Review NaN of 1
Price Paid:
$40.00
from Amazon.com Summary:
Take Tolkien's vast, rich world of Middle-Earth, fuse it with the lush visuals and sound of the blockbuster films, pattern the gameplay after one of the top-selling RPGs of all time, and you've got yourself a sure-fire smash... right?
Right?
EA's "Lord of the Rings: The Third Age" is not the first console RPG to tread across Tolkien's world—that distinction goes to Interplay's wretched LOTR title for the SNES—but it is the most ambitious. Like its predecessors, EA's hack-and-slash retellings of "The Two Towers" and "Return of the King," "Third Age" uses the film trilogy as its primary source material, interweaving rendered CG with the actual movie footage to move the story forward.
In between cutscenes, you'll find yourself trekking across the woods, caves and plains of Middle-Earth, battling the sinister forces of Sauron and Saruman, unearthing hoards of treasure, and gathering a Fellowship under your banner, all in the role of everyone's favorite character: Berethor.
Wait—who?
In a questionable call, EA decided that playing through the Fellowship's story, as it it appeared in the films, would have been too dull (after all, who buys a Lord of the Rings game to play out the story of Lord of the Rings?). As a result, you play a party of entirely new characters, most of them pale, blatant imitations of the real ones (who make occasional cameos).
(From here on out, there are MINOR SPOILERS. Skip ahead to Gameplay if you'd rather be surprised.)
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There's Berethor, Soldier of Gondor, with a curious resemblance to Boromir; Idrial, an elvish warrior-sorceress who introduces herself by stealing lines from Arwen; Elegost, the man who would be Aragorn; Hadhod, the dwarf—think Gimli without the humor—and Eaodred, a spearman of Rohan (*cough*Eomer).
The only character not blatantly copied from an existing one, a female rogue named Morwen, is so pitifully weak in battle that you'll likely assign her a permanent seat in your back row.
None of the characters have much in the way of personality, and most join and stay with you for very little reason. Eaodred, the worst offender in this regard, simply rides up, announces that he's going to join you, follows you from then on without ever bothering to explain why, and says perhaps two dozen words over the course of the entire game.
His virtual vow of silence is symptomatic of the party as a whole; you'll almost never see them interact, and the few times when it does happen (including a brief, tacked-on and incoherent love story) are brief and forgettable.
Part of the problem stems from another of the developers' questionable calls; the decision to tell most of the story through what the game calls "Epic Scenes." Every so often, Gandalf (as again voiced by Ian McKellen) will jump in and deliver a monologue about what's going on. Some of the things he says are relevant, some are trivial—he rambles for some time about the history of Moria, none of which you need to know. Sometimes he fills you in on story events your characters themselves don't witness.
Sometimes, he tells the story out of order—as when he congratulates you for surviving a battle you're still caught in the middle of.
Gandalf gets so much exposition, so densely packed, that the story never gets room to breathe; before one plot point or bit of back story can set in, the writers pile on another. Worse, the writers are for the most part content to simply tell you what happens, instead of showing it to you or let you take part in it. Rather than interact with your surroundings, you'll simply ride down the rails.
Speaking of rails, your path through Middle-Earth is almost perfectly linear. Want to step off the five-foot wide path between Rivendell and Moria? Tough. Want to explore the rocky plains of Rohan, or the vast caves of Moria? Okay; you're done.
The few times the game allows you to wander off the path, it's only to find some key item that allows you to continue on the path. You'll hike, you'll fight, you'll hike some more, fight some more, and if you're hoping to put up your heels at the Last Homely House or Inn of the Prancy Pony, get ready for disappointment.
There are no towns in "Third Age." No place to gather info, or spend that hard-earned money (correction: There's no money either.) You'll find exactly one spot in the game to converse with NPCs, and none of them have much to say.
The one time, late in the game, when the terrain does open up, you'll wish it hadn't. The Battle of Pelinor fields, which should be a raging, climactic free-for-all, instead has you wandering around a virtually empty field, slogging through the occasional random encounter until the game decides you've had enough and brings the scene to a screeching halt.
The game tops off its storytelling ineptitude with a ludicrous final battle; suffice it to say that it comes out of nowhere, that makes no sense, and that fans of the books and films will either walk away laughing or in tears.
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