A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum (ahh...fortress?). The game you love to hate, loves & hates right back!!!
GENERAL IMPRESSIONS: The first thing you hit are the graphics. The colour palette, which in an interview in the Collector's Edition DVD, is supposed to surpass the grasslands and burnt earth of the original, completely disappoints on it's promises. Unfortunately, the end results are landscapes over-rich in colour to the point of being cartoonish. Unit detail is lost in the crazy cartoon colours the different units boast. And you need a beasty PC to see the game in all of its' richness. The more you play, though, the more richness and small little details pop up, so forgiveness readily avails.
GAMEPLAY: The base-building (particularly productions buildings and captured taverns) s now your main focus, because without walls and arrow towers, you're toast. Especially when you have almost completed a mission and you are attacked back at the fortress. Build up your castle's economics, then it's walls, then its units. Then go about doing what you did the first time around (just longer into a battle than before). Lose to an unforseen enemy plan (almost implausible at times). Reload scenario, and start again. It might sound weird to some, but battle tactics for the large set piece battles (Helm's Deep, Minas Tirith, Isengaard etc) were based by many players on what they saw their heroes do in the movie trilogy. Remember, this game franchise is far more film-based than literature-based. BFME II feels like it is based more on Ralph Bakshi's animated feature of the 1970's than the books or Jackson's films. If this was the first outing of BFME, it would easily rate a 9. And where is the beautiful dynamic campaign map of the original. I know the story ran on rails, but in BFME II you just go from one mission to the next in what are ultimately two very short, linear "campaigns", linked by drab cut-scenes. As there are only about 8 missions in each campaign EA has padded them out by throwing in more and more spiders, twists and impossible counter-attacks. You get 3/4 through a mission and what happens? Spiders or Goblins (or both) appear out of the walls and attack your base all the way back at the start. So save often.What a mess. And don't even get me started on the "War of the Ring" section. It and the Galactic Conquest mode of EAW are lame after-thoughts that should have stayed at home. Amateur hour hits retail big-time.
REQUIREMENTS: This game really should have been an expansion disk (iffy at that). The graphics are right up there as long as you have a grunty PC (4 Ghz with 2 Gb RAM seems to satisfy it) and a whopping 5+ GB hard drive space even with the DVD Collector's edition. What's the point in using DVD if you don't USE its' significant larger volume. And what's with the blue rope around the units. You could turn that option off in the first game (but then battles are so much like a pile of spew you need it to see your units). Dwarves, elves, goblins and snow a game do not make.
FINAL THOUGHTS: Yes they've packed this offering with everything a Tolkien fan could want, and if it was a Cave Troll its' belly would be bloated and dragging in the grass. I have tried so very hard to like this game. But it tries so hard to kick me just when I've found a redeeming feature. The naval combat holds much promise of a new tactical element, however it is a totally under-realized component as is the free-hand base building. It isn't free-hand at all. You are limited to areas of maximum resource production, and that makes them very susceptible to sneak attacks (and their defence strength is very, very limited). The unit-cap is thankfully higher, but then it needs to be as your units die VERY swiftly after going into combat. The goblins at least have caves to get reinforcements to the battle faster, otherwise you'll be re-playing the same mission once you've realized that Campaign Missions are actually PUZZLE-based. Their only longevity comes from having to replay missions with hard-won knowledge of enemy tactics and plans (tricks by EA?). The large numbers actually work against the game as large scale battles become visually very confusing and messy (hence the blue rope or red razor wire). There are so many battles in a scenario, in fact, that you very often miss them as you're jumping from one to another to issue new orders or to cue build orders before your army rapidly disappears. And ALL your units die a lot faster in this one, so you're mouse will be shooting all over the pad to keep up. The battles end up as tank rush skirmishes with little or no finesse. Giants & Cave trolls die a lot faster too. If you've battled through "Dawn of War", "DOW:WA", "SW:EAW" or "BFME I", this unbalanced gameplay is a slap in the face, and you are loathe to recommend it to anyone over 15yo. That said, BFME II comes with plenty of new additions and it will be fun for you, so long as you are not looking for a serious Single-player Campaign experience, somewhat like the first game. And if you don't mind a really, really badly written story, with really bad music, and really bad voice acting, then you will love this EA offering (Earnings Anyway = EA). 'nuff said!!!