The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring Review

Since VU Games and Liquid Entertainment acquired the rights to do an RTS based on Tolkien's Lord of the Rings mythology, a great media surge seemed to have increased the optimism among enthusiastic hardcore gamers. The Lord of the Ring: War of the Ring was placed in the capable hands of experienced game developer Liquid Entertainment, which previously received recognition for its excellent real-time strategies Battle Realms and Battle Realms: Winter of the Wolf. The masses settled once the demo of the game was unleashed. From what we could tell, the demo showed off excellent potential and we soon hopped aboard the bandwagon, eagerly anticipating the game's full incarnation. Well, the moment of truth has now arrived and we stand before the doors of Liquid and their latest achievement.

It's about time you had a bath, you filthy maggots!

We're advancing across Middle-earth.

To make one thing straight right away, War of the Ring doesn't connect to the plot or characters from the movie. The developers offer their own interpretation of Tolkien's legendary masterpiece, allowing players to wade through kingdoms and places that were never seen before. The story begins some time before the fellowship set out on a quest to destroy the One Ring. For the very first time, players have the opportunity to engage in battles at Mirkwood, Dol Guldur, the Iron Hills, and other famous locations in Middle-earth. Another interesting addition is the chance to experience Cirith Ungol and the sacking of Minas Ithil. The game allows you to participate in the great war of Middle-earth from two perspectives - good (Free People of Middle-earth) and evil (Forces of Sauron). During the good campaign, your first taste of battle begins when Gimli attempts to hold off an orc onslaught at the foot of the Iron Hills. Later on, the player must fight in Mirkwood alongside Legolas and the Elven King Thranduil, chasing Gollum and keeping orc and goblin forces at bay. After that, you get to join the valiant men of Gondor and Rohan, as they struggle to repel Sauron's mighty armies of darkness. In the evil campaign, you start off with Grishnákh as he fights his way through the Mouths of Entwash, in order to re-supply the frontline of invading orcish armies on the borders of Rohan. As you can tell, on paper, both campaigns were filled with fun things to do and see for the rabid fan of Tolkein work.

One of the best things about the game is the ability to engage in the battles of Middle-earth from two completely different angles. Free-folk races have their own approach to resource gathering, building, military tactics, and special skills. Playing alongside men, dwarves, and elves, gives you a chance to fight against Sauron's forces, relying on sharp swords, swinging axes, speed of horse, and precision of the bow and arrow. Whereas, the ruthless long arm of the Dark Lord allows you to wreak havoc across the lands with the ruthless iron fist of the orc, leaving nothing but desolation and despair behind. At the outset, the game seems a bit deprived of a wider variety of units. Luckily, things change as you progress through the campaigns. Later on, you'll be able to take a well-balanced mix of elven, dwarf, and human units into action, which in turn creates numerous possibilities in terms of combat tactics. Regular RTS gamers, who aren't all that interested in any inconsistencies from the novel, should find the unit variety a fitting addition to the gameplay. On the other hand, hardcore Tolkien readers will no doubt object to mishaps, such as dwarves and elves fighting together throughout territories, which they literarily never set foot on since the Dark Days. The simple truth is that during the Third Age, neither elves nor dwarves ever fought beyond their own borders. Hence, their involvement seems rather out of place when you consider the facts of Middle-earth history.

Once we put our judgments aside, a rather solid real-time strategy comes into view; a game that will most likely appeal to players unfamiliar with the Lord of the Rings license. Although mostly linear, War of the Ring features missions with well-conceived objectives, most of add to the experience and create dynamic gameplay. One particularly interesting mission (throughout the evil campaign) was when Grishnákh had to withstand a powerful offensive from Gondor, simultaneously striving to destroy four signaling towers, which keep on bringing enemy reinforcements into the fray. Even if we consider such a scene as contradictory to Tolkien's tales, from a gaming standpoint, it turned out to be a fulfilling and challenging endeavor. In general, the missions convey an RTS atmosphere very similar to Liquid's Battle Realms and Blizzard's Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos. So, I guess this means the game doesn't bring any radical innovations to the genre. Nonetheless, a fast-paced gameplay and a diversity of missions make War of the Ring an enjoyable strategy.

I feel a bit peckish, let's eat some crows!

