Lord of the Rings for Mac Download
The Lord of The Rings: The Battle For Heart-Earth II
DownloadsI thought that the offset game was bang-up, but Battle For Middle Earth 2 is bigger, ameliorate, and more badass in every fashion that you could imagine. Say what you lot desire most EA, simply I practice not recollect they get plenty credit for what a bully chore they did with the Lord of the Rings license and this game is a shining example of that.
The Books or The Movies?
One of the coolest aspects of this game was that EA went all out with the licensing for this game. Information technology is not just based on the movies or the books, merely really features locations and characters from both. This is truly impressive and at the time it was released I would say this was the most comprehensive collection of Lord of the Rings stuff any game had seen. Battle For Middle Earth 2 features some actually cool characters and locations that did not make it to the silver screen.
I See You!
The presentation has that EA smooth that you would wait. From the characters, the locations, and peculiarly the soundtrack everything has an authentic Tolkien vibe to it that I really do appreciate. The product values of this game are heaven high and it makes you feel like you are in these heated battles. The only disappointment I take is the create a character option. While you tin can level upwardly your character and improve them and brand them a formidable warrior. The artful options are sadly greatly lacking in this style.
Skilful or Evil?
Boxing For Middle Earth 2 features two blockbuster unmarried-actor campaigns for you to sink your teeth into. You can play the practiced campaign which centers around an assail on an elf sanctuary and a bad campaign where you are helping Sauron destroy the forces of practiced. Each campaign volition get you heavily invested in what is going on thanks to its bully storytelling. As a large fan of The Lord of the Rings, I found both campaigns to be very enjoyable, but I did adopt the practiced 1, just only just.
Taking A Run a risk?
At that place is another actually cool game mode that is called The War of the Band. This is like the lath game Take chances where yous take a large map and you are trying to conquer it. The game still has the RTS battles, merely in that location is more going on now. I had a boom playing this with one of my friends as we had a game that lasted for ages equally we both were trying to take control of the land. Y'all can as well play this manner in single-thespian and I even constitute the AI to be a fun challenge as well.
What You Would Wait
I will say that the cadre gameplay has non been radically changed. You still have your various factions with a few new ones added in. You can build various things on the battleground such as bases which is much easier to do than in the last game. The actual battles are a great deal of fun y'all have your units, heroes, and then on, and deciding what to practice and when to do it actually is the central to giving yourself the best chance of victory. Overall, I found the gameplay to exist challenging, but besides very rewarding. It does have a fair scrap of a learning curve, but I felt that the game did a great job of explaining everything to me every bit I was playing.
9
I had a not bad time with Boxing For Middle World 2 and think it is a truly outstanding sequel to a game I already liked. It is then improved over the starting time game that equally expert as that was, it kind of makes it redundant. As in all honesty, if you are new to these games, I would recommend skipping the first and coming straight into this ane here. Information technology is one of the more fun and accessible RTS games I have played and they really do utilize the Lord of the Rings license also as they could have.
Pros:
- It captures the globe of The Lord of the Rings perfectly
- Lots more than content over its predecessor
- Two awesome campaigns to play
- The War of the Band fashion is awesome
- It is a ton of fun to play with a friend
Cons:
- It does take a fleck of a learning curve
- I wish the campaigns lasted just a tad longer
Download The Lord of The Rings: The Battle For Eye-Earth 2
XBox 360
System requirements:
- PC uniform
- Operating systems: Windows 10/Windows 8/Windows seven/2000/Vista/WinXP
PC
Organisation requirements:
- PC compatible
- Operating systems: Windows ten/Windows 8/Windows 7/2000/Vista/WinXP
Game Reviews
How Did It all become so wrong? But 15 months agone we were extolling the virtues of The Lord Of The Rings; The Battle For Middle-World, one of the most entertaining and attainable RTS games we'd seen for years, a strategy game that tried something a piddling different and succeeded admirably in almost every department.
A sequel was of course, inevitable, welcomed, highly anticipated, an opportunity to take this bold new RTS franchise to even greater heights. Tragically though, that hasn't happened, as TBFME2 not only lacks the original'due south amuse, only likewise fails to live up to its potential on virtually every level.
Before its release, we were promised that TBFME2 would have two big selling points: the unification of the book and movie rights under one banner (both of which are utterly under-used), and the ability to build your base anywhere on the map, a feature that manages to strip this follow-up of its predecessor's uniqueness. Not the all-time of starts, so. Still, it'south early days nonetheless.
