An almost perfect RTS
User Rating: 9.5 | The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II PC
I am a LOTR fan, but regardless, this is an absoluty great game. The graphics are still solid for 2009 and the single unit AI really gives you a feeling of realism. The best factor about this RTS is the vastness of ways to battle your foe. Train a massive army complete with cavalry, knights, pikemen, archers, treabuchetes, and heros from the novels and movies. You can even train ships! LOTR BFMEII gives you the opportunity to make a war fleet which can give you an incredible tacticle advantage. Have your core army assault the outer defenses as you command an elven naval bombardment on the enemie's fortress. The castle sim is nigh perfect too. This is a perfect RTS in every way. The only reason I don't give it a 10 is because of the camera and squad grouping. The camera can zoom in and out and rotate, however it is always at a fixed angle. This is a handicap when you want to get your face right in the battle as if you were a soldier. The squad grouping is kind of useless. It would be nice to attach heros to specific units so when us select the squad, you select the hero as a part of the squad. Instead you must select them from the num pad. This especially sucks when you put your army in formation for a seige. You select the group, and the units are scattered all over the place. Besides this, the economy is perfeclty regulated, and the combat and command system is perfect. All around, and almost perfect RTS.
