Review by a-games-136-715468

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)