As the title states, this is the best strategy game for GBA. There are five secret missions you can get: The Board is Set, The Last Alliance, Sauron Comes, The Gap of Rohan, and Balin's Tomb. There are also two secret characters: Haldir and Shagrat. The commander's Gandalf and Saruman are terrible, but Aragorn and the Witch King can win a battle by themselves. The missions are hard. Extremely hard. And long. I still haven't beat the game using the evil side. The final mission, The Black Gate, is the hardest battle I've ever fought in a turn-based or RTS game. It's mission objectives for good are to survive past turn fifteen. That's harder then it sounds, because any time after turn fifteen you could win. I had to live to turn 24! It took me nearly five hours because you can't save a battle; you must either win or lose.The cover is misleading because you only have one mission in Moria and that is Balin's Tomb. You never have to fight the Balrog, and that is good because cave trolls are strong enough! You never get to see Frodo and Sam, and Merry and Pippin can die from a single hit by an Uruk-hai. The tutorial is lacking. It is during the battle when Isuldor loses the ring. It doesn't teach you about different heroes or upgrading characters.

The Good-Spans the entire LOTR trilogy
Stays true to the book
Dozens of units
Strong units on both sides make battles interesting and hard
Plenty of replay value
Will teach you plenty about LOTR out side of the movies

The Bad- Only one save slot for Good and one for Evil
As I mentioned, you can only save before and after battles
Commanders are either too weak or too strong
Sometimes too hard
Battles can be way too long, up to five hours

Overall, this game is worth spending your time and money on, but not for the faint of heart. Even the best strategy gamers will find themselves getting frustrated, and everyone will see the "Defeated!" screen at least once.

Sincerely,
Strategygamer#87

LOTR The Third Age is a turn-based strategy game. You first choose your commander which you will control for ever level except for training (which I reccomend you take). For the good: Aragorn, Elrond, and Gandalf. For the bad: The Witch King, The Mouth of Sauron (only seen in ROTK Extended), and Sauruman. Then you almost every level you choose a companion (up to 3) to fight with you in Middle Earth. For the Good: Theoden, Boromir, Eowyn, Faramir, Eomer, Gimli, or Legolas. And for the bad: Grishnakh, Lurtz, Ugluk, Gothmog, Gorbag, Sharku, or Wormtongue. You can also unlock Haldir, and Shagrat, but I'm not quite sure how.

In each turn you get a certain number of command points (that number is determined by which commander you have) and with the command points you can move, attack, or both.

The levels follow the trilogy, with titles like Darkness on Bree, Defense of the Breach(Helms Deep), Assault on Osgiliath, etc... Overall this is the best GBA Game I have (not that I have very many) If you enjoy Risk, or just any strategy game, you'll enjoy this game.

Got this game for my game boy and it is the worst one to date about cheating. There is nothing random about the games random number generator. You have heros that have different number of moves they can make (0-4) which depends on the hero in question. I was so impressed with the one sided nature of the number gen that I had to collect some data and crunch the numbers. The game average for the enemy is ~70%. The average for the player is ~25%. Game programmers need to get off the crutch of cheating with there numbers to make a game interesting. That is the lazy way to do it. I cannot recommend this game to anyone.

This game is very, very, very, very fun. Don't buy it expecting an experience akin to the GameCube Third Age, though- this game comes to GBA as a strategy game, not a full-fledged RPG. The battles are intense and demand careful consideration for each move, lest your forces be eradicated by your computer opponent. The Third Age uses a turn-based battle system that reminds me of chess, the number of units you can move varying according to your commander's leadership skills. Their are six commanders total to choose from, my favorites being Aragorn and the Witch King. You can play this game as either good or evil. I like being good because it feels so good to destroy those nasty orcs, but I like being evil because then I don't feel so guilty when one of my units dies. Another cool feature of this game is that you can not only link up with others who own this game, you can also play two-player hotseat multiplayer on just one system. The bottom line? An awesome game for those who either like strayegy games or LOTR games or both. I couldn't stand Advance Wars, but I love the Third Age. I'm still waiting on Nintendo to come out with LOTR games for the DS....

To start this review, I must say that this is the best game I have ever played for the GBA. Heres how it works: first, you choose what side you want to play: Good or Evil. Next, you choose your commander. There are 6 to choose from: Aragorn, Gandalf, and Elrond for the side of good, and Saruman, The Witch-King of Angmar, and The Mouth of Sauron for the side of evil. Next you choose the mission you want to play. After that, you can sometimes choose some companions for the different missions. One mission you can't choose companions on is Bree, where you fight Ringwraiths. When you do choose companions, here is a list of the ones you can choose: for the side of good, you can choose Theoden, Boromir, Eowyn, Faramir, Eomer, Gimli, or Legolas. I think there is a secret character you can unlock for both sides. For the side of evil, you can choose: Grishnakh, Lurtz, Ugluk, Gothmog, Gorbag, Sharku, or Wormtongue. Then you commence to the battle. Well, I hope my review helped. Bye!