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The Hearts of Men will fail, and that day is the day you play this.
Lord of the Rings: Conquest takes a well known series of novels and a popular trio of movies and tries to turn it into a massive tactical game. The setting is of course Tolkien’s Middle Earth where armies of good and evil battle for the fate of the Third Age. The progression of the game takes the player through a series of battles starting with the side of men, and after that is completed, the side of Sauron. The side of men reaches its apex with the razing of the Black Gate; the side of Sauron ends with the burning of the Shire. The setting is ripe for something akin to a game whose idea is massive combat, thus making its failure that much more difficult to fathom.
The game play of LoTR: Conquest is really just a king of the hill game. Well over half of the missions involve taking a position and just standing in it while a “capture” meter changes from red to blue. Now to be fair there is at least one protection mission, a couple of seek and destroy missions, and one tower defense mission. These missions just add to the lack luster overall progression through the game. Some of the missions, especially in single player mode, border on tyrannical by flooding the player with torrents of spawns, all of which are pursuing the player. This is a bit better in multiplayer, but in some cases swings to almost too simple. The balance of spawns seems to be poorly maintained by the AI. This results in adding to an already poorly designed system of encounters.
The individual choice of classes the player can choose from also seems to be unbalanced. The choice of the scout class will instantly show its worth with the ability to become invisible and instant kill nearly any of the opposition by coming up behind them. They seemed to try to balance this with giving it a miniscule refresh rate, however this was a failure. The other classes all have their benefits. Archers have speedy long range attacks with trick arrows, warriors have multi hit combos, and mages (there seem to be a lot of them despite their rarity in the books) can protect and heal. There are also special times when players can become ents, trolls, or one of the heroes (villains) of their chosen side. This does add some fun flavor to the game. Versus mode prompts players to reach a certain kill count number before their opponent, mimicking the rivalry of Legolas and Gimili in the movies. I have noticed in that mode though that NPCs will accumulate kills for you, which I believe detracts from the game. Another interesting note about versus is the hero versus mode, this allows the players to play respective named characters (heroes) from the books/movies. One laughable point is when the AI doesn’t restrict a hero based upon one already in play, essentially letting there be two or three Gandalfs or Witch Kings.
I have played this game with some younger gamers, a second and third grader, and they enjoyed this game immensely. I however find this game to be torturous to play. The missions are boring and the unbalanced characters and AI made me wish for blindness. However it can be a game younger gamers could play and be entertained with until they are old enough for more mature games. This is the only positive I see of this game. Do not buy this game, do not rent it, and wash your hands after handling it.
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System: |
Xbox 360
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| Genre: |
Third-Person Action/Mass-Combat
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| Experience: |
Finished the Single-Player game, some experience with multiplayer
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