The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

"Stop Comparing This Game To Diablo"

Seriously, why does every hack and slash dungeon crawler type game have to be compared to Diablo and Diablo 2? The majority of the times, it's an insult to the Diablo series. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King for GBA is one of those games that tries to imitate Diablo, but fails in so many ways that it's sad.

Return of the King isn't all bad though. It has tons of variety, outstanding re-playability, and a storyline that fans of Lord of the Rings will surly enjoy. That being said, I'd like to say that I'm a mild fan of the LOTR movies. I watched them and enjoyed them, but I never watched them again.

The first thing I'd like to say review-wise about this game is this game comes with a serious lack of useful documentation. The instruction manual is about 5 pages long, explains basic, and obvious things about gameplay, and that's it. It's almost like they forgot to make a manual for the game, and threw one together at the last second so the game could be shipped out. Oddly enough, the manual comes in about 5 different languages, which are one right after the other. So they took the time to translate the manual, but took no time to put anything interesting in it, that's wonderful.

Once you get in game, the game does not explain anything to you either, it just throws you at the beginning of the character's scenario you chose, and you're off and running. In the game's defense, dungeons crawlers are usually pretty mindless, and easy to play if you have ever played one before. New fans of dungeon crawlers may find themselves a bit lost at first.

Another thing I would like to say about this game before I get into the meat of the review is this: If you have played 1 or more decent dungeon crawlers on the PC, this game will more than likely disappoint you. ROTK is lacking so many options that are pretty much mandatory in dungeon crawlers, and this will frustrate and annoy fans who are familiar with the genre on PC, where dungeon crawlers tend to be the best, and have the best set-ups.

That being said, let's see what this game did right ,and what it did wrong.

Graphics 5/10

Okay, what's the excuse for this? I have seen graphics that are so much better on the GBA. The characters and enemies in this game are so pixelated and look like crap. It's sometimes hard to tell one enemy from another. Despite this, the character animations are pretty good. When Aragorn is swinging his sword, it looks good, and when Legolas is firing off arrows, it looks great for GBA standards. It's almost hard to properly rate the graphics on this game, since they are so counter-balanced with these two aspects.

The graphics of the areas you visit are not too bad. While plain and re-used, they look decent. The story elements of the game provide a full screen picture from the movie, which looks pretty good, and pushes the story along at a decent pace.

The inconsistency in graphics really makes this game look odd, and takes it down a peg.

Story 8/10

The story here is pretty good, and has the wonderful world of LOTRs to leech a story from. Regardless of the character's scenario you are currently playing, most areas have relevance to the LOTR story, and provide you with sound meaning for being there. Please bear in mind though that this is a dungeon crawler type game, so the story is going to be limited, but when there are story elements, they are pulled off pretty well. You may be a little lost story-wise if you are not a fan of the LOTR movies, but I'm sure if you are not a fan of the LOTR movies, you will probably stop playing this game before the story gets going.

Having 6 characters at your disposal through 6 separate scenarios, makes for a story that is seen from many different angles, and keeps things fresh. Most dungeon crawlers get repetitive, and basically have no story, but this one actually has a story…yay!!

Sounds/Music 6/10

The sounds and music are passable. While the music tends to not change very much, or be noticed at all for that matter, the sound effects are quite good. Swinging swords and growling enemies will be heard in good detail and will make you forget about the music.

Gameplay 3/10

Yeah I know it may be a low score for gameplay, but dungeon crawling has been done so much better than this. Small, little things that could have been included which would have made a huge difference were left out.

First off, this might be the only dungeon crawler game I have ever played that does not have a map. How does a game like this not have a map? Even though the game is pretty linear, with a few side areas here and there to go to, it still should have had a map.

Next up, this might be the first dungeon crawler I have ever played that lets you have 8 items in your inventory, and nothing more. Now anyone who has played a decent dungeon crawler before can tell you that fighting enemies, and grabbing loot is what dungeon crawling is all about. During the course of this game, you will be constantly dropping items, just to allow new items into your inventory. You can enable an auto-drop feature in the options menu, but I'm not sure I trust it all that much, since once you drop something in ROTK, it doesn't go onto the ground, it just disappears. So if you were to auto-drop a decent weapon, there would be no way to recover it.

One way to get rid of the items is to sell them at forges or shrines, which are little areas that act as shops. The problem is, when you sell stuff and go away adventuring again, it's not too long before you have acquired 8 more items again to sell, yet you have to backtrack to the forge or shrine again………..and with this, we come to another annoying aspect of this game: you can't backtrack to previous area in this game. Yes, that's right, once you push forward to a new area, your stuck there, and have to move forward or not at all. This completely takes the exploration aspect out of the game, and leaves you wondering off to find your next enemy to kill.

One more gripe about the items. There is no option to make the names of the items show up on screen. You have to walk over the items to see what they are, and then you can pick them up. The problem is that some of the items will blend in with the backgrounds and floors, so they are hard to see. This may cause you to miss some items if you are not careful.

Now a few good things. The hack and slash gameplay pans out pretty well technically. You will find monsters, sometimes alone, sometimes with another character helping you, and you will fight mob after mob of angry enemies. While the game starts off in a pretty easy fashion, the difficulty will ramp up later on and you will run into some tough enemies along the way.

The save feature is wonderful. Being able to save the game wherever you want to is great, and makes sure that you won't miss a beat between play sessions.

There is a wide range of skills that each character can obtain, in a standard, PC game level up fashion, where you can distribute your attribute points, and can chose to learn or up-grade one skill per level. Some skills are passive and some are action oriented, such as double swings or powerful magic spells for Gandalf.

Being able to use the different characters will keep the gameplay elements fresh and make you re-think your attack strategies in each scenario. However, it's mostly just a “Kill all the bad guys” kind of game.

The controls also seem a bit cluttered, as they do on most GBA games. The quick skill selection is a step in the right direction, but even that will be a burden in battle, and you will just attack until either you or your enemy dies.

With the good and bad elements of the gameplay in question, I found the negatives weighed more on me than the positives, and made me miss the days of PC dungeon crawling. If the above options that I listed were available in this game, it would be so much better. Instead, the gameplay ends up being a forgettable hack and slash adventure, with LOTR characters.

Re-playability 7/10

There is quite a bit of time to be spent in this game if you can deal with the boredom and lack of features that the main game has to offer. 2 more characters are available, which I didn't get, and there are quite a few optional dungeons which can be found and explored, as well as a few secret bonus levels which can be acquired.

With all this being said, I just found it hard to get into this game. I would say it's a good game for LOTR fans to play, but I would not recommend it to a hardcore dungeon crawling fan. They will be disappointed with the lack of standard features that the genre almost always includes and pretty much needs.

My Review Score 6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 12/03/07

Game Release: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (US, 11/05/03)