The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age is a simple yet fun venture for the franchise into the world of RPGs.
The visuals are good and do boast some fairly impressive looking spells and animations. They look quite similar to the two previous EA Lord of the Rings games which is not necessarily a bad thing. What could have made them even better is more on-screen action during the exploration mode, but this may worsen the often slow framerate.
The music featured in the films makes its presence known in the game as well, although not very frequently. The voice actors do a top-quality job and fill their character's roles perfectly. The grunts of the orcs and swings of swords all sound spot-on.
I spent thirty hours on this game and a very pleasant thirty hours they were. At times it was frustrating, at times it was just straight up unoriginal. But for all of it's downfalls, The Third Age makes up for in rewards and satisfaction, especially after a difficult battle. The Evil Mode is just plain uninspiring but does add a little more to the title, rather than the pointlessly shallow "two-player" mode. Nevertheless, for a first stab at the world of RPGs, EA does a very good job at bringing the franchise into this new territory.