Customer Reviews

The Lord of the Rings The Third Age

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(15)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I rented this game to check it out after reading reviews. I agree that the gameplay is very similar to Final Fantasy X (turn-based). The turn-based battle system I don't entirely prefer, but in this game it works well. This game may not take as long to beat than FFX, but I've played over 6 hours and only achieved 11% completion.

You get six characters to use, and if you play in co-op mode, player 1 plays the first, third, and fifth characters, and player 2 plays the second, fourth, and sixth characters. Each player can swap characters - player 1 can switch with a player 2 character and vice versa.

I don't like the fact that only player 1 can assign level-up points to attributes and equip armor, weapons, amulets, etc. Only player 1 can move around the landscape. The only time player 2 gets action is in the battles.

The graphics are incredible, just like FFX. The abilities, spirit powers, and focused skillsets (along with skillsets obtained by equiping certain items) are very well-suited for LOTR. These abilities also look very much different from "Fire" in FFX - instead there are "spirits". Elemental spirits are an original idea, and look fantastic! All abilities (other than regular attacks) have great animation sequences.

The landscapes in the game are very accurate recreations of the actual moviescapes. Moria looks like Moria (the huge underground city, the fire, the Balrog, goblins), Lothlorien looks like Lothlorien (the stairs round the tree trunks, trees themselves, elven architecture, lighting), the Fellowship's camp sites look like camp sites (burnt logs, flames, rocks), and Weathertop looks like Weathertop (the watchtower, stone altar).

Although this game could have used another 6 months or so in development to smooth out gameplay and character animations/movement, it's a revolutionary software title nonetheless!

MAJOR PROS:
* Excellent LOTR music
* Excellent LOTR sounds (lots of bass!)
* Excellent graphics
* The first co-op fantasy game like FFX!
* Excellent LOTR themes, textures, environments, characters

MINOR PROS:
* You control the strategy and speed of the battles
* Each piece of equipment changes a character's appearance
* First game to have Shadow - opposite of Light

MAJOR CON:
* $49.99 price tag

MINOR CONS:
* Turn-based battles (may have been better with Active system)
* The characters move stiffly and roughly
* Player 2 only gets action in the battles

Bottom-line: If you like Final Fantasy (X specifically), and LOTR, rent (or buy) this game and enjoy it!

That is just a way to put it. This RPG is a Final Fantasy game played with Tolkien carachters and story. Maybe you are not going to use any of the main carachters of the book, but you will have some encounters with them, and you are going to help them or receive help at certain moments. The game has excellent graphics, especially the environment and background. You decide how to use the experience you are earning in order to build the carachteristics of your carachters. You start playing Berethor, Captain of the Citadel of Minas Tirith you under orders is looking for Boromir. Soon, he ism joined by Idril, an elf woman with great powers under the orders of Lady Galadriel. Carachters you will use include a Dunedain, a Rohirrim warrior and a Rohirrim women warrior. Also, a dwarf is tossed to the mix. Fight orcs, trolls, Nazgul, etc. This game is great for Tolkien fans, reliving most of the issues of Middle Earth. But, if you are not a Tolkien, even better. The story is great, graphics are amazing, and action is awesome. Very easy to learn, especially for RPG players. The carachters have the same carachteristics as in Final Fantasy, minus the Eons. They even have the perfect points attack. You cannot become disappointed with this game.

You people you critisize this game don't realize what an RPG game is! This game has you exploring more openly than Two Towers and Return of the King and the fighting system is turn-based. That is what an RPG game is all about. Third Age is a fun game and its very strategic as well. The spell powers your characters use are awesome! And you can even play on the dark side. Now thats cool! I highly recommend that you buy Lord of the Rings: Third Age!

Ok, how to tell you about this game. Well as I said, it's not just another of the games. It's a little different.

The graphics are really good. The music is great and the whole environment is great. As for the play, this is one of the best examples of an RPG game if ever I saw one, and I've soon a lot, the only one probably better is the Sims.