Elves And Dwarves
The two story-driven campaigns (skillful and evil) take identify in the north of Middle-earth, where dwarves and elves battle the forces of Sauron. Aided by heroes - most of which you won't recognise - you atomic number 82 your forces through viii piss-like shooting fish in a barrel missions that feel so scripted they make WWE seem spontaneous.
Here'south the thing. The dazzler of the original was its freeform nature and strategic depth, ii attributes that this follow-up is utterly insufficient of. More often than not, missions lead you by the hand from indicate A to point B, where you take a scrap with some enemies, earlier moving you lot on to point C for a slightly bigger ruck. And that'due south about the size of it.
Certain, at that place are some tactical subtleties to employ, such as flanking and height bonuses, but with battles often proving to be utterly i-sided diplomacy (in your favour), well-nigh missions just cease up feeling like strolls beyond a map with a few fights thrown in for practiced measure out.
So how about the new enemies - of which at that place are plenty - surely these guys should spice things up a scrap? Well, non really. Every bit visually impressive as they are - in item Sauron's new servants which include spiders and dragons - they're all still pretty piece of cake to crush and often brandish the tactical sensation of an under five's football team. And don't even get me started on the naval battles. There isn't a discussion in Elvish, Entisli or the tongue of human being that could practice justice to how just bad they are.
In The Battle For Middle-World Two'due south defense, at that place's still enough to relish despite the shortfalls. The game sparkles with EA'due south usual veneer, with some impressive visuals and truly gargantuan battles calculation real beauty and bite to the proceedings. The story - what at that place is of it - is fairly entertaining, while heroes take an excellent array of visually spectacular skills that can be used to plow the tide of battle.
There'southward Still Promise
What'due south more, you can besides harness the power of the One Ring or the Evenstar (depending on your allegiances), with a multitude of defensive and offensive spells available to yous, including falling star showers that plow enemy units into paste and humorous however deadly appearances from Tom Bombadil.
Perhaps The Battle For Middle-Earth II's biggest problem is that information technology feels rushed. The two story-driven campaigns seem hollow and overly scripted, and at around five hours each, are far too short. Battles seldom feel like desperate struggles or brutal skirmishes and rarely require much strategy. You also can't help but feel that the game's been somewhat dumbed downward, as though attempting to appeal to a mass-market place audience with its sheer simplicity.
What's more, the dual licences feel utterly under-used, the voice-acting is a shadow of the original'southward and the build-anywhere feature just makes the game feel similar a myriad of other mildly entertaining yet eminently forgettable RTS games that have come and gone over the last few years.
The Battle For Middle-Earth II may wait impressive, and its basic, past-the-numbers RTS arroyo is fun in a mindless sort of way. However, in no fashion is it anywhere nearly the game nosotros hoped for. What a waste.
Your Plow
Anybody else is doing information technology, mayhap nosotros should likewise
With Rome: Total War and Star Wars: Empire At State of war proving just how constructive a marriage between turn-based entrada and real-fourth dimension battles can be, EA LA obviously thought information technology'd better attempt its paw at doing something like.
So, information technology set about dividing Middle-globe into some 40 provinces, and you lot must conquer them all (or only a specific few if you're pushed for time) and become the supreme ruler of Middle-earth. Sounds nifty in principle, but once you beginning playing, you rapidly realise merely how unwieldy and ugly the campaign map really is. In fact, it'southward and so clumsy that it feels more than like an reconsideration than a well-planned feature. Quite frankly, EA LA shouldn't have bothered.
People say:
8
In the war to find/get rid of that shiny preciousss affair, you can pick upwardly a sword/bow/ax in your typical Lord of the Rings videogames--or you tin option up entire armies. Battle tor Middle-earth II lets you create throngs of elven archers, dwarven axmen, rock-throwing cave trolls, human cavalry, Uruk warriors, and more to nuance on ancient battlefields. It'south a tad more epic than the whole scooping-water-out-of-the-bounding main-with-a-spoon thing when you're sticking your blade in 1 goblin at a time.... But, as in any real-time strategy game, earlier you get your troops, yous first take to collect resources and construct production buildings. It'southward not a complicated process, although BFME2seems to presume its players accept seen some RTS activeness in the by Within the first few missions, you lot're already managing multiple menus, heroes, units, buildings, and powers, and you tin can't deadening down the game to call back or breathe. The tutorials, equally helpful as they are, don't really gear up newbies property for army-commander duties in Middle-earth. Veterans, however won't have any problems with the campaign. When everything starts kick in--the controller shortcuts, unit abilities and weaknesses, what buildings produce what, etc.--you can showtime appreciating all that's gone into this game. The battles don't take place on generic tiled landscapes. Rather, each campaign mission plays out in wonderfully designed stages created specifically to capture your imagination: Cities shine with waterfalls and statues, docks bum from naval bombardment, and the fortress of Dol Guldur intimidates with its skyscraping towers and obsidian walls. The different factions (Isengard, elves, goblins, etc.) offer variety in units, buildings, and heroes, but not then much that it overcomplicates gameplay. And the corpses should be piling up plenty on Xbox Alive: Multiplayer offers lots of maps, a couple of first-person shooter-influenced modes (run across sidebar), and more often than not shine play fit only crashed on us one time during our playtesting), though the four-actor cap and inability to team upward against CPU opponents kinda stinks of dwarf breath.
