Battle for Middle Earth II

8.8
Great

Gameplay	8.0	"A solid successor to an already fun RTS."
Graphics	8.5
Sound	9.0
Value	9.0

By Tristan Clark

The first Battle for Middle Earth was an extremely fun, although slightly shallow, strategy game. It really captured the feel of the Lord of the Rings movies – what could be more fun than sending your trolls into a group of Rohan horsemen, then sitting back and watching the horses go flying?

When I first heard about the sequel, I had some doubts that it would provide as fun an experience as its predecessor. Thankfully, I was wrong – Battle for Middle Earth II improves on the first game in almost every conceivable way, offering a lot of new features that all serve to make the game more rewarding.

BfME II is set in the north of Middle-Earth, focusing on the battles fought between an alliance of dwarves and elves and Sauron’s northern hosts. I had some concerns that this ‘B' story would be uninspired and dull to play, but the developers have done an impressive job fleshing out the vague accounts given in the books. The campaign is narrated by Hugo Weaving (Elrond), with cutscenes taking the form of excellent artwork and pre-rendered footage. It’s certainly not as good as the main storyline, but for a LotR fan like me it was great seeing forgotten characters like Glorfindel finally get a chance to shine.

The game now features six sides. Gondor and Rohan have been merged into the men of the west, fighting alongside the dwarves and the elves, while Isengard and Mordor have been joined by the goblins. All of the sides are fun to play as, and have been fleshed out nicely with a decent number of units and structures.

Other changes to the previous game include the ability to build anywhere you like, custom walls, and the addition of naval units, all of which help add additional layers of strategy. This is good, because if there was one criticism to be made about the first BfME, it was that it lacked enough strategic depth – it was generally a race to see who could get Gandalf to level 10 quickest.

The graphics are very pleasing to the eye. The game uses the same engine as its predecessor, but with enough new effects added in to still be considered impressive. Explosions, water, fire, and other fancy graphical features are all on par with other recent RTS games, although this means the game can be more of a system hog than the first BfME. The sounds and music are both of excellent quality, as you’d expect from a game that has drawn on the Lord of the Rings movies for its resources. A fair amount of audio has been brought over from the other game, but it’s hardly annoying.

Despite all the new additions, BfME II is still one of the more simplistic RTS games on the market. So, if you’re a strategy fan who likes to a lot of depth, you might want to look elsewhere. However, if you’re after a strategy game that is easy to get into and extremely immersive, you can’t go wrong with this one.

NZGamer.com - Battle for Middle Earth II Facebook