This role-playing, action, Lord of the Rings game will satisfy any LotR fans and role-play/action/adventure games alike.
THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE GAMES IN THE WORLD! I have rented it about 18 times from Blockbuster! I even have it right now (November 16, 2007) and have to return it to Blockbuster (November 19, 2007).
First I will tell you a little bit of why I love this game and maybe you will hear some things about it that interest you.
I love this game hands down and can answer any questions you might have as to why, most of which will be answered in what I am about to write you.
This game has some extraordinary customization options and the game is freakin long. You can earn upgrade points by leveling up and you level up by getting enough battle points with a certain character. Whether you use the character or not everyone in your party gets battle points if you win the battle. When you level up and get upgrade points you can choose to give those points to a variety of customizable abilites. These abilities include STRENGTH, SPIRIT, DEXTERITY, ETC. All of the upgradable attributes help and depending on which path you take to your attribute upgrading determines how you will have to work your fighting strategy. In other words: do I want to upgrade this man mostly on strength and use brute force to fight or would I rather upgrade his spirit abilities and use him to rally to others and let them use brute force, or do I want to upgrade this elf's spirit power and use her one spirit attack and many spirit healling abilities to aid the others in battle? Different things like that.
Also with your party you can customize weapon and armor combinations. You have to look at what each piece of armor's special abilities are... not just their strength and protection. This helps and adds a bit of fun to the cusomization because every piece of armor or wardrobe looks different. Also the weapons and armor is found or earned in big battles which makes finding them a treat and rather enjoyable. By that I mean that when you find a piece of armor or a new weapon you can't wait to try it on and see how it works and how strong it is. Literally... you will find it and be thinking, "Yay I found another piece of armor! Yippee!".
Another strong aspect of the game is the exploration piece. It is fun to explore the often massive environments and find new pieces of armor and weapons or just think, "Dang it!", when you find a chest, open it, and it isn't a piece of armor or a weapon. Also the different environmenst never look too dull and look nice for a game made in the earlier half of the PS2 era. Also, on top of that, the character models look nice, especially the armor and weapons, and the frame rate stays solid and never slows down. And to top that off the different animations look nice and will make you excited when you learn new attacks.
You learn new attacks in the game by using one attack catagory a certain number of times. let's say that you want to upgrade your sword attack and get a new one. You have to use attacks from the "Sword Attacks" catagory a certain number of times (the number increases by level) and you will eventually learn a new attack. This works for all of the catagories including sword attacks, spirit attacks, axe attacks, bow attacks, and so on depending on the character.
The difficulty in the game is not all that challenging on the easy setting IF YOU UPGRADE YOUR POINTS AND USE THE ADVANTAGES YOU GIVE EACH MEMBER OF YOUR PARTY FOR GOOD AND TO THEIR FULL POTENTIAL! In other words if you keep upgrading strength and yet never use their melee attacks then you aren't going to make it very far in the game. However, if you upgrade your spirit power and keep using spirit attacks then you just might make it somewhere. Also the character's personality should determine how you upgrade him or her (yes you heard me right. For all of you girls out there who like to play with girl characters there are two girls to choose from, and elf and a human. Of course being a boy I like to play as Berethor, the character the whole story and game centers around and the guy who carries sword). So if you have an elf then you will probably want to upgrade their spirit abilities as they are always going to be strongest with them because spirit is what they do. If you have the dwarf then you should upgrade their speed for attacking and use mainly their melee attacks. However, you should not upgrade both a dwarf's spirit and a dwarf's strength... pick one and stick with it!
The boss fights in the game are pretty fun. However most of the time you will be longing for your strongest character to get his or her shot at the bad guy because you know that he or she will be able to take them down better and with more ease.
The reason I say "shot" is because this game moves on a turn-based attack system. You have to use the abilities of your characters in this turn-based system wisely because you never know how long it will be before they get another shot at the bad guy. Fortunately your characters can dodge attacks and these dodges become more and more frequent with each speed upgrade. Although this turn based attack gameplay is okay and does an okay job of evening out attack opportunities between the sides, it also is annoying. The reason it is annoying is that when you are going up against two and somtimes three times as many enemies as you have on the field it is annoying to have to watch helplessly as your characters take a beating while you oh so desperately want it to be your turn to attack.
Besides this flaw in the game it still manages to stay entertaining. The games difficulty does get harder but stays pretty easy as long as you upgrade right and choose the three characters that you are going to stay with throughout the game and stick with them (my suggestion is Berethor, Hadhod, and Idrial).
Overall this game will be fun for anyone who is a fan of role-playing games, adventure games, and it will not please you if you do not like Lord of the Rings. If you are a fan of Lord of the Ring and Role-Playing and/or Adventure games then you should definately check this game out.
8.4