There are 6 new characters to play as, 4 humans, a dwarf and an Elf. You'll start as a Gondorian and pick up the other 5 characters as you go, maing your own band of heros following the Fellowship, whom you are always about 5 mins behind, always in their wake. You may have to avoid the same enemies they did as well. At almost every turn there will be a fight signaled by a green screen that pops up to warn you or a little "Eye of Sauron" indicator that lights up as you get closer to danger. All fights are turn-based fighting, pick your weapon of choice and attack, maybe the bad guys will do something, maybe not, then it's your next players turn and on and on until all bad guys are dead. You can chose to skip players so if someone's close to dying, it's a good option. The better you do with chosing your weapons the more points you'll get and upgrades. This is how the while game progresses, here and there you'll run into the Fellowship themselves and fight along side them. In Evil Mode, you fight against the Fellowship itself, which I found quite fun. You have to get through the game to play in Evil Mode, then the fun begins, kill the Fellowship. *MWAHAHA* Hey, I thought it was fun.

Anyway.....

For any Tolkien fan who's looking for anything more Lord of the Rings like than what the other 2 LOTR based games were, this will be a rude wake-up. This does not follow the book or movies, so if it's not what you want, don't bother with this game. For any flat out Middle-earth-ish, Lord of the Rings-ish fan, this is nice because it gives you another view to a long story with a lot behind it. Actor voice-overs are nice and add to the whole effect. The scenery looks very much like the movie's backgrounds and here and there you will recognize things from the movie, so it is very pretty. :-)

All in all, if you liked the hand to hand fighting of the Two Towers or Return of the King, you might like this, it's much more RPG than action, Fellowship of the Ring was RPG and more book based. If action is more you thing, go for the other 2 games. I personally liked Fellowship, Two Towers and Return of the King much better than this, but this is a nice change.

Rent this game before you buy it. It's definately something you gotta try first.

I like the game--really, I do. The characters so far (I'm about 25% through) are entertaining and likeable, and the fight sequences can be a challenge but easy to figure out how to play. The graphics could be better--I swear, the ranger's hair looks like one matted lump and moves like it, and I'm REALLY tired of the face mask on the dwarf.....

The basic storyline is that a Gondorian knight following Boromir north, an elf from Lothlorien, a northern ranger and his dwarf-friend, and later a Gondorian woman raised in Rohan and a Rohirric man all form their own group, following the fellowship through adventures found in the movies, such as Moria, Rohan, Helm's deep, and so on.

However, the game makers must have gotten LOTR confused with Dungeons and Dragons or Everquest, because the feel of the game definitely isn't LOTR! You fight your fair share of goblins, orcs, urikhai, wargs, and other such middle earth creatures, but there is much more magic involved and worse, a whole soap-opera style love triangle story that I find to be irritating myself.

I loved the movies even with the changes made, and I felt that the changes there were in keeping with the Tolkien mythos; this game, however, has many departures that just plain irritate me.

However, if you aren't a LOTR junkie like me and just want a game that is fun to play and easy to learn, this is definitely it! I've never played an RPG before, but I picked this up in minutes and learned the control-sequence quite easy. Its map is a pain at times, however, as it rotates with you and you can never see an overview of it, making it easy to get lost and driving you nuts trying to figure out where to go. But even with that, the game play is fairly fast-paced without being short. As I said, I've made it 25% through the game, but the constant battles make the game go quickly--and I haven't tired of it yet; in fact, I hate quitting it for the night!

Overall, the storyline really needs work, the graphics need work, but the gameplay itself is fun and can keep you entertained for hours.

