Customer Reviews

The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(42)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

(I deduct one "overall" star because the game's launch had a lot of multiplayer tournament problems. Those appear to have been resolved in the recent v1.02 patch which you will download automatically the first time you sign on.)

Gameplay:
BFME2 is what I would call a "true real-time strategy game". In most RTS games (e.g. Starcraft, Age of Empires) you are really playing a "real-time tactical game". You must focus a lot of effort on directing your troops at a micromanagement level, telling them who, exactly, they are supposed to shoot at, one guy at a time.

The BFME series has simplified this by creating "batallions". Instead of building archers 1 at a time, you'll build them 15 at a time and they come out as an organized batallion. You cannot tell your 15 archers to focus fire on 1 enemy unit, you can only tell them to fire on another batallion. The details of how they direct their fire is up to them. The time you aren't spending directing fire can now be spent on executing a bigger plan.

Consequently, BFME2 is one of the very few RTS games that rewards multi-pronged attacks and flanking. Units get a flanking bonus for attacking enemies from behind and the fact that you don't need to babysit every single fight means you can leave one battle to go start up a second front somewhere else and not worry so much about the fight you aren't watching.

BFME2 also introduces a new resource model which greatly rewards map ownership. Rather than fighting over piles of resources and ignoring the other 90% of the map like most RTS games, BFME2 has resource collection spread across the entire map. The more you control, the more money you get. Factions have been completely re-balanced to accomodate this -- in BFME1, the human teams could not match Mordor in an open land war but in BFME2, they can. They need to, if they want any money!


Singleplayer:
BFME2 covers portions of the war that were not covered by the movies. The first mission of the Good Campaign has you fighting off Goblins around Rivendell, for example.

Single player has 4 options:
- Skirmish, the usual you-vs-computer battle mode.
- Good Campaign.
- Evil Campaign.
- War of the Ring. This is a new and improved version of the "living world map" they had in the first game. They fleshed it out and now it's more like a free-form game of LOTR Risk. You and the other players start off in various sections of middle earth and conquer the map any way you choose. Battles can be resolved RTS style or automatically (Civilization style) and this mode also has multiplayer support (one War of the Ring game could take a very long time if you resolve every battle in RTS mode!)


Playable sides:
- Dwarves. Dwarven units tend to be slow but tough. They aren't big on cavalry but their infantry is very good. They gather resources with mines and they can also use these mines for travelling -- enter one mine and pop out at any other mine, anywhere on the map! This gives dwarves a good ability to hold ground once they've taken it.

- Goblins. Similar to dwarves in that they can build mines and use them for travel. Goblins are a "spamarific" species, though, with a lot of large batallions of inexpensive but brittle troops. They do, however, have some very, very fast units and are excellent for hit-and-runs.

- Mordor. Not entirely unlike the Mordor from BFME1, but minus the free troops. Mordor has poor defenses and plays best as a very aggressive team. As Mordor, you need to push your opponet early and keep pushing while you upgrade to better units and work on more resources. Mordor lacks the mobility of the goblins and dwarves and lacks the speed of the elves but they do have a great ability to flood the map with orcs.

- Isengard. Similar to the Isengard from the first game, you rely more on strong infantry with strong upgrades. Similar to Mordor, this is a good team for someone who likes to take a strong offensive. Warg Riders give Isengard some good cavalry but it's usually the Uruks that form the real destructive force of any army.

- Elves. Elves are fast on their feet with especially good archers. They can be played offensively or defensively with pretty good effectiveness. Try to use your fast feet to keep the enemy pinned in while you build up for the kill, or play defensive and work on leveling up some of your powerful archer heroes.

- Men of the West. This team is basically Gondor + Rohan from the original game. Human infantry is pretty strong, especially in shield-wall mode and they can do a good job of soaking up damage while your archers do the real hurting. Humans also have pretty much the best cavalry in the game, making them quite lethal at either hit-and-runs, or for backing up a strong infantry army.


