Product Description

The quest to destroy the One Ring continues in The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Ring, the first real-time strategy game based on The Lord of the Rings saga. Massive battles will erupt as the peoples of Middle-Earth fight for control of Tolkien's World. Play as the forces of good and valiantly fight for the One Ring's destruction or play as the forces of evil to claim control over Middle-Earth forever.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8530 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Sierra
• Released on: 2003-11-28
• Platforms: Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP

Customer Reviews

Very Underated!
This game has been hammered both on Amazon and in the press. Don't be put off: There's a splendid RTS here.

The style of the game seems to be at the root of the bad press, but it feels much more in keeping with the great fantasy golden age of the 1970s. The game looks like a very attractive Fantasy Wargame! Just think Games Workshop Miniatures and you've got the vibe of the game.

The landscapes are spectacularly and expertly designed, with fantastic 'particle' grass effects and changing weather patterns.Wildlife hops about and water sloshes around when touched by the cursor. Furthermore, the terrain is true 3D, so tactics are very flexible. For example, you can lure the enemy into ambushes in valleys by posting archers on the top of canyon sides. Simple things like this set it above the simpler tactics of Warcraft III.

The skirmish AI is very good, with aggressive and cunning tactics exhibited by your enemies, who frequently use diversionary attacks and pincer movements to great effect.

The unit mix has been condemned by many reviews, but with a few hours play reveals considerable depth. Despite there being only two factions, the player has a huge amount of freedom to create his own style of army. It's perfectly possible to concentrate on creating an army entirely of Goblin Spearmen supported with archer or an exclusively elf army, and win games with them. The mix of troop types is very varied and both sides differ greatly from each other (far more successfully than a similar feature boasted by Empires: Dawn of the Modern World, for example). The extensive unit mix allows for some very exotic and colourful battles not often seen outside of miniature wargaming.

Presentation is excellent, with solid voice acting, superb sound effects and atmospheric music. However, the opening film (a grainy replay of ingame footage) feels rushed and cheap, and blights the package. I've knocked a star off for that!

The campaign is well handled and feels much like traditional fantasy story telling. The game's lack of pretensions about it's subject matter and the the coherent atmosphere captures the spirit of fantasy gaming very nicely. The use of the traditional cast of characters and monsters lend it a familiarity not found in other similar games.

On-line play is fast and fun. The game runs very well over a 56K connection and the games are always action-packed and rewarding.

One of the biggest complaints about War of the Ring has been it's visual similarity to Warcraft III. This isn't the case, for the simple fact that the game uses the visual style of Battle Realms (made by the same people). Battle Realms was released WELL before Warcraft III, and is the visual and gameplay inspiration for War of the Ring. Check out some Battle Realms screenshots for proof of this.

Anyone expecting a version of the movies will be disappointed: Anyone who grew up with Tolkien and the table top fantasy games scene will be in for a very nice surprise. With gorgeous graphics, exciting and diverse gameplay and fantastic environments, I can thoroughly recommend the War of the Ring to any fan of fantasy and RTS gaming.

Rushed Job
The premise behind the title is a sound one, unfortunately the woefully inept execution of this game renders it almost unplayable.
So much more could have been done with the "Age of Empires" playing format, and in fact if this is the kind of RTS you like then I would recommend that you spend your money on any of Ensemble Studios games as they have perfected their art.
With the power this games requires (800MHz) then one would expect that they would be pushing the limits of the in game graphics (especially when this is coupled with a 32MB Graphics card) but, no they do not. In fact the games graphics would not look out of place in a game from 1998.
Graphics aside, the part of the game most fulfilling is the actual game play, unfortunately there is a surprising lack of this in the game. There is no real desire to continue throughout the game and no real reward if you indeed do.
The whole incident appears to be a rushed job, it seems that it was released so that it would tie in with the film release and make lots of money, no matter what the game play was like people were going to buy it because of the license.

If you are reading this review with the intent on buying the game, please spend your money somewhere else.

Warcraft in Middle-Earth
This game is best thought of as a large expansion pack for Warcraft III - the game engine, tactics and 'look-and-feel' are identical to that game; the only difference is that the units are inspired by the Lord of the Rings.
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As a fan of Warcraft, I therefore also enjoyed this game, which is a perfectly serviceable RTS (although not as much as the old 'War in Middle-Earth' game that I once owned for my Amstrad 128k, which took 35 minutes to load from a cassette player - ah, the memories.)