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 | The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2 |
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Product Description
Platform: WINDOWS XP Publisher: ELECTRONIC ARTS Packaging: DVD STYLE BOX Rating: TEEN In The Lord of the Rings The Battle for Middle-earth II the sequel to the critically acclaimed RTS game The Lord of the Rings The Battle for Middle-earth you now have the chance to experience all that Middle-earth was meant to be.With all new content from J.R.R. Tolkien's original fiction delve deeper than ever before and engage in new battles that go beyond the award-winning movie trilogy. Wage war in the North and assumemand of the most storied civilizations in all of Middle-earth history--the Elven and Dwarven armies--or fight on the side of evil with heroes and creatures that have never been seen in The Lord of the Rings films. Defend or overtake never-before-seen lands such as Dol Guldur The Misty Mountains and Mirkwood as you unleash powerful new weapons and abilities--summon dragons cause volcanoes to erupt or bring down a cataclysmic lightning strike. But beware with greater poweres greater adversity. Your enemiesmanded by a powerful new A.I. system possess a greater tactical edge and more powerful spells. Will your armies have the fortitude to persevere? Features: New races places heroes and battles from books and films Command all the races of Middle-earth with three all-new factions including Elves Dwarves and Goblins.Win the war in the North single-player campaign with an all-new story that takes you to places and battles of Middle-earth previously unseen. Customizationmand and control Build your own landmark castle with fully customizable and upgradeable fortresses and walls.Create your own hero with all-new customized RTS units that are your avatars in-game.Control battles with all-new enemy A.I. meleebat and flanking adding unprecedented tactical fidelity. Core RTS depth of strategy Master next-gen unit control with smart formations battle lines and planning mode.Build anywhere brings creativityProduct Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1701 in Video Games
- Brand: Electronic Arts
- Released on: 2006-02-28
- ESRB Rating: Teen
- Platform: Windows XP
- Format: CD-ROM
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.25" h x 5.50" w x 7.50" l, .60 pounds
Features
- Real-time strategy game based on the Lord of the Rings film trilogy
- Control massive armies across the vast world of Middle-earth
- Build a landmark castle; create hero with all-new customized RTS units
- Fight on either the side of good or evil; powerful new A.I. system
- Single or multiplayer gameplay modes
Editorial Reviews
From the
Manufacturer
In The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for
Middle-earth II, the sequel to the critically acclaimed RTS game The
Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth you now have the
chance to experience all that Middle-earth was meant to be.
With
all new content from J.R.R. Tolkien's original fiction, delve deeper
than ever before and engage in new battles that go beyond the
award-winning movie trilogy. Wage war in the North and assume command of
the most storied civilizations in all of Middle-earth history--the
Elven and Dwarven armies--or fight on the side of evil with heroes and
creatures that have never been seen in The Lord of the Rings films.
Defend or overtake never-before-seen lands such as Dol Guldur, The Misty
Mountains, and Mirkwood as you unleash powerful new weapons and
abilities--summon dragons, cause volcanoes to erupt, or bring down a
cataclysmic lightning strike.
But beware, with greater power comes
greater adversity. Your enemies, commanded by a powerful new A.I.
system, possess a greater tactical edge and more powerful spells. Will
your armies have the fortitude to persevere?
Features:
New
races, places, heroes, and battles from books and films
- Command all the races of Middle-earth with three all-new factions including Elves, Dwarves, and Goblins.
- Win the war in the North single-player campaign with an all-new story that takes you to places and battles of Middle-earth previously unseen.
- Build your own landmark castle with fully customizable and upgradeable fortresses and walls.
- Create your own hero with all-new customized RTS units that are your avatars in-game.
- Control battles with all-new enemy A.I., melee combat, and flanking, adding unprecedented tactical fidelity.
- Master next-gen unit control with smart formations, battle lines, and planning mode.
- "Build anywhere" brings creativity and strategy to base building and battlefield dominance.
- Control the entire war with a high-level "Risk" style meta-game on the Living World Map with all new strategic A.I.
- Extend your battlefield with larger than life navy battles at sea.
Customer Reviews
A true real-time strategy game.
(I deduct one "overall" star
because the game's launch had a lot of multiplayer tournament problems.