Other new stuff:
This game adds "stances" and some new unit powers. Stances allow all units in the game to decide if they want extra damage at the expense of lower armor, or higher armor at the expense of lower damage, or a balance. Human Swordsmen in the defensive stance with shield wall activated are extremely tough. If an enemy is banging on your buildings and ignoring your units, set your units to aggressive stance and teach them a lesson.


Conclusion:
All of this adds up to become what is, I suggest, possibly the best RTS game ever made and I've played a lot of them.

[updated 04.02.06]: I won't recap the game's features or settings--others have done a fine job of that. As a baseline, here's what I've played so far (after several days): all 20 2-player skirmishes to victory[*], the Good Campaign to victory, the Evil Campaign to victory, and a War of the Ring game to victory. I've also done some on-line playing, and I'm currently working my way through the skirmishes again with the difficulty level set higher.

Here's why BFME-2 got a 4/4 rating (fun/overall) from me:

-- It's easy to pick up. True, I had played through BFME-1, but that was long enough ago, and BFME-2 has changed enough, that it wasn't a given. The built-in tutorials were great, and, yes, since I don't have a lot of free time, I bought the PRIMA game guide.

-- It's addictive. Not quite the electronic crack that Civ4 is, but I've spent far more time playing it during the last several days than I than I thought I would.

-- I know other reviews here have complaints about installation and system compatibility, but for me it's worked fine out of the box + the 1.01 patch on a system that I was never able to get Civ4 completely stable on.

-- I enjoy the music + graphics + voice work + cut scenes. Of course, BFME -2 has the advantage of all the LOTR movie music, art design, etc.

-- The user interface does what it needs to do and otherwise gets out of the way.

-- The difficulty in skirmishes is almost infinitely tweakable, due to the handicap system. For example, my main profile was at level 2 after finishing my first set of skirmishes, but the Medium difficulty level puts your opponent at level 4. No worries: I started out by putting my opponent's handicap at -50% and have lowered it by 5% each time I've won (my profile is now up to level 3, and I'm giving my opponent a handicap of -15%).

-- I can play through a skirmish (or a Campaign mission) on 'Easy' level in 15-30 minutes; maybe an hour, tops.

-- There's a nice balance among the six factions; each feels different, each requires slightly different tactics. I tend to favor the Good factions, but I must confess to having fun with the Evil campaign, especially using Mountain Giants to level most of Fornost.

-- I enjoyed the focus on the War in the North. It's a nice change from the classic LOTR books (and I speak as one who has been reading LOTR for nearly 40 years).

-- Having completed one War of the Ring game, I've found that I like it better than I did at first--mostly because the ability to do "real time" (skirmish) resolution allows me to win battles even when the odds are heavily against me.


Here's why BFME-2 _didn't_ get a 5 in either fun or overall:

-- The skirmish maps are too small. Or, better put, there should be larger maps available in addition to the existing ones. I'd like to see a 4x map (twice as high, twice as wide) so that each side can really establish an infrastructure and then manuever with large armies over large fields. Likewise, a lot of the movement plotting and formation capabilities of the game are largely wasted because space is too cramped and everything moves too quickly to do a whole lot with them.

-- I'd also like to zoom out farther _and_ I'd like to see support for 1280x1024. However, I suspect that these two limitations, as well as the small map sizes, are all for the same reason: system resources. I'm running BFME-2 on a 3.6 GHz P4 with 1GB RAM and a RADEON X600 graphics cards w/256MB of memory--and the game still gets sluggish when too many units are on the screen. I've had a few crashes, but very few compared to the number of hours I've played.

-- EA put all this work into the fortress building aspects of BFME-2, but you seldom get a chance to do much with them--at least, in skirmishes--because conflict starts too soon and either drains your resources in replacing destroyed units/buildings or simply ends before you can do much with your fortress(es). The main exceptions are in campaign missions where the main wave of attack is delayed for some period of time (e.g., Erebor and Rivendell in the Evil campaign).

-- Fortress walls are too easily destroyed and are too hard to repair. It takes most of the fun out of building in those cases when you have the time to do so.

