A lot of work obviously went into this, this is especially evident in the campaign taking the Fellowship through all the stages of the book. My one complaint is the mini-map (a Palantir, of course!) which shows everything indistinctly, or at times, no troops appear at all. Not a good situation to lose track of troops, or worse yet, of heros. The heros are an important part, as are the upgrades, and it's such fun to do a lightening sword shot with Gandalf. Well worth the $10 it cost...

That pretty much says it all. The graphics are nice and the two good and evil campaigns were fun. The game is a little simplistic, however. The on-line feature doesn't interest me so, once you play through each campaign, you're done. No real long-term playability. For the price though, it was a good buy.

Recommended.

When I first picked up this game, I was skeptical of slogan- Middle Earth Is In Your Hands. I was thinking back to my Star Wars game, where you really didn;t have too much control and people rampaged around wherever they wanted. After the installation (which by the way took a while), I started a good campaign, and was very dissapointed when I was Moria and I had nine useless Fellowship member running around shouting stupid one liners.

My opinion, however, did a complete 180 when I was put into Rohan. When I first set up the camp, I immedietly knew that this game was different. You can actually control individual battalians, and they're not just cheesy pump-n-dump ones; they're upgradeable with weapons, banner carriers, and armour- not to mention fire arrows.

The real treat in this game is when you get to the missions where you actually have a defendable fortress rather than an open settlement. You can put arhcers on your walls, reinforce the gate, build posterns, and battle towers. This taken to an all new level when you beat Minas Tirith and you can actually have more than 5 options of buildings including, marketplace, stoneworker, keep, and workshop, and many more.

The one thing I do have a problem with is the scale. The sixes of these battles are very downscale. Helms Deep is 250 against like 1,000. Unlike in the movie when it's like 5,000 against 10,000. Same goes for Minas Tirith. the ighest is like 600 for the good guys, and about 1,000 bad guys.

Another thing that I didn't like was the cheap way you could win battles. The hugest one was Minas Tirith. Don't want to bother wasting you time defending the gate? Retreat everyone of your 300 archers to the second level. Want to avoid catapult fire? Retreat to a corner to defend from. Every single one of your people died except a hero? Hide in a corner until Aragorn comes. Things like these almost suck the strategy out the game. If you are a crappy commander and easily outnumbered, you should lose, not have a hero hiding in the bushes until the heros come. Thats not to say however that the regular missions are bad- in fact they are the best parts, and you reall have to know what you are doing.

I overall, think this game is just about for any gamer!

The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth is a grand little game that is based on the lotr movie series. The gameplay is fun and action packed. The graphics are great and the special powers astounding. Ok...so why do you just give it 4 stars? Well there are some issues that I have with this game. For instance, having to buy special powers for every new scenario is tedious at best and boring at worst. In the begining it is way to time consuming and only in later missions does the pace pick up. There are to few heroes as well. Where is Galadriel and where is Tom Bombadil? Even so this is a great game but for number 3 they can make some adjustments to make a great game even better.

Lord of the Rings Battle for Middle Earth is a great lotr game.It has 4 factions and they are Isengard, (If you remember Saruman thats where his tower was) Mordor, (which is where the one ring was destroyed) Rohan (where everyone acts overly dramatic but cool) and Gondor (where the stewart jumped off the castle). Each side is good in its own way. Gondor is good w/ defenses and footmen or infantry. Rohan is pretty straight forward but they're best w/ cavalry which is practically they're only military units. Mordor Summons brute strength with elphants ring wraiths huge armies and pretty much any nasty creature/villain you can think of. unfortunately no sauron. Isengard is like mordor but with better infantry. Isengard's infantry are handy especially w/ upgrades which is the smartest thing for them. Now heroes in that game are great. Each and every single unit in the game has 10 veterancy levels. Each level up they become more potent in battle and gain more prowess. (lol i know im a 12 year old and im talking like an adult) anyways it has a unique interface too. Instead of having the sidebar or the bottom bar they have a small plantir in the far left hand corner of the screen. The reason for that is so you can focus more on the battles instead of the command bar. And instead of having workers they have a circular base with build areas and you click on a build site and construct whatever you want. You can also get power points. You use the power of the evenstar or teh one ring for power. when you have enough power points for something you simply get into the power menu and selec what you want. each side has its own special super unit of doom. for gondor and rohan they have the army of teh dead. mordor and isengard have teh balrog. now each of those expire after a while.the campaign is great for both sides too. i loved using lurtz and killing aragorn and teh rest of the fellowship at helms deep. In conclusion Battle for Middle Earth is a great game. I guess they have a sequel w/ and expansion now but im not going to get it because its probably exactly like the first.