This game is pretty cool. It has awesome graphics and lets you get new armour and new weapons every time you achieve something. The game is not all about fighting though. It follows a good storyline and the characters have their own story as to where they came from and things like that. You start out in an elven land called Eregion. You start with a man named Berethor. He is from Gondor and he is very strong and is searching for his friend, Boromir. Now as you may know if you like the Lord Of The Rings Bromir gets killed in Amon Hen, after Moria. While you're in Eregion, Berethor gets hurt and is saved by a she-elf named Idrial. She is going to Rivendell when she gets stopped by Berethor and leads him to safety. That is when Idrial becomes a part of his adventure. You get many characters along the way. Their names are, Berethor man of Gondor. Idrial elf of Lothlorien. Elegost whom we find in the mountains(he is a ranger like Aragorn). Hadhod, a dwarven warrior from the clan of Fundin. Eaoden a man from Rohan who is very skilled with the spear, and Morwen a woman from Rohan in search for her family after her village is burned. Each character is skilled with different weapons and personalities. While traveling you can only control one character on foot. In battle, you use three different characters. You go to places where you meet some of the fellowship. You can go to Moria, Amon Hen (where you see Boromir die and where you try to let Frodo leave),Rohan, Helm's deep where you control Gimli, Aragorn, and Legolas along with your party and many other places. You can even be evil and control orcs and anyone who you have battled in good mode. So order the game cuz its cool!!!!!

WARNING: I'll be going a bit in-depth partway into talking about "The Third Age's" endgame, so skip this review if you don't want to know about it.

Okay. I liked the game, but it left me wanting just a bit more at the end.

Overall, it's a refreshing change from the usual anime-flavored tactical turn-based fighting game, in that it's NOT anime-flavored. There's no better world to do this in than Middle-Earth. Some of you may feel disappointed that you don't get to play any of the major characters, but I think that this game is a step in a right direction. For me, there's a deeper sense of immersion playing alongside a major character rather than as one. It's a creative, satisfying twist.

Note that I didn't refer to it as an RPG, as per the game itself. Strictly speaking it doesn't do the genre any real justice. A simple comparison to make this point: Considering Neverwinter Nights as a benchmark for the RPG genre in terms of its sheer depth and replayability, The Third Age is like watching the entire trilogy over Peter Jackson's shoulder and helpfully suggesting minor changes along the way. And then saving the whole thing to DVD.

The most immersive aspects of this game are the fully realized Middle-Earth environments and the soundtrack, music and all. One of the pleasures I found in this game was the simple act of standing around just taking in the sights and sounds. (The fields of Rohan especially.)

Now the gameplay: It plays almost exactly like anything out of the Final Fantasy series. (It actually reminds me more of FF VII than any of the more recent ones.) But it feels completely Middle-Earthy, again thanks to the visuals and sounds. Visual status effects (such as Fear, Stun, Spirit Resistances, Aura of The Valar, etc.) are well-made and manage to work well within the world and mythos of Middle-Earth. And I may add that playing dress-up is one of this game's better points; sure there's no point equipping less-beneficial items, but the chance to just put them on and view the whole package in real time is one of The Third Age's little pleasures.

(Although I would note that the films themselves didn't display much in the way of physical manifestations of magic. Devoted Tolkien fans who loved the films would probably find these necessary visuals a seeming departure from the understated quality of magic in the movies.)

The game itself isn't that tough. There were a few points when I thought I had broken the game, only to be surprised by later enemies you'd think were pushovers. (Case in point: Easterling warriors.) But there's a seeming imbalance here: in my opinion the most difficult enemies I faced in the whole game were, not even Sauron himself, but the Mumakil (the elephants on steroid megadoses, for the uninitiated.) The Balrog (even Sauron) in comparison, was a comparative cakewalk. Sure, given that the Balrog should indeed appear early on due to the game's linear nature, but I think that badass could've been a tad more... well, bad.

And Sauron? Yes, you do get to fight him in the endgame (another event twice removed from the books), but it isn't that hard as long as you have the right characters in place and have the right spells and attacks ready to go. It's really just a matter of being patient and wearing him down.

Now my real beef with the game.

Assuming you've done everything the game asked, you should be at 99% completion and have all equipment and all epic scenes right after you finish fighting alongside Aragorn and right before you face off with the last eight Nazgul and then Sauron. The beef: you get level-ups after each of your two rounds with the Nazgul but don't get to save. And you still don't get to save after you finish off Sauron but instead get a final hidden epic scene that vaguely ties together the whole thing. (Kudos to Sir Ian for voicing the whole game, by the way.) And you don't even get to unlock Mordor as a final Evil Mode chapter.

