Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #680 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Electronic Arts
• Released on: 2006-12-01
• Platform: Windows XP

Manufacturer's Description
As the expansion pack to the fan favourite, The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth II, this Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game will enhance every existing feature and offer players the chance to command the rise of evil in Middle-earth while experiencing the epic battles that took place before those depicted in the New Line Cinema films.

Full of exciting content, including an entirely new faction, completely new single player campaign, and additional units for all six existing factions, The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth II, The Rise of the Witch-king, allows players to explore the evil side of Middle-earth. The all new single player campaign's innovative units will help to tell the story of the evil Witch-king's rise to power, domination of Angmar and invasion of the great kingdom of Arnor, home to Aragorn's ancestors. To fully experience the evil side of Middle-earth, gamers can now play as the Angmar faction in skirmish, multiplayer, and War of the Ring modes.

The Lord of Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth II, The Rise of the Witch-king will transport players to a new time and place in Middle-earth while adding strategic depth to the innovative gameplay gamers loved in The Lord of Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth II. Fans will love exploring the evil side of Middle-earth as described in Tolkien's fiction and brought to life in the visual style of the New Line Cinema films. This game is set to deliver the ultimate RTS Middle-earth experience.

Experience a whole new depth of strategy and upgraded War of the Ring and Create-A-Hero features. Create-A-Hero's entirely unique Troll class boasts additional weapons and armour that will allow players to have even more freedom in customizing their game play. War of the Ring, a risk-style meta-game, offers upgraded army persistence, a new siege dynamic on the Living World Map, and unified territories that serve as major control points.

Customer Reviews

Short campaign but great fun!
I've actually completed the Angmar campaign before BFME II. This is partly because it is quite short. However, the missions have some variety and the storyline does introduce interesting new characters and history. I would recommend playing it on Hard level as it was fairly straightforward to complete (although once I had to come up with a good idea to complete a mission)

The Build-A-Hero function is great fun but I have a few criticisms:

1. It would be really nice to use one's Custom Heroes in the Angmar Campaign.

2. More female heroes would be nice and a greater variety of outfits.

3. One should be able to use Good heroes with Evil forces and vice versa.

The War of the Ring is challenging. I would have liked much more in-game explanation of the rules and perhaps some basic advice on strategy as often one does not have the game instruction book to hand.

However, overall this is well worth buying and I am even buying my second copy to play over an internal network!

Keeps getting better and better!
This expansion pack carries on if not exceeds Battle for middle-earth 1 and 2. The new class of troll is great (and for people who created a troll hero on BFME 2 the trolls actually knock mutiple enemies back instead of killing them one by one.)

I really enjoyed playing the campaign as it is very inventive and follows one of LOTRs most famous enemy - The Witch King. It is also great because it is challenging - none of the levels are easy and if you found one easy the next is garunteed to be harder.

The skirmish is the same but it couldn't be improved anyway and the War of the ring campaign is much improved.

Overall I think this game is another great chapter in the Lord of the Rings games and I hope EA make more as good as this because it truly is Brilliant.

Good expansion pack....but....
Firstly I just want to say that Battle for middle earth 2 was a brilliant game and both game and expansion pack look beautiful. The game also provided many hours of play for me.
The expansion pack is good but I found that there were some things there to put you off. They have added a lot of cool new features like hero units and new faction(angmar) etc but there are also some flaws and it will need a few patches. Firstly all the things that were changed in the latest patch for BFME2 have not been changed in the expansion pack.... I found this immensely irritating. Secondly some of the new angmar units appear to have 'lagged' animations while the rest of the game is running smoothly. Having said that I think its a fairly good expansion pack and will be perfected with a patch or few.