And the voice acting for the new characters is rather wooden and lacking in any real emotion. This hurts the impact of the rare cutscenes, as it is often hard to find the characters as vibrant or believable as they could otherwise have been.

The total play time is variable. If you don't spend much time learning your characters' more advanced abilities, you can complete the game in 15 hours or less. On the other hand, if you want to make sure each character learns absolutely every skill available to them, you can easily spend 35 hours or more doing so.

Once you've completed the game, I find the replay value moderate. There's enough to do in the game that you can easily play it again trying different strategies. Maybe you'd like to focus more on increasing Hadhod's speed so he take's actions more often in combat? Or perhaps you want to see how effective you can make Idrial with the sword instead of her Spirit Powers. You can also make different choices with armor and weapons. There are frequently times where you have to decide whether a newly-discovered item is worth equipping. It might have a better overall armor rating, but be ineffective against Fire attacks for example. You must decide what is the right balance for the way you're playing the game.

Overall, I consider this one of the better games I own on the Gamecube. I realize and accept that it's not a standard RPG, that EA has tinkered with the formula to make it more accessible to a wider audience. This creates some minor annoyances, but not enough to really detract from the experience for me. I definitely recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of the Lord of the Rings, and also to RPG players who are willing to accept the stylistic differences from other games in the genre.

My Scores:
Gameplay: 7 of 10
Controls: 8 of 10
Story: 5 of 10
Graphics: 10 of 10
Sound: 8 of 10
Replay Value: 7 of 10
Overall (not an average): 8 of 10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/28/09

Game Release: The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age (US, 11/02/04)