Let us in, pretty please.

The interface functions similarly to both of the abovementioned games. It's straightforward and easy to get into. Although everything appears to work smoothly, we did encounter certain issues that proved annoying during gameplay. Like in Battle Realms players can gain special points during combat, thanks to which they may use so-called fate powers to boost the overall performance of their units. You can also use these fate powers to summon more dangerous creatures, like an Ent or even a Balrog. The problem is that the fate powers icon is barely visible, since it appears more like part of the interface layout rather than a vital gameplay icon. The second problem is that by the time you've accessed the list of fate powers your troops already lose half of their energy just fighting to stay alive. Of course, memorizing shortcut keys is always a viable option. Sadly, many additional actions also require the use of shortcut keys, so this might sometimes prove to be an extra chore rather than a direct and simple solution to the problem.

The AI puts up a decent fight throughout most of the missions, forcing you to resort to various tactical maneuvers. Each time your adversary will keep all units focused on the main objective. If the enemy's goal is to protect its own encampment, each and every unit will do its best to accomplish this. Similarly, opposing forces appear to work well when their objective is to destroy your base. The AI will drive the main force with the sole purpose of demolishing all your buildings and defense structures. It might also interest you to know that rivaling forces usually give you enough time to fortify your positions before they jump into the fray. So, you'll mostly be spared of enemy rushes. It's a shame, however, that the developers did not give a more convincing and responsive AI to friendly units. In combat, friendly units react poorly and unless they're positioned correctly on the battlefield or strengthened with proper fate powers. In fact without the proper positioning or enhancement it's likely they'll be hacked into sausage by the bad guys. Another major weakness is path finding. Some of the more complex maps like Helm's Deep got my elven archers all confused and running around up and down the walls of the keep like idiots.

War of the Ring was a satisfying experience all the way up to the Helm's Deep scenario, when our impressions quickly changed. At that point the frame-rate became so choppy that it became virtually unplayable. The game was tested in all resolutions, none of which helped improve the situation. The sad thing is that the game was equally choppy on high end systems, as well as lower end systems. These technical issues were also present on certain maps in Mirkwood (especially those that feature water reflections and multiple units on screen). One of the systems we tested it on was supplied with a GeForce graphics card and the other with an ATi Radeon 9700 Pro card. The choppiness occurred on both systems.

When it comes to visuals, we believe War of the Ring would stand as a worthy challenger to today's RTS classics... if the programming team had taken more time tweaking the engine code that is. Putting the lousy frame-rate aside, we feel that the game has a superb atmosphere, which is largely due to fine-looking and highly-detailed surroundings, well-designed unit models, and many additional effects like weather and water reflections. In addition to that, the game features excellent unit animation as well as a cool effect that makes the grass sway and change shape when troops walk across it. Camera movement is an equivalent to the one we've seen in Battle Realms. In other words it won't take you too long to adjust to it.

The sounds in the game are of the highest quality and deserve praise all the way. The soundtrack is first-rate and can, at times, measure up to Howard Shore's themes from the movie trilogy. The voice acting in the game easily measures up to other RTS games, each unit and hero character has a different set of responses to your commands. Come to think of it, the voice acting is one of the best aspects of this game, along with the superlative soundtrack.

The multiplayer doesn't involve any exceptionally innovative features, but you will be able to try out a variety of modes; which included Razing, Survival, Catapult, Famine, and Control. The good thing is that the game is a bit more flexible than in the single-player, which means you'll get a lot more freedom to toy with different maps and a wide variety of units. All in all, the multiplayer matches in War of the Ring reminded me of those endless sessions we had during the Warcraft 3 days. The only problem is we found it to be quite laggy at times.

So, faithful reader, after reading all this, you must decide whether you are prepared to dole out $49.99 for such an experience. Unless Liquid addresses these major technical issues with a decent patch, I think it'll be safe to forecast that War of the Ring will flop under a flood of negative feedback from the gaming community. There are many issues conflicting with the actual story and we were rather disappointed that the game fails to convey the epic scope of Tolkien's mythology (for that, we still look forward to EA's Battle for Middle-earth). Conversely, if you are a casual gamer looking to enjoy an RTS classic like Battle Realms and Warcraft 3, this one should be right up your alley.