Those appear to have been resolved in the recent v1.02 patch which you
will download automatically the first time you sign on.)
Gameplay:
BFME2
is what I would call a "true real-time strategy game". In most RTS
games (e.g. Starcraft, Age of Empires) you are really playing a
"real-time tactical game". You must focus a lot of effort on directing
your troops at a micromanagement level, telling them who, exactly, they
are supposed to shoot at, one guy at a time.
The BFME series has
simplified this by creating "batallions". Instead of building archers 1
at a time, you'll build them 15 at a time and they come out as an
organized batallion. You cannot tell your 15 archers to focus fire on 1
enemy unit, you can only tell them to fire on another batallion. The
details of how they direct their fire is up to them. The time you aren't
spending directing fire can now be spent on executing a bigger plan.
Consequently,
BFME2 is one of the very few RTS games that rewards multi-pronged
attacks and flanking. Units get a flanking bonus for attacking enemies
from behind and the fact that you don't need to babysit every single
fight means you can leave one battle to go start up a second front
somewhere else and not worry so much about the fight you aren't
watching.
BFME2 also introduces a new resource model which
greatly rewards map ownership. Rather than fighting over piles of
resources and ignoring the other 90% of the map like most RTS games,
BFME2 has resource collection spread across the entire map. The more you
control, the more money you get. Factions have been completely
re-balanced to accomodate this -- in BFME1, the human teams could not
match Mordor in an open land war but in BFME2, they can. They need to,
if they want any money!
Singleplayer:
BFME2 covers
portions of the war that were not covered by the movies. The first
mission of the Good Campaign has you fighting off Goblins around
Rivendell, for example.
Single player has 4 options:
-
Skirmish, the usual you-vs-computer battle mode.
- Good Campaign.
-
Evil Campaign.
- War of the Ring. This is a new and improved version
of the "living world map" they had in the first game. They fleshed it
out and now it's more like a free-form game of LOTR Risk. You and the
other players start off in various sections of middle earth and conquer
the map any way you choose. Battles can be resolved RTS style or
automatically (Civilization style) and this mode also has multiplayer
support (one War of the Ring game could take a very long time if you
resolve every battle in RTS mode!)
Playable sides:
-
Dwarves. Dwarven units tend to be slow but tough. They aren't big on
cavalry but their infantry is very good. They gather resources with
mines and they can also use these mines for travelling -- enter one mine
and pop out at any other mine, anywhere on the map! This gives dwarves a
good ability to hold ground once they've taken it.
- Goblins.
Similar to dwarves in that they can build mines and use them for travel.
Goblins are a "spamarific" species, though, with a lot of large
batallions of inexpensive but brittle troops. They do, however, have
some very, very fast units and are excellent for hit-and-runs.
-
Mordor. Not entirely unlike the Mordor from BFME1, but minus the free
troops. Mordor has poor defenses and plays best as a very aggressive
team. As Mordor, you need to push your opponet early and keep pushing
while you upgrade to better units and work on more resources. Mordor
lacks the mobility of the goblins and dwarves and lacks the speed of the
elves but they do have a great ability to flood the map with orcs.
-
Isengard. Similar to the Isengard from the first game, you rely more on
strong infantry with strong upgrades. Similar to Mordor, this is a good
team for someone who likes to take a strong offensive. Warg Riders give
Isengard some good cavalry but it's usually the Uruks that form the
real destructive force of any army.
- Elves. Elves are fast on
their feet with especially good archers. They can be played offensively
or defensively with pretty good effectiveness. Try to use your fast feet
to keep the enemy pinned in while you build up for the kill, or play
defensive and work on leveling up some of your powerful archer heroes.
-
Men of the West. This team is basically Gondor + Rohan from the
original game. Human infantry is pretty strong, especially in
shield-wall mode and they can do a good job of soaking up damage while
your archers do the real hurting. Humans also have pretty much the best
cavalry in the game, making them quite lethal at either hit-and-runs, or
for backing up a strong infantry army.
Other new stuff:
This
game adds "stances" and some new unit powers. Stances allow all units
in the game to decide if they want extra damage at the expense of lower
armor, or higher armor at the expense of lower damage, or a balance.