vii
Though Patrick may feel otherwise, I gotta say I retrieve EA did a commendable job adapting the complicated controls of this keyboard-first game to the tight quarters of the 360 controller. In mere minutes I was managing resources and calling out orders with ease. So it wasn't the controls that made this game hard to play--it was the resolution. Icons, pct numbers, and other onscreen displays are tiny, which leads to big frustration when you're trying to set upwards your base. This as well has an result on your ability to distinguish who's who among your units--expect a lot of zooming in to brand sure you've selected the archers, not the swordsmen, and zooming out to effect the assault or new position command. Merely I do love that, instead of pushing y'all through the narrative of the books and movies (again), the campaign parallels those events by focusing on the obscure War to the N, explaining why the elves and dwarves were missing in action--a treat for whatsoever Tolkien nerd.
7
For years it's been said that console controllers can't handle PC-friendly RTS games all that well. With BFME2, EA makes a noble endeavor to cadet this tendency with the 360 controller, merely the game has fashion likewise much to do and not enough buttons to work with (sony, Jay). BFME2's Xbox-level graphics also hurt, and the entertaining, Risk-esque War of the Ring mode from the PC version is gone, so single-histrion just isn't as fulfilling (though I can't say I miss that mode'southward boring multiplayer variant). But while the solo campaigns offer familiar RTS missions, the game presents them with a very solid center for the Tolkien feel--what tin can I say, it'south fun to vanquish Rivendell. Also, multiplayer features a overnice slew of achievement-friendly Live modes, which play into the best reason to become this version: to accept an accomplishment list that reads similar Gandalfs resume.
The Lord of the Rings is ane of those franchises that you can't help but think of in videogame terms. Thus, I am compelled to say: Lord of the Rings + RTS = Awesome
Unfortunately, Boxing for Middle-globe, the kickoff Lord of the Rings RTS game, was non then awesome. Fun to a degree? Certain, but it left many fans disappointed in the midst of the flourishing moving-picture show franchise.
But, hey, that'southward what sequels are for.
Boxing for Middle-world Ii, unlike its predecessor, does most everything right. It takes a dearest franchise rife with potentially great videogames moments and transforms it into a fleshed out, fully formed RTS feel. Half of what makes for a solid RTS, for example, is a rich world to draw upon, and that's something Battle for Middle-earth Two certainly doesn't want for. The missions are well crafted both objective-wise and setting-wise, utilizing the vast lore of The Lord of the Rings books to make more than some really memorable experiences.
The logistics of the game are all pretty sharp, too. Battles feel truly ballsy, with hundreds of characters on screen at in one case, and meliorate nevertheless, the chaos feels controlled though always intense. The emphasis is squarely on the activeness, with a plethora of units and heroes (similar to the Warcraft serial) at your command. But, with such an emphasis on action, the strategic element of the game runs in the shallow end. For RTS purists, that tin can exist a chip of a downer, only for the more than mainstream audience that doesn't usually delve into heavy strategic games, this is a pretty big boon.
Strategy enthusiasts aren't left completely in the nighttime, however. Included in Battle for Middle-earth II is a Chance-like turn-based strategy game called War of the Band. It's a flake rough around the edges, but if yous adopt a picayune bit more depth mingled with your action, information technology'southward definitely a fun diversion from the main game.
And, if nothing else, Battle for Eye-world Ii certain does wait nice. The telescopic of the game is pretty huge, and with battles fielding a huge number of units, it'll induce a few moments of nerdish awe. But, similar most RTS titles, it looks actually overnice far abroad, simply when yous first zooming in, all the flaws polish through. This would exist a negligible if information technology weren't for the fact that a bulk of the cinematic use in-game graphics, highlighting many of the game's imperfections.
Like, love, or loathe Lord of the Rings, there'southward simply no denying that Battle for Middle-earth II is a solid RTS. It helps all the more if you can recognize the subtle genius in zerging an enemy base with a battalion of LothlA?rien elves, but fifty-fifty if you can't, it's still worth a long look.
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