THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE BATTLE FOR MIDDLE-EARTH

'''The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth''' (''BFME'') is a real-time strategy (RTS) game for the PC developed by EALA. It was inspired and licensed from Peter Jackson's recent adaptations of the famous books by J. R. R. Tolkien and also features a number of the voice actors, including all the hobbits and wizards. It uses the Sage engine from '' and was released on December 6, 2004. The sequel, '', was released on March 2, 2006.
While there have been numerous other games based on ''The Lord of the Rings'' by J. R. R. Tolkien and its film adaptations, ''Battle for Middle-earth'' is unique in the fact that the developers intended to bring the feel of a "living" Middle-earth to the PC through impressive graphics and special effects, as well as to push the genre beyond the RTS niche market by introducing a more intuitive system. Though lauded for its graphics, it did not make a major impact with critics. The game was still well-received by many, including Peter Jackson, and also ''Lord of the Rings'' and RTS fans (though also lambasted by other fans). It allows players to control units from 4 major "factions" of Middle-earth: Gondor, Rohan, Isengard, and Mordor, as well as members of the Fellowship. However, some people were disappointed by EA's promotional videos promoting the game as a ''-style game, commanding thousands of troops at once, while the actual in game unit count and variety are actually quite low relative to other RTS titles. This game plays very similar to '' even down to the power point system which allows players to earn special powers as you destroy more enemies. The powers that can be earned range from summoning elven allies, calling Eagles, all the way to bringing out the Army of the Dead or the Balrog.
The name of this game comes from a quotation by Gandalf at the end of '' film: "The battle for Helm's Deep is over; ''the battle for Middle-earth'' is about to begin."

Contents

Gameplay

Campaign

Reception

Awards

External links

Fansites

Gameplay

The game functions much like other RTS games; the player must manage an army taking control of economy and unit production. How BFME differs from other RTS titles is that buildings can only be built on set points, called plots; sites for building structures already exist and are scattered around the map. These range from settlements (1 resource collector), outposts (citadel, three building points), camps (citadel, 6 building points, small wall segments and 7 defensive build plots (Gondor camps have 4 defensive plots and a wall segment encompassing the entire camp)),to a full fledged castle(citadel, 8 build plots(Rohan gets 7, Gondor gets 9)and about a dozen defensive plots). In line with the trend in recent RTS games, units train in battalions/hordes, except for powerful troops (e.g. Mordor trolls, Rohan Ents, Isengard berserkers) which are brought into play individually. ('' is a recent example of this).
Economy is managed generally by building farms (Good side) or blacksmiths (in the case of Gondor); slaughterhouses, lumber mills and furnaces (Evil side) on the predefined slots to gain resources. There are also upgrades and special powers to increase the speed of obtaining resources (Gondor can build a marketplace to receive money faster from its resource collectors, Isengard and Mordor can purchase abilities with their powerpoints). Each production building reduces the cost of either upgrades or the production of certain troops (Gondor blacksmith-cheaper upgrades; Gondor/Rohan farm-cheaper cavalry; Isengard/Mordor slaughterhouse-cheaper Isengard wargs, cheaper Mordor trolls and ''mûmakil''; Isengard/Mordor Furnace-Cheaper upgrades and siege weapons; also note Gondor/Rohan statues reduce cost of Heroes, and Gondor/Rohan healing wells reduce cost of units).

Each map throughout the campaign is named after well-known and lesser-known regions of Middle-earth such as the Westfold, Eastern Rohan, Mirkwood and even to the far-eastern locales of Rhûn and Harad. While the game authentically follows the story in proper order with special events like the Battle of Helm's Deep, Isengard, Moria and Minas Tirith, the in-between gameplay rests, as said, upon the regions of Middle-earth, encompassing in the West from Pelargir to Mirkwood, eastmost to Rhûn and all the way south to Mordor and the far reaches of Near Harad.
In the campaign's world map, players can view famous locations like the Shire, Rivendell, Barad-dûr and Mount Doom, among others. When players scroll over locations and armies, depending on the context, a short video clip will play on the lower left hand corner of the screen, showing the actions of the armies or the locations as seen in Peter Jackson's movie trilogy.
BFME also features a somewhat unique repair system. Buildings cannot self-repair if they are under attack (with the exception of the Gondor faction). Also, heroes self-heal and groups repopulate only when they are no longer under attack(The battalion will only regenerate units by itself if it is rank 2 or higher. Wells can be used to heal and regenerate units, and under-attack-units will not regenerate (not heal) when next to a well.
Narrations in the game are done by Ian McKellen (Good side, as Gandalf) and Christopher Lee (Evil side, as Saruman).
The Battle for Middle-earth is also moddable. Some mods add units, heroes and factions, to give a better in-game play.

Campaign

This RTS features an Evil and Good campaign set in the War of the Ring-timeline as directed in the trilogy by Peter Jackson with a few game adaptations. Like many other RTS-games, this features two opposite endings dependent on which side the player joins. The Free Peoples (Gondor and Rohan) focus on their numerous heroes, like Gandalf, Aragorn, Théoden, Éomer, etc. On the other hand, the Forces of Darkness (Mordor & Isengard) depend mainly on their hordes of Orcs, Uruk-hai, Evil Men, and monsters such as trolls and ''mûmakil''. The finale of the Good campaign is to assault the Black Gate of Mordor, to buy Frodo time to destroy the One Ring; the Evil campaign's finale is to lay siege to and destroy Minas Tirith, the White City.
The Good Campaign starts in Moria where the player must kill the Balrog in a one-on-one match with Gandalf the Grey. One difference between campaigns is the Good makes use of elven cloaks for invisiblity.

Reception

Some have criticized the game for recycling old concepts such as heroes (found in ''Warcraft III'' and ''Battle Realms'') and special powers ('' and EA's own ''), a special resource used to buy powers (''yin'' and ''yang'' in ''Battle Realms'', fate in ''War of the Ring'' and General's Points in ''), making the player field small armies (limited by Command Points) and being too simple compared to other real-time strategy games, among other things.
However, the fielding of smaller armies can be explained by the fact that doing so will allow players with older computers to play smoothly in multiplayer. (Official maps support up to a total of eight players.)
Also, considerable liberties were taken with Tolkien's works for the sake of gameplay. For example, Gandalf can survive the journey through Moria if you defeat the balrog (in fact the mission will fail if Gandalf perishes) and Éowyn does not fight in each and every battle. The Good Campaign also has an alternate fate of Boromir where, if the player manages to save him at Amon Hen before he is killed by Lurtz, Boromir goes with Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli through Rohan, fighting at Helm's Deep. However, even if Boromir does perish and you succeed the level, he will appear on the next lext level. He later travels with Pippin and Gandalf to Minas Tirith and helps fight the battle, and afterwards fights at the Black Gate. It is unknown what happens to him after this.
Another interesting thing is, Faramir, who does not participate in the battle of Minas Tirith in the movie, fights alongside his brother Boromir in the game.
Theoden, who dies at the Battle of Minas Tirith in the movie, survives the battle in the game, and participates in the fight at the Black Gate.
Though unique, the game was also criticized for having a "building circle", in which you cannot choose where your buildings go, taking away from the strategy aspect of the game.

Awards

''Battle for Middle Earth'' won three notable awards: the E3 2004 Game Critics Awards: Best Strategy Game, the 2005 GIGA Games Award (German): Best Strategy Game, and the GameSpy Best of E3 2004 Editors Choice.

External links

★ Official Website

Fansites

★ Middle Earth Vault, a fansite

★ Battle for Middle-earth II Heaven, a fansite