Human Swordsmen in the defensive stance with shield wall activated are
extremely tough. If an enemy is banging on your buildings and ignoring
your units, set your units to aggressive stance and teach them a lesson.
Conclusion:
All
of this adds up to become what is, I suggest, possibly the best RTS
game ever made and I've played a lot of them.
Just a bit shy of five stars
[updated 04.02.06]: I won't
recap the game's features or settings--others have done a fine job of
that. As a baseline, here's what I've played so far (after several
days): all 20 2-player skirmishes to victory[*], the Good Campaign to
victory, the Evil Campaign to victory, and a War of the Ring game to
victory. I've also done some on-line playing, and I'm currently working
my way through the skirmishes again with the difficulty level set
higher.
Here's why BFME-2 got a 4/4 rating (fun/overall) from me:
--
It's easy to pick up. True, I had played through BFME-1, but that was
long enough ago, and BFME-2 has changed enough, that it wasn't a given.
The built-in tutorials were great, and, yes, since I don't have a lot of
free time, I bought the PRIMA game guide.
-- It's addictive. Not
quite the electronic crack that Civ4 is, but I've spent far more time
playing it during the last several days than I than I thought I would.
--
I know other reviews here have complaints about installation and system
compatibility, but for me it's worked fine out of the box + the 1.01
patch on a system that I was never able to get Civ4 completely stable
on.
-- I enjoy the music + graphics + voice work + cut scenes. Of
course, BFME -2 has the advantage of all the LOTR movie music, art
design, etc.
-- The user interface does what it needs to do and
otherwise gets out of the way.
-- The difficulty in skirmishes is
almost infinitely tweakable, due to the handicap system. For example,
my main profile was at level 2 after finishing my first set of
skirmishes, but the Medium difficulty level puts your opponent at level
4. No worries: I started out by putting my opponent's handicap at -50%
and have lowered it by 5% each time I've won (my profile is now up to
level 3, and I'm giving my opponent a handicap of -15%).
-- I can
play through a skirmish (or a Campaign mission) on 'Easy' level in
15-30 minutes; maybe an hour, tops.
-- There's a nice balance
among the six factions; each feels different, each requires slightly
different tactics. I tend to favor the Good factions, but I must confess
to having fun with the Evil campaign, especially using Mountain Giants
to level most of Fornost.
-- I enjoyed the focus on the War in
the North. It's a nice change from the classic LOTR books (and I speak
as one who has been reading LOTR for nearly 40 years).
-- Having
completed one War of the Ring game, I've found that I like it better
than I did at first--mostly because the ability to do "real time"
(skirmish) resolution allows me to win battles even when the odds are
heavily against me.
Here's why BFME-2 _didn't_ get a 5 in
either fun or overall:
-- The skirmish maps are too small. Or,
better put, there should be larger maps available in addition to the
existing ones. I'd like to see a 4x map (twice as high, twice as wide)
so that each side can really establish an infrastructure and then
manuever with large armies over large fields. Likewise, a lot of the
movement plotting and formation capabilities of the game are largely
wasted because space is too cramped and everything moves too quickly to
do a whole lot with them.
-- I'd also like to zoom out farther
_and_ I'd like to see support for 1280x1024. However, I suspect that
these two limitations, as well as the small map sizes, are all for the
same reason: system resources. I'm running BFME-2 on a 3.6 GHz P4 with
1GB RAM and a RADEON X600 graphics cards w/256MB of memory--and the game
still gets sluggish when too many units are on the screen. I've had a
few crashes, but very few compared to the number of hours I've played.
--
EA put all this work into the fortress building aspects of BFME-2, but
you seldom get a chance to do much with them--at least, in
skirmishes--because conflict starts too soon and either drains your
resources in replacing destroyed units/buildings or simply ends before
you can do much with your fortress(es). The main exceptions are in
campaign missions where the main wave of attack is delayed for some
period of time (e.g., Erebor and Rivendell in the Evil campaign).
--
Fortress walls are too easily destroyed and are too hard to repair. It
takes most of the fun out of building in those cases when you have the
time to do so.
