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

Mar 2, 2006

What more really needs to be said about The Lord of the Rings? The books are perennial favorites, the movie trilogy grossed a gajillion dollars, and countless games were spun out of the license, including the highly-enjoyable Battle for Middle-earth. Having since acquired the license to Tolkien's prose fiction as well as the movies, EA is continuing the BFME series with Battle for Middle-earth II.

Taking place at the same time as the events in the first game, BFME II tells the story of what happened during the northern lands of Middle-earth while Frodo and Sam tried to destroy the One Ring and Helm's Deep was hanging on for its life. The focus is squarely on Sauron's efforts to annihilate the Dwarves and the Elves of the north.

The primary single-player game is divided into two campaigns, allowing you to once again play as the forces of good or the forces of evil, with eight missions in each campaign. Unlike the original game, there is no dynamic campaign map in this mode; you simply go from one mission to the next in a completely linear fashion. (There is also a "War of the Ring" mode, which I'll cover later.)

Unfortunately, the single-player campaigns suffer a severe drop in quality when compared to the first game. Because the movies didn't cover any battles to the north, the cut-scenes are handled within the game's engine, and, to be honest, look pretty bad. The character models are stiff and the proportions are way off. As for the story, it simply doesn't offer that much emotional impact. When you're playing as the Dwarves and fighting to protect the city of Dale, other than the desire to win the scenario, I really didn't care either way. I never really got the sense that these were Armageddon-preventing battles or that the fate of Middle-earth hung in the balance.

One of the most significant changes made in BFME II relates to construction and resource management. You are no longer limited in where or how you construct your cities--like it any other RTS, you can build wherever you want. Resources are collected automatically once you build mines, Mallorn Trees, or lumber mills. The system for placing these is actually very helpful--as you move the building's icon around the map, a percentage appears that shows you how much gold you will be able to collect from that area. During some of the game's latter battles, you'll need to weigh the importance of collecting the maximum amount of gold versus exposing your resource centers to enemy attack.

Although the overall story doesn't deliver on its task of tying everything together, individual mission design can be quite good. There's an amazing scenario during the evil campaign where you must attack the Shire and destroy those damn hobbits. It's great fun burning everything to the ground, and things take a very unique turn when the forces of Isengard arrive and want to claim the Shire as their own. At that point, it's evil vs. evil, with both sides determined to show the other who's the most vile of them all.

The gameplay itself is largely unchanged from what we saw in the original. The battles can be quite massive, with hundreds of units hacking and stabbing each other on screen. It's not overly complex nor does it require much strategic thought, but it can be lot of fun to play. That is, when you're not pounding your fist in rage over the game's warts.

Both unit AI and pathfinding can be extremely troublesome, particularly when it comes to game's naval battles. Not only is your navy incompetent, they also seem unable to avoid friendly fire. For example, when one of your Elven Storm Ships creates a whirlpool in an effort to destroy the enemy's fleet, your other ships will actually sail directly into the whirlpool. (I guess they didn't have anyone on watch.) And the problems extend to your land-based forces as well. I can't count the number of times I saw my boys come under enemy fire and not respond. Instead, they'd just stand there and let themselves get whittled away to nothing. You can change their stance in the interface, but something as simple as defending themselves should be handled automatically. It all gets extremely frustrating after awhile.

One of the truly interesting aspects of the game is "War of the Ring" mode. Similar to the campaign from the original game, you play this mode from a top-down, Risk-style map. As you conquer a territory, you can recruit soldiers from that area or construct one of four buildings. When it comes time to wage war, you can either let the game auto-resolve the conflict, or you can play it out in real-time.

There are four gameplay modes to choose from and my favorite was "Stronghold," where you must seize and hold the major cities or fortresses in Middle-earth, including Helm's Deep, Minas Tirith, Isengard, and Rivendell. It was fun revisiting the classic battles from the first game, but War of the Ring isn't as robust as it should be. The enemy rarely posed much of a threat to me (a problem that pervades the entire single-player experience), and I was hardly ever forced to go on the defensive. There's no question that War of the Ring adds more meat to the bone, but I can see its fun being exhausted after a week or so. It simply lacks the necessary depth.

The world of Middle-earth is once again brought to gorgeous life via a fully 3D engine. Everything from the units to buildings to the environments look fantastic. I was especially impressed with the lighting effects -- as fireballs sail through the air, their glow is cast upon objects in the environment. And as was the case in the original, there's a full physics engine working behind the scenes, which ensures that when a Troll smashes a group of Elven archers they all go sailing through the air.

Those graphics come with a price, though, especially in multiplayer. During four-person battles, I regularly experienced frame-rate drops even when the battles weren't occurring on my screen. And the problems don't stop there. I experienced consistent issues connecting to multiplayer games (on average, it'd take four tries before I was even able to join a game), and a few times I was dropped out of the multiplayer lobby altogether. (Getting the game to work with ZoneAlarm was nigh impossible; I eventually just turned off ZoneAlarm and exposed myself to the wilds of the Internet.)

My biggest concerns, though, rest with how multiplayer is balanced. The heroes are simply far too powerful; in one game, three heroes utterly destroyed an entire enemy army. Things get even worse when playing with One Ring enabled. In this mode, Gollum scurries around the map, One Ring in hand. If you defeat Gollum, you can take the One Ring and use it to summon a serious ass-kicker like Sauron. Fighting to control the Ring does add some delicious tension to the mix, as all players scramble to capture the Ring, but once you've managed to summon Sauron, the game is effectively over.

Overall, Battle for Middle-earth II is a competent and enjoyable RTS game. There's nothing really unique or ground-breaking here, and veteran RTS players will find it easy, but if you're a Lord of the Rings fan just looking to smash stuff, you'll get some enjoyment out of it.