The Lord of the Rings, The Third Age

"An Unpolished Gem"

The Lord of the Rings - The Third Age

The Lord of the Rings - The Third Age was clearly a very ambitious project, with daring differences from the typical SRPG. But does it live up to it?

Gameplay - 7.5/10

The Third Age uses a unique way of deciding the number of turns you get. Three flanks sit side by side vertically, and the number of turns each flank gets is decided mostly by your heroes. While each flank gets 0-1 command points(Which is just 'the number of turns' with a fancy name) as a base, your heroes' leadership determines how much more command points can you be possibly granted. The higher your heroes' leadership, the more command points you can possibly be assigned. While this is a innovative method of deciding the number of turns, it is flawed. Battles will often take very long as you cannot move your units concurrently, and your win or loss is too dependant on luck. It is so dependant because oftenly, a person who is lucky and is granted many command points will easily topple the person with low command points, no matter what are the other conditions. While this is also dependant on how you move your units around, it is not as depended on as luck is. This method isn't really all that bad, it's just that most of your heroes have low command points ranging from around 1 to 3 only. If it was increased, battles would go much faster, and this method may actually be good.

The battle system is not as complicated, fortunately. The range of units differ, and that decides from how far can you hit an enemy. You can hit an enemy with a melee attack if the enemy is adjacent to your character, and the amount of damage that is done can be viewed when you select your character, and place the cursor on an enemy within his range. The larger the cursor, the more damage your character will do. Some characters are capable of doing melee attacks from more spaces away, while others, if out of melee range, will attack with bows if they have the range to do so. However, you cannot hit enemies with melee attacks if they are on an elevated platform, you will use a bow instead. This is simple enough.

You are allowed to upgrade your heroes after missions with experience gained from killing. There is, however, few items, skills and equipment to choose from. It would be preferred if there was a greater variety of things to choose from, as that would allow for more unique gameplay.

Your objectives for each mission are often different, ranging from capturing flags to defeating certain enemies. Completing objectives give you points, and when your points add up to be at or above the required points, you win.

Graphics - 8/10

The game boasts very good graphics for a GBA game, clearly one of the goals of the developers. The battlefields are beautifully detailed, and the sprites are realistic. Most portraits looks good, leaning as closely to realism as a GBA will allow. Overall, the game looks very good and is a pluspoint.

Sound - 7.5/10

Most of the music in the game are suitable for their situations, most being dark and serious anyway. Units make sound when they are attacking, getting hit or dying. A short sound is made when you proceed to attack enemies, which sets the mood for battling well enough. The clashing of swords and shooting of bows are all there, actually, just about every part of the game has some kind of sound there. However, music in the game can be repetitive, as they sound very similar. They're usually drums...and some brass instruments in the background. I'd prefer if something more different was used.

Presentation - 6/10
The game is not friendly to first-time players. No background story is really provided apart from the little amount of text you can view when you click on a mission. This will often make players wonder why exactly are the 'good' and 'evil' side fighting, or why does an opponent has such a special unit. Of course, viewers of the LOTR movies or readers of the LOTR books may instantly recognise why, but first-time players are not spared the ease.

The game doesn't detail you enough in-battle. For example, other than the cursor which is sometimes unclear, you don't really know how much damage will you be doing to an opponent. Also, when someone is on a tile, you won't be able to check the effects of the tile(Terrain bonuses, in other words). The game doesn't let you to check the stats of a unit directly either, you have to remember its portrait, press Start and navigate through the Units submenu to find that unit. This poses a trouble as you often would want to know where to move to so your enemy can't hit you, and you can't do so easily. Flags are also unclear at times. Some maps place a flag in the middle of two tiles, and a newbie wouldn't know which tile to stand on. These issues are sometimes frustrating to the player. The two tutorials are also most of the part useless since they teach you only the bare- BARE - basics of the game.

--

Overall Score(NOT decided by averaging the four scores above): 8/10

Closing Statement: While The Lord of the Rings - The Third Age is a very underrated game, it is understandable why one would shun it. This game will also not appeal to everybody, so my suggestion will be to read more on it or rent it, so you don't end up buying a game you'll possibly dislike.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/23/05