Battle For Middle Earth 1-2

Back when Lord Of The Rings ruled the box office, and for good reason, it seemed as if you could not escape the Lord Of The Rings craze. From video games, to movies trying to emulate the feel, Lord Of The Rings offered us an array of three amazing movies, re-introduced people into reading classical fantasy and off course gave us some great games. Today we are going to discuss the real time strategy EA made (back when EA made good games) set in the lord of the rings universe based on the movies.

The Battle For Middle Earth series is a real time strategy that has a "battalion" based system, which means that when you create one unit instead of having a simple unit you get a group of them called battalions. It really is not that much different from other RTS systems, but it does make for some more epic fights and makes for even having a single copy of a unit is actually useful. The first game also happened to introduce an interesting way of base building, in the form of a "castle" (if you are good) or a "camp" (if you are evil). The castle offers walls and great defensive works, but has a limited amount of building blocks, which means you will not be able to have as much variety. On the other side, the camp offers more building blocks, so you can have more buildings and more variety, but a lot less fortifications, meaning you will have to defend your base a lot harder.

In Battle For Middle Earth 2, they did away with the camp system, and instead opted for a way more streamlined base building, but they made up for it with larger units, more races to pick from, custom (and more) heroes and off course more units.

That said, both games equally emulate the feel of the Lord Of The Rings universe perfectly, even if there are not much to say about the gameplay. It has the usual square way units work, with spearmen, swordsmen, archers and cavalry, mixed in with the siege weapons, resources are gathered through buildings, which is a very pleasant shift from the norm, because that means you can keep on playing in the same map, forever, without hindering your ability to churn out your most powerful units.

Add to the mix that each "race" has a different playstyle, weaknesses and strengths and you get a very wholesome RTS experience.

This is a very mischievous part of the games. Originally, you will think that they have used clips from the movies, and you would be right to think so, as they -do- sound very familiar. However, only when you look into the soundtrack you will notice that they are in fact, original compositions. The masterminds behind the music managed to take sound clips and very similar instruments used for the films and create music that feels like it is from the movies without it actually being from the music.

Sound wise, they have done a remarkable job, every unit sounds like the movies, with the effects and flair to go along with it. Even the hero units, though not voiced by their original cast, sound almost identical to their big screen counterparts.

With the addition of having a more "dynamic" music, which seems to shift based on the current activity (combat or peace, winning or losing) and you have an entire experience build to immerse you fully in the world of the Third Age of Middle Earth

The games feature robust Single Player campaigns that are, in RTS tradition, built to both tell you a story as well as teach you the game. In the first game, the story follows the Movies. You start off with the fellowship in Moria, and begin expanding the story from there. Throughout you will then move to operate Rohan, one of the four factions, in its war against Isengard, and then move on to Gondor (the second good faction), where you will have to build up your forces, to withstand the siege of Minas Tirith. With the atmosphere enhanced by the music and the perfect use of the battalion system for RTS games, the campaign is amazing.

What won me over is the fact that each hero led army, contrary to most RTS's will retain his units after every fight, which means that if you managed to survive Minas Tirith with an impressive, well equipped unit of elite soldiers, those same units in all their strength and splendor will be the ones assaulting the Black Gate with you, and let me tell you from the get go friends, my army not only had a chance to hold off Sauron at the Black Gate, but we were effectively pushing through, entering Mordor and going all hooligan up in that bitch.