Lord of the Rings Conquest Review

BY Rabie Hassoun | POSTED: 21 January 2009

A deep multiplayer game that is a few glitches away from greatness.



For the majority of the people that read or watched anything Lord of the Rings the epic battles and fights were the best thing about the whole trilogy. The battles featured memorable heroes and characters going head to head, “evil versus good” style. A few years ago, when the LOTR movies were released to be precise, translating those battles into a video game was labelled impossible. They were too large and featured way too many characters going at it at once for a game or system to handle. Using Star wars: Battlefront for both the Xbox and PS2 as a stepping stone, the developers of The Lord of the Rings: Conquest (Pandemic Studios) used a mixture of licensed music, movie ripped cut scenes and some interesting gameplay options to come up with a rather interesting video game, on the outside at least.



To kick it off you have 2 campaigns to mess around with in this game. The first, which has you in the good guy’s shoes, consists of 8 levels/battles for you to conquer. After beating those 8 levels the game will introduce you to the far more satisfying evil campaign, which consists of 8 levels as well. The levels in both campaigns are almost identical and are basically memorable battles from the movies, where you are assigned a certain goal or mission to complete. Fans of the trilogy will definitely identify those scenes from the movie. Add that to the fact that you will be controlling a set of recognizable heroes as well and you have yourself a true movie to game translation. Too bad the gameplay isn’t as fun however...

One of the few areas this game falls short in is the gameplay. The graphics are good enough, the original music tracks and cut scenes are there, but the gameplay simply does not live up to the quality possessed by the other components on hand here. Before you start a battle you need to choose the class of the character you are controlling. You have four to choose from: Warrior (powerful close attacks), archer (long range attacks), mage (casts lighting) and scout (Invisible attacks). Each comes with its own set of special attacks, moves and strengths/weakness. The button mashing nature of the gameplay ruins everything however. From the moment the battle starts till the end of the level, you are basically in a race to who presses the buttons first. The moves you perform cannot be cancelled, another annoying gameplay issue. If you initiate a combo and then notice a fresh opportunity to attack you still have to wait for the combo to finish before taking advantage of the situation. To make it all even worse, the difficulty scale is slightly tipped to the hard side. Meaning that if you fail to press the button fast enough and fall to the storm of attacks initiated by the AI, you can kiss your health bar good bye and therefore restart the level again.

Playing Coop (2 players online/offline) makes the gameplay a bit more manageable. At least now you will have someone with common sense (or so you hope) helping you out when you need it. The game offers the chance for up to 16 players to go at it in one online session. The game actually features a number of online modes for you and your 15 friends to mess around with as well. You have the normal team death match, capture the flag/territories and the Heroes death match. Lag wise, we did face a few hiccups during our time with the game, but it certainly improved overtime and hopefully will keep doing so for days to come.



What we enjoyed the most in this game is how much authentic LOTR material it threw at us. If it was not enough that you have the opportunity to beat and destroy memorable characters and locations, the game offers you the chance to use horses and trolls to your advantage. Taking over a troll and waving havoc in a battle is as interesting as it sounds, and then some. For the majority of the game you will be controlling an unknown character. But during certain points and levels you will be given the opportunity to control some of the all time favourite characters in the trilogy, spicing up the game to a certain extent.

Graphics wise the game leaves you impressed at times and fairly dissatisfied at many other times. While the battlegrounds and the scenery surrounding them are very rich in texture, the game could have used a bit of polishing on the edges. The characters design is good enough; you will easily recognize some of the greatest characters in the trilogy. The game could have looked better, but keep in mind that with so many things going on the screen (16 player battles for example) having better graphics could have slowed down the action for sure. Those unstoppable combo animations we mentioned earlier in the review are probably the worst thing about the graphics/design of this game. The rest of the animations are very fluid and the game rarely slowed down, even during the most intense battles.

The music running in the background is the original LOTR sound track by Howard Shore, which is a great feature on its own. The music is not just thrown in there pointlessly. How the music alters in tempo during certain situations in the game is absolutely delightful.  Both the sound effects and voice acting departments are inconsistent however. At times you will be impressed by how a voice is done or how precise a sound effect is, only to be left disappointed by a mediocre sound or voice a few moments later.



We are going to go ahead and declare The Lord of the Rings: Conquest as a great game concept. Yes it is based on Star Wars: Battlefront, but how it observed the LOTR licence is very impressive. The use of original cut scenes and soundtrack was awesome. The game even went as far as altering the story of the movies to satisfy the game’s needs. The gameplay though is sadly a letdown. Having to use the same buttons and watch the same animation over and over again is as fun as watching paint dry. If you are a fan of the trilogy or if you are looking for a solid game to beat with a friend cooperatively, look no further. Others looking for a deep and satisfying single player game should defiantly look elsewhere.