The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age: How Does This LOTR RPG Stand Up?
For the most part, Electronic Arts has made exceptional use of its license with Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy, spawning numerous titles that have defied the history of shoddy movie-based games with their near perfect capturing of everything that made the films so wonderful.
Unlike the score of other Lord of the Rings movie-based games, The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age is a standard console-style RPG that takes more than a few swipes from Square-Enix’s Final Fantasy X. Now that sounds like a good thing on paper, but unfortunately, despite some redeeming values, the game fails on most accounts to achieve the level of quality garnered by its counterparts due to a myriad of unforgivable story and design flaws.
Where The Third Age suffers the most is with its story. Not content with simply following the true fellowship, EA has introduced a new cast of six characters not seen in the books or movies: Berethor a Citadel Guard from Gondor, Idrial an elven servant of Lady Galadriel from Lothlorien, Elegost a Ranger of the Dunedain, Hadhod a dwarf of the Fundin Clan from Moria, Morwen a female warrior originally from Gondor but now calls Rohan home, and Eaoden an outrider for Rohan’s Royal Guard.
The problem is that most of the characters are obvious attempts to imitate the real characters (Elegost is the Aragorn, Hadhod the Gimli, Berethor the Boromir, et cetera et cetera) and none of them are even close to as likeable or interesting thanks to practically no character development. And, though there are six characters, Berethor is the central focus for the plot, as at first he has been sent out in search of Boromir, but as the game progresses you learn that something else is driving him forward.
On his journey, he meets up with the aforementioned cast and they travel in the wake of the true fellowship that is always one step ahead of them. Which leads to the second issue with the story – some of the scenarios involving the new adventurers just don’t fit in with the lore of Lord of the Rings. In Rohan, for example, you enter a battle against Grima Wormtounge that leads to when he gets his behind booted down the steps and out of the kingdom, but with the group supposedly behind this event it should have already taken place when the true fellowship past through.
And the ending, don’t even get me started on it. I am not going to spoil it but it doesn’t work whatsoever. Liberties such as these are taken over the course of the entire game, leading to many moments that are sure to incite frenzy in the hearts of diehard Lord of the Rings fans everywhere, including myself most of all.
Although the focus of the storyline surrounding the new cast is rather lame, the side of The Third Age’s story that follows the events of the movies is extremely well done, and serves as a great summation of the entire trilogy. As you quest along, special story scenes become unlocked that feature actual movie footage and completely original narration performed by none other than Sir Ian McKellen himself as Gandalf. With over 100 of these scenes to view, there is a ton of film footage to enjoy (some of which could previously only be found in the extended edition DVDs) that at least provides some semblance of a worthwhile plot.
It is sad indeed that the majority of the story fails so miserably, but thankfully the gameplay fares a bit better. Basically, The Third Age is a standard RPG through and through that skimps out on a lot of character and environmental interaction and instead focuses on an abundance of battle sequences. For the combat, The Third Age uses a traditional turn-based system that is practically identical to the one used in Final Fantasy X, and that is a good thing. When entering a battle, coming via random and/or triggered encounters, you are given control over three party members (occasionally four) to defeat the opposing dark forces.
In doing so you have the usual selection of actions, such as different attacks, special skills, spells and items. Where the FFX comparison comes in is with the way turns are set up. On the right hand side of the screen, a queue of the turn order is displayed allowing you to plan your tactics ahead of time based on who is going and when. Also similarly to FFX, you can swap characters in and out of battle at the simple push of a button, making for a battle system that does have a fair share of strategy to it.
Strategy definitely is needed on your part too, as completing The Third Age is surprisingly difficult, actually to the point where certain battles become unfair and almost hinge on catching a lucky break rather than how well you plan out the battle. When I speak of a lucky break I am mostly referring to the rate at which your characters hit or miss with their attacks, which at the medium and hard difficulty settings can become lopsided in favor of missing; I honestly have never seen so many attacks miss in an RPG in my life, and what’s really funny is how you can see misses coming.
When an enemy is hanging on by a thread of health, for example, I can recall far too many times where I knew and said aloud to myself in bouts of frustration that the killing blow would miss, and guess whatâÂ?¦ it did. Lowering the difficulty setting to the easiest level does get rid of this frustration, however, it makes the game way too easy in the process. Overall the balance between the difficulties just isn’t very good.
Like the battle system, The Third Age’s character development options are done very well in most cases. In fact, leveling-up and customizing your party is probably the best part of the game. As is the case in nearly any RPG, every level rewards you with a certain number of skill points to pump into the different characters’ attributes, such as strength, spirit, speed, dexterity, and so on. To increase your characters’ secondary attributes, like armor ratings and weapon and spell resistances, different weapons and armor must be collected on your travels.
However, since there is absolutely no economic currency or equipment shops to buy supplies, every item you equip comes from treasure chests or important battles. What really makes this all so very cool is how every weapon and piece of armor reflects on the in-game character. If you change helmets, you’ll instantly see it, and the same goes for swords, shields, leggings, chestplates, necklaces, or any other gear you happen to find. Seeing your party constantly changing is instantly satisfying and plays a key role in keeping you interested until game’s end.
