LOTR: The Battle For Middle-earth

[Stryker82]

Who wants to talk about this mind blowing LOTS RTS game... Wow, i mean holy crap myself and roll in it this game owns me like the last fat kid who ate a whole cake in 30 seconds. Wow... Wow wow wow! I love it.

Ok, so it's not 100% controllable, like you don't take ur peasant and build a farm, and then a barracks and just put anything wherever you want, but you buld a Settlement/Outpost/Castle and other variants, and then you get 3 - 8 locations to build something... I only played it for 2 days, but i got to Minis Tirith in the Good campaign, i will be getting the Play disc back soon so i can marvel at it's superiority.

Wow, the heros are just so awesome, even the midget hobbits can do some damage to the unexpecting orc. Sure, they get owned melee, but wait! Frodo, Sam, Pippin, Merry SHEATHE YOUR SWORDS AND THROW ROCKS FOR EXTRA DAMAGE!!! Ok so the hobbits are not that cool, but then there's Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Boromir, Feramir, Eoyn(SP?) Eomer, Theodan, and last but not least GANDALF!!

Wow, each of them have some great powers. Legolas pulls a second arrow out of his ass, fires both with this nice blue aura around them, and manages to damage the orc you target, and a couple around him. Gimli can throw axes, run his midget ass up to an orc and beat him to a bloody pulp, and has this super cool move at level 4 or 5 where he jumps into the air and lands knocking back and damaging any hostile you target.
So there's some cool stuff, i cant even explain all of the hero's moves. Gandalf starts with this wicked wizard blast thing, that throws the orcs into next week, with some good damage. Level him up some and you get this amazing lightning bolt, that does damage per second in a certain range/area, and he can also mount Shadowfax and TRAMPLE those little orcs into oblivion.
Ok his coolest power i have discovered, JUST LIKE THE MOVIE!!! The big white light apears and BOOM! He shoots it out of his wand and it blows the enemy and some surrounding ones into grilled cheese with bacon bits.

So there's a couple Nazgul attacking me, so i send out All-Mighty Gandalf into a field of about 100 Orcs. I use lightning and a few die, i use the wizard boom thing and clear a path big enough to get a run and TRAMPLE the rest into little Orc Pancakes. So it's gandalf facing this Nazgul, he soars through the air, coming for me while i charge my spell, and BOOM! It hits dead on and the Nazgul disintigrates in MID AIR!!

If you have a scroll mouse, you can zoom in and see your Archer's Arrow go right through the head of an unsuspecting orc and just jizz yourself at how cool it looks. You can even rotate the camera 360 degrees, zooming freely.

Ok well thats not even HALF of the kick-ass action and fun you will experience when you play this game, i mean WOW! I could go on forever. I took down one of Mordor's city's with an army of archers led by Feramir... I loaded all Battallions up with Fire Arrows and heavy armor, and since they were Rangers they blend in with the forest and one of my special POWERS!!! YES GODLY POWERS!!! So i take my 95 archers and just wait in the forest, i mean NOTHING can stop these guys, they're like Michael Jackson alone in a room with 100 little boys with no pants, i mean they just CANT BE STOPPED!! So 25 or so orcs try to attack my base, and they all get shot down before they even SAW what was coming. Uh oh, a BIG OLLIPHANT (SP?) In the game they call them Mumakills, but still, BIG ELEPHANT surrounded by about 50 more orcs, and 10 or 15 archers. So i target all 95 of mine on the elephant, and suddenly the rack on top lights on fire, DRIVING THE ELEPHANT MAD! It starts going crazy like your wife when she see's you in bed with her sister! It starts kicking around and swinging it's Tusks killing most of the orcs around it, and then it DIED AND FELL ON THE OTHER 20 ORCS!!! Job easily done!

Ok so peasants seem useless right? WRONG! Peasants work as the perfect HUMAN SHIELD for ARCHERS! So you use one of your GODLY powers giving them all combat gear, and then u merge an archer Battallion with this newly formed peasant battallion and you're set. Get 4 of these Dual-Battallions as i call them, (just 2 battallions merged) and set them to Attack-Move (hit A and right click, they move to target and attack any hostiles they meet) So let's say they see a Cave Troll, UH OH!! WE'RE DOOMED!! Wrong again, The peasants put up their shields while the archers fire on that troll, when the troll finally dies, it goes into a frenzy, swinging all over the pleace dealing HEAVY damage. So you lose a couple peasants, they take 1 or 2 hits, and by then your forces are back, and you can REVIVE 1 dead unit per battallion with a heal power you have.... So you do this and you almost NEVER lose any men, as long as ur power recharges in time.

The other cool thing, not only do heroes level up, but your Battallions level up too, get stronger and more HP and stuff! Wow, Rohirrim and Horse Archers (forget name) rule. Your archers on horseback in the same group as your regular rohirrim (knights) own the Pike men, because pike men own cavalry. ANYWAYS, You take your group of cavalry, set them to Wedge formation (+25% damage, -25% Defense) and then you can run over any foot soldier/unit in sight! You can run over 100 orcs and not even lose a single horse! If you get a bit hurt, no problem go back to your base and heal with your fountain you build for 200 gold

The AI is also pretty amazing. If your Mordor you can use the Eye in Barad Dur (i think) But when the AI is using it, it will scan the map and when it finds your base you hear Sauran do the whole "I see you" in that ghostly phantom voice eching through your speakers. I was sending some rohirrim to help take down one of his bases, and the eye just comes out of nowhere and starts following this horse, i stop the horse, the eye stops... It WATCHES you like strange people on your webcam at night! <_<... >_>... I mean uh, YES! ITS SMART! He sees my rohirrim, and then a squad of Pikemen (orcs) come and whack the crap out of my horses and i hardly knew what was coming, i was amazed at the fact that the AI ACUTALLY KNOWS HOW TO USE ITS POWER OF SIGHT! lol

DAMN! This game is almost like Risk too! Campaign mode, you gotta defend certain territories, For Example: East Rohan, West Rohan, Minas Tirith, Mines of Moria, and almost EVERYWHERE IN MIDDLE-EARTH! You can select your Army(s) and send them to a territory, conquer it, and gain economy/power/unit space upgrades, (unit space, i forget the name, so you can build more troops)...

I HAVE To stop now... You'll be reading a novel if i talk about this spectacular RTS game...So i just typed all that and i can still go on... I HAVNT EVEN PLAYED EVIL SIDE YET!!

How do you people like this game?

[CloneX7]

It's alright..for maybe the first two hours or so. I just got tired of the 'do this, than do that'. Way to scipted for me, not enough freedom. Great graphics but It looked way better during production. Online is fun though.

[Supersonic]

yeh this is one great game and lots of fun online but after a few games you just cant be bothered with it.