A suprisingly deep strategy game that fans of the movie will most likely enjoy
+ Two solid campaigns
+ Follows the movie franchise well
+ Good stratergy based gameplay
Negatives
- Action does get repetetive soon enough
The battle for middle earth is a real time stratergy game based on the Lord of the rings films.
There are three main types of game to play, campaign, skirmish or online.
The campaigns are really fun, they follow the films quite well, as the good guys you follow the fellowship and help defend Rohan, Helms deep and Gondor.
They do how ever add a few extra's in, for example when Sam is going through Shilobs lair, in the film he's alone, but to make it into a level there's a twist in which you have to help recover a troop of Gondor soldiers, then you have to infiltrate Cirith Ungol with them and set up a base outside.
They turn sequences which may not seem to be good levels for stratergy games but they do pull them off.
However the real stratgery comes in the middle of the game, as the evil side you bassically attack as the armies of Mordor, and as the good side you defend your lands (until near the very end of course)
As the good side you must defend areas by clearing it of all enemy camps/castles/outposts that have been set up, this does get repetetive, especially after you've done both campaigns.
But in the end it's great fun while it lasts.
You have the option to set up camps and castles in both situations (as good and evil) in these places you can set up buildings using resources.
You start of with a set amount of resources and gather more by building farms and lumber mills in outposts and camps.
You can also use resources to buy troops, for this you have yo have built barracks, stables or archery ranges though.
There's also the option to build siege weapons on bigger levels (such as the defense of Godor and Helms deep)
There's a fresh variety of troops to choose from and as time goes your buildings level up and allow you to build more types of soldiers.
Also if you have a blacksmith or armourery you can buy upgradfes for your troops such as fire arrows and heavy armour.
It gives you great customisation of how you build your army, you can even name certain troops of soldiers.
For good there are Gondor and Rohan soldiers, archers and cavalry, there's also Gondor scouts and typical siege weapons.
Heroes include the fellowship, Faramir, Theodore and eowyn.
You can also get the upgrades to summon eagles, elves, rohan cavalry and the ents.
Then for evil you have mercenaries, mordor orcs and Isengard Uruk hai soldiers as well as crossbow men, you can also get beserkers, ladders, siege towers and oliphants.
Heroes include Sauroman, Nazguls, the balrog and several Orc and Uruk commanders.
You can get upgrades as time goes by, after some big levels (such as Helms deep) you'll automatically get 'x' amount of upgrade points.
These can be put towards special powers- such as a heal that can be used on a troop of soldiers, however you can only use it every 5 minutes.
Upgrades are different depending on if your good or evil, they do get boring after a while but do come in useful in battles.
There are around 15 upgrades for each faction to purchase, other include summoning Eagles or Nazguls, war cries to tempoararily increas attacks and passive abilities for heroes to make them stronger.
For most of the game it's a case of building as many farms as you can and then waiting for your buildings to upgrade whilsts destroying near by enemy lumber mills.
Then once you have enough of a mixture of troops (so normally archers and melee fighters) you march to the enemies main base and destroy it.
It's superior gameplay lays in major battles, I'll take Mordors' attack on Gondor.
As good your given around 10 minutes to prepare (build barracks, gather supplies and purchase upgrades)
Your base is the actual Gondor castle and it looks superb and very similar to as it does in the movie, you can place archers on the walls and position siege weapons to crush enemies.
So, I conclude battle for middle earth is a suprisingly deep stratergy game but occassionally action is repetetive and it's strong points lay in the major battles.
Altough it sometimes strays from the films it's mostly for the better and it should please anybody who enjoyed the films, or even the books.
Thanks for reading!
~Gormo