The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II [PC]

Bringing the visions of both Tolkien and Peter Jackson to life better than any other Lord of the Rings-licensed game to date, Battle for Middle Earth 2 is both a joy to look at and a clear step forward from its predecessor, thanks to some intelligent design choices. Sadly, the challenge level of its single-player side is more Simon Says than Sauron, but there's still much to like in this real-time strategy sequel.

In its largest departure from its predecessor, Battle for Middle Earth 2 allows you to place your buildings anywhere on the map, instead of pre-defined build pads. This makes it feel more like a traditional real-time strategy game, but along the way it's lost almost none of the fixed defensive options that made the BFME's defensive aspects so compelling. Building walls, turrets, and other emplacements is still easy -- and even dedicated base-building RTS games like Stronghold could learn a thing or two from the way BFME2 handles them.

However, you still can't get a summary view of troops that you have selected, and instead have to juggle with selections and mouse-overs to get an impression of the overall health level of a large army. This is about the only major problem with the game's interface. Any RTS fan will be right at home -- especially when they discover the cool order-queuing system, and the way you can set a rally point for all buildings with a simple shift-right-click.

Another new feature is the creation of your own hero. This process is very similar to making a character in a massively-multiplayer RPG. You choose your race, class, appearance, stats, and lay out a predefined path for his advancement as he gains in strength. Once done, you can field him in any of the game's modes except the campaign. With specialized builds, new tactical options become available, like teleporting troops around the battlefield or summoning new ones mid-fight. Surprising multiplayer opponents with an unexpected or well-timed hero power pays off, in both entertainment and tactical terms.

While the original Battle for Middle Earth was pretty, its sequel is even more impressive. It's a beautiful-looking game, brought to life with spectacular maps, excellent models, and a real flair for visual design from opening sequence to game-over screen. You'll be spending most of your time zoomed out, but you'll still enjoy watching your troops stomp about Middle Earth causing havoc.

Huge or powerful units like trolls, ents, and wizards still throw hapless soldiers all over the place once the fur, rocks, or fireballs start flying. The engine gives the impression that all this action is just in a day's work. Solid sound effects, music, and speech (including voice work from Hugo Weaving) underline the game's high production values -- you'd have to be jaded indeed not to be impressed.

Along with the usual cutscene heavy single-player campaigns, skirmish mode, and multiplayer options, Battle for Middle Earth 2 offers a new "War of the Ring" mode. Mixing skirmish battles with large-scale, turn-based interludes, this latter option allows you to plan your domination of Middle Earth across many encounters, marshalling armies and constructing defenses as you go.

Like the recent Star Wars: Empire at War, this broadens the strategic appeal of the title, but unlike Empire, once a battle kicks off you can build extra structures and produce more troops to your heart's content. You might say this makes the forces you build in the turn-based segments irrelevant and, with some exceptions, you'd be pretty much right. Still, immersing yourself in the strategic machinations of Elrond, Saruman, Sauron or Theoden is an engrossing way to spend an evening