-- Neither the manual nor the PRIMA game guide explains exactly (or even generally) what changes as the different difficulty levels, nor what the numeric level(s) mean for a given profile and how that affects gameplay. For that matter, some of the summary values after skirmishes/missions (e.g., 'tactical rating') are likewise unexplained.

-- In fact, there's a fair amount that the manual never really explains--and it's not the most readable manual in the world, either in content or in presentation.

In sum, I've just had a lot of fun building armies, defending (or conquering) territory, and trying out different tactics, all within a slighly mutated version of Tolkien's world with great music in the background. My complaints with BFME-2 mostly have to do with it been a bit too cramped, fast moving, obscure and self-limiting--though that may just reflect why I don't like real-time strategy (RTS) games quite as much as 4X games such as Civ4.

All said, I consider myself as having gotten my money's worth for having bought BFME-2 ([*]the collector's edition, no less, which is why I had a few more skirmish maps than the regular release) plus the PRIMA game guiide. My enjoyment of (and semi-addiction to) BFME-2 has been a stark contrast to my experience with Star Wars: Empire at War (see my review here on Amazon).

Your mileage may vary. ..bruce..

==================================
A few random tips for those of you just starting out:

-- Your (computer) opponents will rush you, that is, starting sending battalions at you as fast as it can generate them. The best defenses is often a good offense--build up several battalions as fast as you can, chew up the forces that come at you, then send your forces at the enemy's fortress while building replacements.

-- If you are playing a Good faction (Elves, Men, Dwarves), Battle Towers are your friends. A close set of three to five Battle Towers can render a given approach impassible--at least, until your opponent starts bringing up siege engines and/or Mountain Giants. And a few strategically placed Battle Towers back by your barracks/stables can take care of those pesky units that make it past your main forces. I frankly prefer Battle Towers to walls.

-- Geography matters. Look for choke points where you can block enemy advances. On one skirmish map, I found such a narrow choke point much closer to the enemy fortress than to my own. I rushed my first three (Elven) archer battalions into the trees there, then built a 'Mirror of Galadriel' to heal them. The enemy kept trying to send forces through that point, but they all got ground up--not a single enemy unit ever got past, and I never had to replace any of my three archer battalions. In the meantime, I was able to take my time to build up for my own invasion.

-- Technology advances also matter. Elven archers with Silverthorn arrows and Elven armor are incredibly deadly; a few such battalions can take down anything very quickly.

The game is an awesome game except for a very few quirks. Firsly, my system is as follows: AMD 64 3500+, 2GB DDR RAM, SATAII WD HDD, 7800GTX and i play @1600x1200 on an LCD so i need the games to be playable at this native reso.

The problem is if you crank up the command unit factor more than the default, the map quikcly gets flooded with troops, this seriously Slows things to a crawl (kinda helpful in micro managing battles but seriously annoying otherwise). I don;t think it's due to graphics coz i reduced the resolution and i had the same problems, the issue is CPU bound. Again, don't get me wrong, in the default settings of skirmishes i have no slow down, this happens only when u have way more than 1000 command points and your playing on large a$$ maps.

I seriously wonder what kinda system is needed to play the game smoothly with so many units? maybe an AMD 64FX? Anywasy the game is awesome, i always play against the comp in Brutal difficulty, or else the AI is not too challenging. However, i know a lot of people who beg to differ.

The AI is overall pretty good at one thign - Rushing you, they simply intend to win on the sole concept of rushing rushing and rushing. I have held Morodor, Goblins and Isengard all at Brutal difficulty at bay for over 3 hours on the maps of Helm's Deep and in Gondor ultimately beating each faction one by one with a unit kill to death ratio of 300 something (i only lost 20 units). This seriously proves that the AI needs a lot of work, they kept coming like lamb to the slaughter towards the gates where ive placed my upgraded Ranger batalions picking them off so easily. After ive place around 7-8 ranger batalions on the walls, nothing even came close to touching the gates. I had breakfast, cofee and took a bathroom break all the time while the game was going on.. it was sad ha ha

As a big fan of real-time strategy (RTS) games, I found this game to be a bit more than the average base-building, resource-collecting fare. To be sure, there is a lot of this kind of activity required in the game, but it is presented in a way that does not seem bland or too conventional. The game does not break a lot of new ground for the genre like, say, Dawn of War or Rise of Nations, but it does offer an interesting spin.