Also along the lines of character development, each of the six party members has a unique skill tree to advance their skills upon. Berethor, for instance, is a master swordsman so his main skill tree allows him to learn new sword combos and special attacks, while Elegost on the other hand is a bow and arrow marksman, and thus he learns powerful arrow skills. In addition to having a main weapon skill tree, the characters have a number of other skill sets to learn.
For example, Berethor can learn leadership abilities that boost party stats, Idrial can learn healing and haste spells, and Morwen can obtain thieving abilities. Each character provides something different to the team, adding to the overall strategy of the battles. In order to advance these skills, the characters must successfully perform maneuvers a specified number of times in the particular tree that the desired ability is in. This element makes sure that you mix up your tactics and use your full party.
Outside of battle and character advancement, you and your fellowship adventure through nine total game areas, including Eregion, West and East Moria, East Emnett Gullies, Plains of Rohan, Helm’s Deep, Osgiliath, Minas Tirith, and Pelennor Fields. Each of these areas appears wide open, but they actually aren’t, disappointingly enough. Many of the game’s maps are extremely linear due to a horde of invisible barriers that keep you going in one direction. There are a few exceptions with some areas containing branching paths, but they are so few and far between that it doesn’t help too much. Also disappointing is the game’s poor pacing and unbalanced ratio of adventuring to combat.
Early on in The Third Age, there is a nice flow to everything with a nice balance between battle and questing. However, once you reach Helm’s Deep, which is about halfway through, the game practically turns into one big series of drawn-out battle after drawn-out battle, and playing almost becomes a chore. The problem is that none of the major battles, like Helm’s Deep or Pelennor Fields, play out as exciting as they do in the movie or like they did in EA’s previous Lord of the Rings games. So just when you think the game should really take off, it actually falls a bit flat, and that is never good.
Another issue with The Third Age is its very short length. From beginning to end, the game barely makes it past the 20-hour mark, including 100 percent completion of every mission, which is rather brief for an RPG these days. Even worse is the fact that once the game is over there is nothing else to do. There is the hyped Evil Mode to play around with, but it is an absolute joke – all it contains is a series of battles from the evil side of the events that happened in the regular game with no story or anything.
Finishing each of the levels in Evil Mode (there are nine) is worth playing since it rewards you with new equipment to use in the main game, however, none of the evil missions lasts longer than around 10 minutes or so, making for one pointless mode overall that doesn’t add anything special to the game.
Without a doubt, The Third Age’s most notable achievement is its stunning graphics and amazing audio design – this game’s production values are top of the line. Like its predecessors, The Third Age perfectly captures the very style and sound of the films. Graphically, character models look impressive, featuring intricately detailed armor and weapons, as well as nicely done facial animations.
Creature designs mimic those of the movies, and some of the boss monsters, most notably the Balrog, are downright gorgeous. Environments also appear ripped straight from the movies and mostly look fantastic, however, many of the locations that should have tons of on-screen activity, mainly the battles at Helm’s Deep and Pelennor Fields, only contain static models in the background, leading to rather dull moments where excitement should be at its peak.
Unfortunately, all of The Third Age’s visual punch comes at the cost of occasionally severe frame rate drops, both in and out of combat, that do ugly up what is otherwise a remarkable graphical showing. On top of the ugly frame rate bugs, this game also suffers from a nasty graphical glitch that crashes the entire game. On very rare occasions, the game world turns completely transparent while zoning from one are to the next. I first had this happen when traveling in the East Emnett Gullies, but the worst case popped up when leaving the Osgiliath sewers. The environment turned clear and I was left stuck running in the side of a mountain. Though this only happened to me twice, there is no way a major glitch like that should make it into a final game. Shame on you EA, shame on you!
Despite the few graphical glitches, The Third Age really is a spectacular looking game, and it showcases incredible audio too. The music is breathtaking, and understandably so since it is made up of Howard Shore’s award-winning soundtracks from the films. Voice acting is also quite good for the newly introduced characters, and the few actual fellowship characters that do make an appearance make use of edited sound bytes from their acted lines in the movies. Some of these edited lines don’t fit in too well with the current scene, but in most cases they sound fine. Ian McKellen’s narrative performance as Gandalf definitely deserves props, especially since his narrated clips are the only saving grace for the game’s story. Finally, engaging sound effects round out an extremely impressive aural experience. Swords clanging, background combat sounds, creature moans, and just about everything else sound right on and draw you deep into the game world.
The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age is a tough game to rate. On the one hand you have a mostly fun combat system, great character customization, gorgeous graphics, and enthralling audio. But on the other hand, the pathetic story, unbalanced difficulty, repetitive second half of the game, short game length, and unforgivable bugs and glitches really drag down what is largely an enjoyable game to play. If you can look past some of its issues, The Third Age seriously is a solid RPG. Considering all of its problems though, I find it hard to recommend this game to anyone but the most diehard of RPG fans or those who loved the films and won’t mind seeing the story totally screwed up. Lord of the Rings purists need not apply.
Final Score: 7/10
