The Fellowship has broken
Our quest begins with a human warrior named Berethor, whose quest is to locate Boromir (you know, the human who wanted the ring so much). Not the most interesting way to begin a RPG, but this quest forms the basis of the entire story. The string of events of trying to track down Boromir will unfold into a deeper story as he meets other characters (humans, elves and dwarves), which will either join his party or play their own part on The Third Age's story.
The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age is quite removed to previous titles in the franchise. Unlike The Two Towers and The Return of the King, you won’t be able to play the roles of the major characters from the movie, nor will you be able to follow the identical path of the Fellowship’s story. However, you play the role of a bunch of unknowns who have a similar goal to the Fellowship – to rid Middle Earth of Sauron and his evil hordes. Your party is always a few steps away from the Fellowship, which will on occasions allow you to take part in a selective group of events from the original story. For example, early in the game you will be able to fight against the fiery Balrog in the depths of Moria alongside Gandalf the Grey.
Any RPG fan will know that games such as Final Fantasy aren’t spectacular because of their amazing gameplay elements or audio contribution - it purely lies in the hands of the game’s story. As gamers you should no doubt know that games without an interesting and compelling story which involves the gamers with the game’s characters and major events would be absolutely worthless. Thankfully The Third Age is one of those games you know has an interesting and exciting story. It includes the typical RPG romance, drama, humour and even the unexpected twist - but then it’s utterly destroyed.
The events of The Third Age’s story are told through various in-game story sequences and a number of movie based scenes that are discovered as you progress through the game. Ian McKellan - otherwise known as Gandalf - narrates these scenes himself, taking you through (from the perspective of Berethor) the history of middle-earth, details about your companions and yourself and even his current knowledge of events happening in the world.
These movie based scenes are overused. In fact, they ruin interaction with the characters and destroy the opportunity of the gamers ever been swept away in the compelling story. This because Gandalf himself tells you major story developments throughout the game, taking away the thrill of learning about each individual character. It’s pretty frustrating when you have to hear the story of your Elven companion from Gandalf’s mouth and not hers.
The Lord of Final Fantasy… wait, what?
On a brighter note, The Third Age’s battle structure is probably the most satisfying and more enjoyable part of the entire game. Although the game’s battle structure and character progression is almost identical to Square-Enix’s Final Fantasy X, there is no denying that they’ve chosen arguably the best structure to duplicate. Each character has his/her own hit points, action points (similar to mana) and each character has their own individual stats that you can customise once they acquire stat points when growing levels. Anyone familiar with the past Lord of the Rings titles from EA will remember that overtime you will reach ‘perfect mode’, which makes you ultimately invincible for a certain amount of time. Although not exactly the same as the past games, you will still be able to achieve a ‘perfect mode’. In perfect mode gamers will be able to summon powerful creatures that will allow you to attack your enemy/enemies for massive damage.
The Third Age’s battles are done in typical RPG fashion. You will encounter your usual random battles and, naturally, your major boss battles. However, one feature that I came to enjoy was how the gamers encounter these battles. On the world map, as you venture through major locations in the Middle-Earth landscape, EA has created an unique symbol shown at the top corner of your screen, which indicates when a battle is coming up. The orange-glowing Eye of Sauron will eventually get brighter as you walk through the area you’re currently in, which finally burst into an intensive battle against anything ranging from Orcs, Uruk-Hai and even Trolls. Also, the blue glowing orb glows distinctively as you become closer to major battles that you must complete to progress further (such as Boss Battles and defeating enemies blocking a major path).
These two symbols eliminate any of those unexpected battles occurring, and makes random battles more bearable. The advantage of these symbols is that it gives gamers the opportunity to be aware of their surroundings and to be prepared for the more important battles, such as reviving any dead characters in your party or replenish any health or action points beforehand.
The battles themselves are turn-based. Players will issue commands using a series of pull-down menus, one of each indicating a different type of attack. In addition to the characters standard attack, they will all have a distinct set of skills of their own. Each character has similar categories as one another though. There’s a set of weapon-based attacks (an archer will have bow specific attacks whereas a dwarf will have axe specific attacks), and the other set is their own specialised category. For example, the Elf will have nature magic (healing) whereas Berethor (the human-warrior) will have leadership skills. What increases the interaction between the player and the game is that each character has his or her own ‘category tree’, which is used to learn new abilities from the categories mentioned above. In acquiring more points to learn abilities you will have to use your current abilities, in the certain category, to acquire one addition category point. Once you’ve achieved the designated amount needed, you will unlock the new ability for your character. Not like some RPG games, where you could simply kill enemies with your basic attack, The Third Age needs the assistance of these abilities to kill enemies. The idea eliminates players falling too far behind in their character’s progression, since the much harder abilities to acquire are essential to defeating the harder bosses in the game.