Gameplay: There are a few options here that should keep most players preoccupied for a while. First, there is the campaign mode that allows for play as either the good or evil side. Each of the campaigns have eight scenarios which for the most part are your standard base-building, land-conquering variety. Overall, the missions are well done and are a great introduction to the other gameplay options. Another gameplay mode is the War of the Ring. This is a mix of turn-based and real-time gaming in which factions try to take over a map of Middle Earth by moving armies around. It is a very well-done gaming mode that should allow for a lot of replayability. Thirdly, there is a skirmish mode as well as online play. The game comes with several maps, but unfortunately there is an overabundance of 2-player maps and a shortage of larger maps (only one 8-player map).

Each of the six playable races (men, elves, dwarves, Mordor, Isengard, and goblins) feels unique enough to offer a range of gameplay options. Each has several units, many upgrades, unique powers, various heroes, and other perks. Also, the game ships with a "create-a-hero" template that allows you to create your own in-game hero. This options, while a good idea, is rather limited in regard to the appearance of your hero. Heroes are better implemented in this game than in other RTS games (like Warcraft 3) and can level up without having to hunt down "creeps" or perform other distracting tasks. I assume that a future patch will adjust some of the heroes so that they are better balanced against each other.

The gameplay itself is very frenetic and engaging, and on medium and higher difficulties, the fighting starts early. The game's AI is generally good and will make it a point to destroy your buildings at every opportunity, along with your units. Occasionally, I've witnessed a few lapses with the AI, such as cases in which enemy units were not immediately noticed and attacked. Otherwise, the AI holds its own in most fights. I've only noticed a few flaws in the game, but they are worth commenting upon. First, buildings and walls are far too weak and easily destroyed. Since games are won or lost based on your resource and unit output, it's a shame that a few infantry units can destroy an upgraded fortress in seconds. Of course, lesser structures like farms go down even quicker. Also, the game is not really geared toward epic siege warfare, which was one of the great things about the movies. Walls are not only weak but they are far to expensive to be practical and are difficult (perhaps impossible?) to repair. Additionally, the resource model encourages you to spread your farms apart for maximum benefit, so there is little possibility of having a compact, well-fortified, walled-in base. A patch could correct much of this (such as the strength and cost of buildings and walls), which would allow for more strategic and tactical possibilities such as siege warfare (requiring actual siege weapons) and turtling. There is naval warfare in the game, which is generally done well. However, very few maps allow it.

Graphics: This is a great-looking game. Lots of attention to detail in the environment as well as in the models. Unit animations, explosions, magical effects, weather, and other visuals are very convincing. The cutscenes for the campaigns are based on the game models and some wonderful paintings. The animations are not quite as dramatic and visceral as those of Dawn of War, but they are nonetheless quite good. And there are a lot of them. It never gets old seeing Tom Bombadil punching foes in the face or summoning the terrible wrath of a Balrog. Even common occurrences, such as Roharrim cavalry mowing down infantry, are always good for a smile. The game does require a decent computer to get the most out of the visuals. I have a mid-range machine (P4 3.0ghz, 1GB of RAM, Geforce 6600GT) and still get a bit of lag when there are a lot of units fighting on screen. However, EA went the extra mile on graphics, and it really paid off.

Sound: Everything is in order in this department. There are a lot of spoken sound-bites for each of the races, along with appropriate sounds for monsters, weapons, building construction, explosions, magical effects, and so on. The epic music from the movies plays in the background to set the atmosphere. All of the auditory elements of the game serve their purpose well.

