The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age

Written by Ryan Genno  on April 01, 2005

Review: Act your age!

Tweet

Comments

Lord of the Rings fans had a lot to cheer about, eh? The original Tolkien books are as popular as ever, the Hollywood movies were all blockbusters, and EA produced two fine action games on the series as well. Although it looks like we won't be seeing another LOTR any time soon, EA Games still thinks they can milk more money from this fantasy license so here is another LOTR game. Instead of making another hack and slash game like before, Lord of the Rings: The Third Age is a turn base role playing game much like Final Fantasy X for the Playstation2. Mixing one of the biggest movie franchises with one of the longest running and most popular RPG's sounds like a damn good idea, and they almost pulled it off here.

When you start up the game you'll see the same old movie clips from the other games where a magical but very evil ring gets passed on from different owners throughout the ages. Now that the ring has been found in this Third Age, the races of Middle-Earth must come together to destroy the ring in a far away land before the monstrous armies of Sauron can get their hands on it. Instead of controlling the main heroes from the story like Aragorn/Gimli/Legolas, in the Third Age game you control the destiny of the unknown warrior Berethor, one of the many knights in the background that helps the Fellowship complete their mission. Using this nobody could have worked since you are getting a cool side story of this adventure, but why is EA using cinemas that don't even feature the guy you're playing as? That's pretty dumb!

Like most role playing games you can meet multiple heroes on your quest, and the more your party fights the more experience and items they get. You can find other weird races of Middle-Earth like the traditional Dwarves, Elves, and Wizards and each has their own commands or spells. For those gamers who hate getting into random battles all the time EA included an eye of Sauron icon that will warn you when the enemy is coming so you can at least prepare yourself. Fighting a bunch of evil Orcs and awesome looking bosses is great, but I just wished the adventure itself wasn't so linear. It just felt like I was just going from point A to point B all the time.

Like many games today you can also get the chance to be evil as well in Evil Mode. The whole problem with this cheap Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic idea rip off there wasn't much story, so the whole thing feels like a waste of time.

One of the game's strongest features is just watching it in action. All the heroes and enemies are beautifully animated, and wait till you see all the amazing detail too. The game even looks like it runs at a higher frame rate then most RPGs like Final Fantasy X-2, but the trade off is that some of the environments look a little dull at times. Another negative would again be the bonus cinemas. They look great here and all, but since they are based on the movies and not this side story they really feel out of place.

Like the graphics the sounds in this game are pretty good. The music is the same stuff found in the films, but it works here in the game even if feels like recycled material. The many sound effects like stabbings and magic attacks are used well here too, plus most of the game uses real voices and all the actors speak in ye old English so it feels just like the movies.