The Lord of the Rings: Conquest

As a massive fan of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, I've played almost all of the games relating to the films and this game is up there with the best of them (maybe the 2nd best - behind Lego Lord of the Rings). In Conquest, you can play on both the good and bad sides, wage war for the one Ring and see what happens when either side win. The music from the original LOTR trilogy is a great addition as is Hugo Weaving reprising his role as Elrond to narrate the story for both sides. When doing the good or bad campaign, you choose to play as either a Mage (basically a wizard), archer, warrior or scout and eventually get to play as a hero character (Aragorn, Gandalf, Sauron, Saruman, etc), as well as other game options like instant action (which I absolutely love playing) that consists of team deathwatch, conquest or capture the ring, all of which make this game so damn fun. However, the game does feature a frustrating combat system where enemies can gang up on you and strike you multiple times as well as the game's AI where characters wonder off cliffs or just stand around doing nothing only to be attacked and killed almost instantly. Overall, the graphics recapturing Middle-earth are phenomenally fantastic and beautiful to look at (especially Minas Tirith - which is my favourite level on instant action). Overall, the game is a ton of fun and is great on multiplayer where you and friends can hours of time conquering in Middle-earth and I definitely recommend Lord of the Rings fans to play this game and see if you loved it like I do.

Pros: the graphics are absolutely undeniably gorgeous to look at and beautifully capture Middle-earth, playing hero characters (Gandalf, Aragorn, Saruman, etc), you can play either good or bad side and see it from the heroes and villains' perspectives, multiplayer is fun as are the other game options (instant action, team deathmatch and capture the ring), you can ride on various creatures (horses, wargs, mumakil, etc - unfortunately no fell beasts) into battle, the music from the LOTR trilogy is great and the scope and scale of the maps (i.e. Minas Morgul, Minas Tirith, Helm's Deep, etc) are incredible.

Cons: the fighting can be frustrating as you can hit multiple times by enemies, the game's AI with some enemies walking off a cliff and allies just standing around doing nothing, needed more locations to fight in (Edoras, Lothlorien, Cirith Ungol, Amon Hen and Fangorn Forest), some of the voice acting and dialogue isn't very good and need more hero/villain characters to play (Sam, Pippin, Merry, Theoden, Eomer, Gollum, Galadriel, Boromir, Arwen, and Gothmog - the last three you can play only with the DLC which has unfortunately gone)

i saw one review on this game that is negative and since i feel that was way too unfair and harsh of a review, i thought i'd write one that is more fair to the game since i thought it was pretty Darn great in this EA's line of LOTR's based games. i hadn't even known they were making a new Lord of the Rings video game this year, but i happen to be looking at some strategy guides and came across one for a newer LOTR's game i wasn't aware of. so i almost immediately went out and got a copy. if anyone has played star wars:battlefront, its almost the same with some minor changes. but since i loved that game as well, its not bad thing in this game either. you get to do so many things you only wished you could do in the other LOTR's games, like ride horses (and attack on horses too!) play as all the heroes, walk where ever you want in a super gorgeously detailed environments, and play almost all the big battles from the films. the game starts out with the battle of helms deep and goes from there, even to some places you never get to see in the films. its loads of fun, and superbly detailed which one who has played the other LOTR's games as come to expect from these games. Then you have the evil campaign....wow. i have never played the bad guys in middle-earth before but it was awesome. its similar to the way you play as the good guys except your playing as orcs. and let me tell you, you MUST play the game in this mode along with the good guy mode to get the full game experience. if you play the game in only good guy mode, your missing half the game! i didn't realize it, but you play ALL new l;levels in evil mode and let me tell you, they are breathtaking. playing on places like weather top and omg, the citadel of minas tirith, wow!! it was actually breathtaking, you can feel the hugeness of it, like your really there! and one place you battle in i was pretty shocked at...the shire! aww you have to kill those poor little hobbits! thats the point in the game i wish i coulda been the good guys! that was really the only drawback i had after playing the evil mode, i wished that i could play the good guys in these levels. technically you can, if you play on instant action. anyway, i cannot tell you how much fun i had playing in these famous film environments, it was so much fun! in short (i know, too late!), i had a blast. extremely fun and great game for anyone who is a LOTR's fan.