Replayability/Technical Issues: The game should have a decent shelf life for RTS gamers, assuming that EA supports it with patches and an occasional bonus map. A map editor is available for download at the official website (www.bfme2.ea.com). The manual that comes with the game is decent, but the in-game tutorials are better. The game has been pretty stable for me with no installation issues. It did crash twice between turns in the War of the Ring mode. However, this was no big deal since I had been playing for several hours and had recently saved the game.

Overall, if you like RTS games, this is a good purchase.

Rating: 4.25 stars

I have played a lot of strategy games and this one certainly ranks among the top few. Creating Heroes and War of the Ring are two elements that don't arise is many other strategy games and certainly enhance the fun of the game. Campaigns are well-designed and follow good plotlines. Skirmish-style games are also a lot of fun.

This was my first RTS game in years. I'm not an avid gamer and so it took a couple of years for me to wear out my older RTS games (Warcraft III, C&C:Generals) enough to justify opening the wallet for a new one. Also, I just got a new computer that can finally handle newer games.

In all, I have quite enjoyed the game for the first three weeks and I'm very excited about the future. It seems to combine/include all the best elements from all the RTS games i've played. some don't like it, but I like the fact that you have to upgrade each unit individually. It allows for more strategy and makes the upgraded/experienced battalions/units much better than those that aren't. The hero element is also good (as it was in Warcraft III) but very-well balanced with non-hero units. Heros can do tons of damage, but they will still get destroyed if you send them into battle alone. Also, the experienced hero's have significant advantages so it is well worth your while to build them early and level them up as much/fast as you can.

The resource gathering mechanism is cumbersome, difficult and challenging. Other games allow you bunch all resource gathering in a concentrated area, but this game forces you to sprawl your base if you want to collect resources faster. this is compensated by the fact that resources never run out. All of these things introduce new elements and therefore alter the strategies needed to overcome them.

This was consistent throughout the game. It takes a little bit to get used to it, but one can play it fairly soon. But the more you play, the more you see the depth of the game and realize the extent to which various strategies can be employed.

Strongly recommended. my best friend is considering buying a pc just so he can play this game because i've raved about it so much.

The greatest strategy on earth and i own it. now i'm going to give you read out why you should by this game. i will also tell you the features.
first of my favorite ting is creating your own hero with swords, axes, shields, armour, pads, stats(such as power and health), and powers. i like using the wizard class the best because of their awesome powers like fire balls and evens the hero gandalf's word of power spell. don't worry about getting the first game before the second because the first sucks. in this game you can customize your central fortress with catapaults, towers, and walls. you can build anywhere and command large armys. the factions you can play as are,Men, Elves, Dwarves, Isengard, Mordor, and Goblins. you can controls a navy and the spell that you can choose are so darn cool it's unbelievable. (Whew!) and i'm just getting started, there are new maps, a story driven campaign, and a risk style war of the ring mode. i say if you have the cash (which is not alot) then get this game NOW!!!!!! thank you for reading this review.

I bought this game for my younger brother, aged 16, for Christmas and he played it non-stop for the entire week afterwards. He has since bought the expansion pack (Rise of the Witch King) on his own, so overall I would say he was very pleased with it. I had the chance to play the game myself for a bit and found it fairly easy to pick up, especially with my experience with Blizzard's Real-time Strategy games (WarCraft, StarCraft, etc). With my limited experience, I can't say for sure the quality of the game, but while not blown away, I enjoyed it.

Like it says above,love the game...don't love the campaign.IT'S WAY TOO SHORT! If you've played LOTR BFME 1,you probably loved the loooooooooong campaign.The shirmishes(open play battles)on it were
pretty fun,but the campaign was great.Anyway, the game has lots of great things too,first the new factions.The factions are...Elves,Men of the West,Dwarves,Mordor,Isengard,and Goblins.
as well as adding 3 new factions,The old Rohan and Gondor factions have been combined into one, Men of the West
One of the new things to do is a thing Called Hero Builder as well as using the old LOTR Heros you can build your own heros.
First you pick their class, you choose from...Heros of the West
(Good Men),Elves,Dwarves,Wizards,Servants of Sauron,(orcs,uruks and trolls)and Corrupted Men(Evil Men).