The main problems found in The Third Age’s gameplay all come down to how difficult and linear the game is. The difficulty isn’t a major problem, but it certainly is apparent as you progress further in the game. Battles aren’t overly difficult nor are they too easy. Your major battles will take time for completion, however, you won’t have a problem eventually beating them. It’s understandable that the game was aimed to satisfy the needs of both the casual and hardcore gamers, but there’s no real difficulty found within the game compared to similar RPG games that usually have those hair-pulling battles in the game. Although there is an unlockable Hard-mode when finishing the game, it’s hard to believe that anyone would be willing enough to go through a 20+ hour game just to experience a slightly harder difficultly.
The linearity of the game is another problem. You will simply need to clear an area, complete several essential quests and progress onto the next area. The quests in each area aren’t difficult either. Find a certain weapon and defeat a number of enemies and then you’re off to the next area. When you complete an area you will unlock ‘evil mode’ for the chapter cleared. These do very little to expand the appeal of the game, since it’s just a selection of battles where you play as the bad guys. There are no side-quests nor is there any rewards to encourage players to explore. Heck, there aren’t even townspeople to talk to. Although the game must stick to the basis of the Lord of the Rings story, it still wouldn’t have done any harm to add in several side-quests or certain items to make the game less focused on the main story.
My Precious
The level of effort put into the game’s visual aspect has paid off greatly. The animation of the characters in-battle is superb. As your party or enemy characters make an attack or defend, their faces will correspond to their mood and the force put into the attacks. The spell effects are outright cool, which all work in context with the spell you use. If you use the water spell, a huge down pour of water will wash through the battlefield and hit the enemy with incredible force. It’s truly spectacular to watch some of these animations.
All the characters are easily defined to every little detail on their bodies. The armour is rusty on the Orcs, whilst your party’s will be shiny and will look more protective. All the Orcs and Trolls look like their movie-counterparts, and move exactly like they do in the movies. The only real pick at the graphics side of things would be the character’s motion on the in-game cut-scenes. They look stiff as they move and the textures look rather poor. It’s a little confusing seeing these problems occur, since most of the character models and animations are near perfect.
The game’s music score is something that also deserves a notable mention. The game uses numerous themes familiar among Lord of the Rings fans, which serve to create the relevant mood and atmosphere that worked so effectively in EA’s previous Lord of the Rings titles. The tempo in the music increases as the action picks up and the music drops into a more romantic style as the calmer scenes appear. The music is done so effectively that you will soon become immersed in the fantasy world of Middle-Earth. The sound effects in this game are great also. Everything from the grunt of the Orcs all the way down to the swift sound of the arrows soaring past it’s all down quite nicely.
Sam I have to go alone
To spice the game up a little EA have added a unique multiplayer experience. Gamers will be able to experience the game via co-op with another person. By selecting co-op mode you will be able to venture off through Middle-Earth with a friend as you both rid the evil plaguing the land. The only problem of this so-called ‘co-op multiplayer’ experience is that only one character is controlled on the field at the one time, which will only require the second player to select their own attacks during battles. Not much of an exciting multiplayer experience really. It would be more effective to just have the friend tell you what move to select, since that’s what it almost feels like when playing co-op.
The Western Gate has fallen
Anyone familiar with RPG games would know that the characters and story are two vital factors in a game’s success. The Third Age fails to bring a satisfaction to either of these. To anyone out there who has experienced Final Fantasy X will no doubt remember the depth involved in each of the character’s roles in the major story. Overtime you understood how the characters acted, looked and had a vast understanding of their past and their feelings. You really got to understand about these characters that you were controlling. However, The Third Age fails miserably to attract gamers to stay occupied with these plain and boring characters stuck in a linear story that doesn’t jolt any excitement at all. It’s with these plain elements that destroy the game’s overall experience, which is a real shame since the gameplay, graphics and audio are this game’s strong points.
Despite the problems faced in difficultly, story involvement and some other minor nit-picks, The Third Age is an amazing game that’ll keep gamers occupied for an easy 20+ hours. The Third Age portrays Middle-Earth perfectly into a RPG experience that’ll satisfy the needs of any Lord of the Rings fan or RPG fans alike.
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