"...It's a fun game with a great license that any fan of the series will definitely appreciate."
When you see or play this game think Champions of Norrath, or another similar dungeon crawler, only set in the Tolkien universe. Beginning with the Fellowship's departure from Rivendell, you can begin the game as Frodo, Gandalf, Legolas, Aragorn, or Eowyn. Each character has their own special abilities, such as Gandalf's ability to use magic or Frodo's One Ring power which turns him invisible. These varied powers make things more interesting, and this is a good thing because combat is fairly repetetive. Each character is 'different' in terms of fighting style, but overall they all esentially fight the same way. Regardless, the game is still fun to play, especially if you're into the hack n' slash genre. The thing that puts it in the genre is the fact that you, as one of the characters mentioned above, runs around Middle-earth slaying evil monsters and collecting loot such as items and gems (Currency in this game). There's an inventory system, albeit small, where you can hold items such as weapons and armor to equip or sell. A leveling system also keeps things interesting. As you slay monsters you gain experience and ultimately levels, and for each level you get a few points to put into skills (i.e., strength, wisdom), and one or so to spend on character abilities. To make things a bit more interesting, your character has a 'corruption level' which increases under certain circumstances (And especially for Frodo because he has the One Ring). As your corruption increases so does the attention of the evil Sauron on your character, and if you get too much attention Sauron will try to put you down using his minions. All along the way the movie's story is interwoven at inermittent points throughout the game. Whoever you play as you meet up with some of the others from the Fellowship as well, though you are never really with any of the other members during gameplay. Despite the fact that gameplay is a little repetetive, it's still a solid system.
In visuals, one can't expect too much detail. And this is especially so in Lord of the Rings. The epic nature of the movie can't be retained through the GBA, but that doesn't mean that the game doesn't look good--or at least decent. Each character you play as is clearly identifiable be it Gandalf or Aragorn. Their movements are nice and fluid and action actually looks pretty good too. The fighting you'll be doing mostly is against grunts who look no different from one another, but sometimes you'll run across rare monsters who are tougher to kill, but sometimes drop better loot. Thankfully, the monsters present in the game differ from time to time. The combat in this game looks decent but is mostly unremarkable. Considering the obvious limitations of the GBA this is easily looked past. Environments usually begin with a recognizable locale such as the Gates of Moria, but beyond that things look a bit bland. Fortunately, levels are filled with foliage, rocks, stairs, treasure chests, etc., so that things don't look too sparse. And in addition to that, environments sometimes will be accompanied by environmental effects such as falling snow. The Two Towers looks good for its size, and again its hardly fair to complain of any lack of detail or scope compared to its silver screen source.
The music in The Two Towers doesn't work that well; however, it works well enough for this handheld game. Music is easily out of the Lord of the Rings. Sounds effects are pretty much just much of the same. There are the standard sounds of clanging and smashing or spellcasting, but nothing much more beyond that.
Thw Two Towers reminds me of a poor-man's Diablo. This dungeon-crawler is nothing special, and if you already own either this game on another console or a different Lord of the Rings title, then this one may not interest you much. Still, it's a fun game with a great license that any fan of the series will definitely appreciate.