The gameplay is almost the same as BFME 1, only instead of having
build plots you start out with two laborers that can build structures almost anywhere. Resource collecting buildings
can be built almost anywhere , they have a large circle around them. The buildings circle must be clear of cliffs,water bodies,and other resource collecting buildings circles to have 100% resource output. if they have any of those the output percent will be measured by how much clear land it does have.
if 2 resource collecting buildings circles overlap the one that was finished first will own the overlap area.
Okay one last thing, their is one other feature.its called
War of the Ring, it plays out almost exactly like the board game
RISK only when you come to a battle you can play it just like a skirmish.

Anyway if you like a fun game with some great stuff buy this game,
If you like long campaign don't.

I'm writing this review from the point of view of a casual gamer who only plays against the computer; I like being able to quit a game whenever I feel like it. So, obviously, I'll only be commenting on the single-player modes.

The campaign modes of the game features nothing from the movies proper, instead focusing on the "War in the North" - the Goblins versus the Elves and Dwarves. The campaign is comparatively short, featuring only about 1/3 of the missions of the original BFME, presented in a fixed order. However, the locales and actual missions are varied and well-designed, avoiding the monotony that was 75% of the BFME I campaigns (a.k.a. destroy the enemy base, which was always located directly opposite you on the map, and maybe fulfill the ridiculously easy secondary objective).

As you can tell from the campaigns, three new factions are introduced - Goblins (roughly equivalent to the spam-happy Mordor from BFME I - units that are weak but cheap with a few random heavy hitters), Dwarves (incredibly strong and ponderously slow, very good on the defensive), and Elves (think Gondor from BFME I and soup it up, making them stronger and faster but are slightly weaker defensively as a trade off). Gondor and Rohan have been combined into the "Men of the West" faction, combining the best of both worlds, and Mordor has been made slightly more robust, including adding a few more heroes, but have lost the free orcs. Isengard, with the exception of adding new heroes, is pretty much identical.

My favorite addition to the game is the "War of the Ring" mode, which takes the campaign mode from BFME I and turns it into a Risk type of game, with territories able to be reconquered, garrisoned, built up and more. This adds a great level of strategy and fun to the game, and any battles can be auto-resolved or fought out in real-time. My only complaints about this mode are that the AI tends to be too agressive, leaving their territories undefended, and that the players only can have three armies that invade other territories (they led by pre-selected heroes you have at the beginning of the game; later heroes you build can't lead armies).

The create-a-hero feature is a cool concept, but I would have liked to see more options - each character can only have certain skills depending on their class (wizard, orc, et cetera), which is fine, but we only get 12 or so to choose from. Appearance options are even worse, with only a sparse variety - you can't even change hair color. And every hero costs 2000 resources, no matter how powerful or useless they are. (This was apparently fixed in the now-difficult-to-find expansion pack, "Rise of the Witch King")

Also, a lot of the little annoying things from BFME I have been fixed. Unit-producing buildings now can be upgraded by purchasing an upgrade, cutting out the rank-based-on-production system that never worked because the command point limit was so low - another issue that has been resolved in BFME II, with a base CP limit of 1000 that is adjustable (it also is realistic - player start a game with 100 CPs and, as they build up their infrastructure, get more). Resource gathering is now based on territory and buildings can be built anywhere, which makes the game more realistic - factions now battle it out for the entire map instead of trying to control one of several arbitrarily-chosen "expansion points." There is also a new difficulty for the AI - "Brutal" - for those of us who found the "Hard" opponents somewhat lacking.

All in all, this is a very worthwhile game that is both deeper than BFME I (thereby pleasing the BFME and other RTS veterans) while still being fairly easy to pick up (meaning the rookies will enjoy it). It's quality and fun, but has enough frustrations and shortcomings to land it squarely in 4-star territory.