-- Neither the manual nor the PRIMA game guide
explains exactly (or even generally) what changes as the different
difficulty levels, nor what the numeric level(s) mean for a given
profile and how that affects gameplay. For that matter, some of the
summary values after skirmishes/missions (e.g., 'tactical rating') are
likewise unexplained.
-- In fact, there's a fair amount that the
manual never really explains--and it's not the most readable manual in
the world, either in content or in presentation.
In sum, I've
just had a lot of fun building armies, defending (or conquering)
territory, and trying out different tactics, all within a slighly
mutated version of Tolkien's world with great music in the background.
My complaints with BFME-2 mostly have to do with it been a bit too
cramped, fast moving, obscure and self-limiting--though that may just
reflect why I don't like real-time strategy (RTS) games quite as much as
4X games such as Civ4.
All said, I consider myself as having
gotten my money's worth for having bought BFME-2 ([*]the collector's
edition, no less, which is why I had a few more skirmish maps than the
regular release) plus the PRIMA game guiide. My enjoyment of (and
semi-addiction to) BFME-2 has been a stark contrast to my experience
with Star Wars: Empire at War (see my review here on Amazon).
Your
mileage may vary. ..bruce..
==================================
A
few random tips for those of you just starting out:
-- Your
(computer) opponents will rush you, that is, starting sending battalions
at you as fast as it can generate them. The best defenses is often a
good offense--build up several battalions as fast as you can, chew up
the forces that come at you, then send your forces at the enemy's
fortress while building replacements.
-- If you are playing a
Good faction (Elves, Men, Dwarves), Battle Towers are your friends. A
close set of three to five Battle Towers can render a given approach
impassible--at least, until your opponent starts bringing up siege
engines and/or Mountain Giants. And a few strategically placed Battle
Towers back by your barracks/stables can take care of those pesky units
that make it past your main forces. I frankly prefer Battle Towers to
walls.
-- Geography matters. Look for choke points where you can
block enemy advances. On one skirmish map, I found such a narrow choke
point much closer to the enemy fortress than to my own. I rushed my
first three (Elven) archer battalions into the trees there, then built a
'Mirror of Galadriel' to heal them. The enemy kept trying to send
forces through that point, but they all got ground up--not a single
enemy unit ever got past, and I never had to replace any of my three
archer battalions. In the meantime, I was able to take my time to build
up for my own invasion.
-- Technology advances also matter. Elven
archers with Silverthorn arrows and Elven armor are incredibly deadly; a
few such battalions can take down anything very quickly.
Great game = heavy sys reqs
The game is an awesome game
except for a very few quirks. Firsly, my system is as follows: AMD 64
3500+, 2GB DDR RAM, SATAII WD HDD, 7800GTX and i play @1600x1200 on an
LCD so i need the games to be playable at this native reso.
The
problem is if you crank up the command unit factor more than the
default, the map quikcly gets flooded with troops, this seriously Slows
things to a crawl (kinda helpful in micro managing battles but seriously
annoying otherwise). I don;t think it's due to graphics coz i reduced
the resolution and i had the same problems, the issue is CPU bound.
Again, don't get me wrong, in the default settings of skirmishes i have
no slow down, this happens only when u have way more than 1000 command
points and your playing on large a$$ maps.
I seriously wonder
what kinda system is needed to play the game smoothly with so many
units? maybe an AMD 64FX? Anywasy the game is awesome, i always play
against the comp in Brutal difficulty, or else the AI is not too
challenging. However, i know a lot of people who beg to differ.
The
AI is overall pretty good at one thign - Rushing you, they simply
intend to win on the sole concept of rushing rushing and rushing. I have
held Morodor, Goblins and Isengard all at Brutal difficulty at bay for
over 3 hours on the maps of Helm's Deep and in Gondor ultimately beating
each faction one by one with a unit kill to death ratio of 300
something (i only lost 20 units). This seriously proves that the AI
needs a lot of work, they kept coming like lamb to the slaughter towards
the gates where ive placed my upgraded Ranger batalions picking them
off so easily. After ive place around 7-8 ranger batalions on the walls,
nothing even came close to touching the gates. I had breakfast, cofee
and took a bathroom break all the time while the game was going on.. it
was sad ha ha
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