What I would have liked to see: 1) Mordor (specifically Barad-Dur) as an Evil Mode Chapter, 2) a chance to save after everything's said and done, and 3) a game summary screen to display stats, number of saves, items used, fave weapons, whatnot. Just to give players a better sense of completion.

TO WRAP UP: Liked the game, wished Balrog was tougher, should've been a chance to save after defeating Sauron and unlock Mordor for Evil Mode.

Hope it's been helpful. Thanks for taking the time to read my review. :)

There isn't that much to say about this game. It's a pretty big rip off from Final Fantasy X except none of the characters have any special function beyond weapon type. In FFX one character (note the correct spelling of 'character') specialized against armored monsters, another against flying monsters, etc. The rate of random encounters is extremely annoying. You level up just about once per battle. You gain armor and have to re-equip your characters just about every two battles. I understand that there isn't much to use from the movies beyond orcs and trolls, but there just isn't enough enemy variety and practically no boss battles.



The story is nonexistant. Basically it's all a bunch of movie clips played out of order that the programmers are trying to shoehorn into places where they don't belong. The dialogue is sickening. It's like they took the script for the LOTR movies and randomly cut and pasted phrases all over the place. If you have any common sense at all you will be completely disgusted by some facets of the game. Like how many times you face the Nazgul and how easily they are beaten. Yeah, in the movie they're almost unstoppable, but you and your merry band will routinely pummel them. Joining up with Aragorn, etc, could be slightly plausible at Helm's Deep but helping out Eowyn at the end??? The whole point in the movie, and book, was that she defeated him singlehandedly! And then the final battle..... Even if you're a pretty casual fan of either the book and/or the movie you will fall out of your chair when you see the absolute height of lameness which is the final battle. The ending is almost just as bad.

The graphics are pretty good. It's fun to see changes when you equip armor. I wish other RPGs would do this, even though helmets tend to obscure the characters faces too much. Not a big deal since the characters are basically just robots that spit out random lines from the movie verbatim.

If you want to try this game, just rent it. If you're going to play any LOTR game get the hack n slash Return of the King.

I'm reticent to recommend EA products, but I have to admit that "LOTR:The Third Age" is definitely worth getting. I agree that it strongly resembles "Final Fantasy 10", thankfully without the irritating mini-games and plotless sidequests. The game was definitely rushed to market, typical of EA, as you will notice from the main character's running animation and other minor details. However, overall the game is beautiful. Character appearance changes with new equipment, which is a good touch.
This is the best two-player-simultaneous fantasy since the Baldur's Gate console series! If you have a spouse or significant other (or just a gaming buddy) this game really shines. The story is linear, but evil mode helps compensate for this. The comment about these games not being real rpgs is a good point. However, if you're into console fantasy, you ought to check this out. You will also find this a breath of fresh air if you are tired of the childish aesthetics and irritating minigames found in many Japanese console fantasy games these days.
Hope you enjoy it!

*Spoilers*
I thought this game was a lot of fun, but in some places the storyline was very very messed up. You are playing these people who are like the fellowship of the ring five minutes later. Basically, without your characters, Gandalf would never have beat the Balrog, and basically nothing for the fellowship would have worked out. WHAT THE CRAP!!! That was the really stupid part for me. And the last boss you fight is such a stupid end to the story. The game has a love triangle in it that does not end the way it should!! Also, the game is pretty easy, so I started out playing it in the hard mode. I did really like the Evil Mode part of the game which let you play the bad guys for a few battles in each chapter of the game. If you win Evil Mode you will get valuable items for your party.
I thought the battle mode in this game was very fun, and the graphics were beautiful. The landscapes were pretty detailed and the people weren't too bad either.
Overall, this game is pretty good, I would recommend giving it a try. I am a hardcore LOTR fan who will buy anything with that name on it, but I was sorely disappointed by some of the things in the story.