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3.9

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The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age

2004-11-02

Developer: EA Redwood ShoresPublisher: Electronic Arts, Electronic Arts

XBOX, NGC, GBA, PS2

Single player, MultiplayerThird person, Bird view / Isometric

Role-playing (RPG)

Strategy

Turn-based strategy (TBS)

Tactical

Action

Fantasy

The Lord of the Rings:The Third Age introduces entirely new characters which aren't mentioned in the books or movies. The game does relate to the movies by including scenes from all three movies, with new background speech by Ian McKellen (Gandalf). There are seven playable characters in the game which have been created specifically for it, as well a small appearances by characters such as Gandalf, Aragorn, Eowyn, Faramir, and Gothmog. The game covers events in all three movies/books, mostly with references to major events shown through cut scenes, or the scenes from the movies with Ian McKellan's narration. A classic RPG game, The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age has gameplay elements similar to Final Fantasy, where you have a party of characters, each with a different set of skills and attributes, who gain levels, making them stronger as the game progresses. Battles are turn-based, and let the gamer make different decisions on what they want to do to change the outcome of the battle. The game travels through many areas throughout Tolkien's Middle Earth, including The Pelennor Fields and Moria.

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TerryWoodiniArchived a game4 weeks ago

The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age

PRO: Evil Mode is fun because it rectifies the abomination this game calls the story CON: the existence and presence of the party undermines the actions and sacrifices of the Fellowship in most major story events

2 reactions

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BocoArchived a game2 months ago

The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age

20 hours

Soundtrack

Visuals

Gameplay

Story

Lord of the Rings: The Third Age is perhaps the worst game I have ever played on stream. LotR:TA is a turn-based RPG, which takes heavy, HEAVY cues from Final Fantasy X, one of the best JRPGs ever made. It falls on its face with nearly every aspect of its game design, leaving no reason for it to be played, whether you're a RPG enjoyer or a Tolkein fan. Let's start with the gameplay, the meat and potatoes of what you'll be doing, essentially there are two methods of play, the overworld, where you navigate a largely linear area, picking up items, changing your equipment, leveling up your characters and getting into fights. Which leads into the second gameplay variation, combat. It plays out much like you would assume, on your turns you chose your actions, attack, spells, items or switching your active party members. While all this seems fine enough, the execution of each individual part takes what would've been a mid licensed RPG, with not much to write home about, to a crass homunculus of the RPG genre. Theres so many issues that it makes it very difficult to even start discussing them, so I will start with a very simple concept, recovering HP, there are a few ways of recovering HP in LotR:TA, Skills that heal, items, leveling up and interacting with a save point. All of this is standard issue RPG fare, where the game stumbles is healing on the overworld. You cannot heal on the overworld using skills, you can only recover using items or a save point if you are near one. Which brings us to another issue, healing items. In most RPGs if you run out of healing options, no biggie you can just pop back to a town to restock. This is not an option in LotR:TA, as there is no currency in the game, there are also no towns. However, there is an option for obtaining more items, you can learn a skill that allows you craft more healing items if it is used in combat, how ever this leads to another issue. Combat. More specifically how encounters are designed, this game does not have random encounters, normally this would be something to be praised, however their solution is awful. Instead of a traditional encounter every X amount of steps it has set encounters within certain areas on the map, which are exhausted after you complete them. This means that you can do every encounter in an area, and will probably do so each time. This design choice means you cannot grind levels, ability points (to learn new abilities) or crafted items. Meaning that theoretically you could run out of resources and soft lock yourself. And all of that is just scraping the surface level, not even touching on turns where two enemies take eight turns, lacking of a respect option for stats and much much more. On to the story though, it's not much to talk about, its hard to follow at the best of times and inane at the worst. It follows a Gondorian who was struck down by a ringwraith and was revived by an elf, they together follow after the Fellowship, through each area from the movie meeting new allies a long the way. The story is incredibly unclear about what you're supposed to be doing other than "just follow the fellowship", I do think this story is the fault of the licensing agreement that EA had, which only allows them to work with things depicted in the Peter Jackson films. In addition to cutscenes that don't communicate much, there are also "Epic Scenes" which are recut scenes from the movies with narration dubbed over them, mostly from Gandalf. There are 109 of these scenes, which range from not really adding anything to massive story revelations to straight up telling lies about in game lore. Speaking of, if you're a bit of a lore hound, this game will probably do massive psychic damage to you, it varies from small inconsequential things like the amount of trolls in Moria, to your party fighting the Balrog or killing all 8 ringwraiths post-witch king death (which they also helped with). As for visuals, theres not much here, I suspect that this game largely reuses models from EA's previous LotR games, which is not a bad thing. Its a 6th gen game seeking an at least semi-realistic visual style, which unfortunately hasn't aged the best. The worst thing I have to say is that many of the characters mouths are actively broken when they're moving or screaming, as well as the battle UI looking very very rushed. Lastly the Soundtrack, it mostly consists of tracks from the films soundtrack, and if I said anything negative about Howard Shore's work I would be drawn and quartered and then crucified, as I would deserve. However I feel like the over usage of it really cheapens the impact of the music. Overall this game is one of the worst games I have ever played, there is absolutely no reason any person should give the game the time of day.

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matsuu_uReviewed a game4 months ago

The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age

Soundtrack

Visuals

Gameplay

Story

Jogo de RPG de turno, segue a linha da Sociedade do Anel, com três heróis que acompanham os passos da sociedade.

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Black_XXIVReviewed a game1 year ago

The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age

500 hours

Soundtrack

Visuals

Gameplay

Story

Titolo della mia infanzia, adolescenza e anche oltre. Non è open world ma comunque si possono visitare i luoghi più belli della Terra di Mezzo. Bellissima storia di personaggi originali che si lega bene con la tria principale. Apprezzabilissima la modalità di strategia a turniSempre bellissimo da giocare anche dopo 20 anni. Uno dei miei titoli preferiti del franchiste

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PrimalTundraReviewed a game1 year ago

The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age

Soundtrack

Visuals

Gameplay

Story

I wanted to give this game a playthrough for so many years, and when I did it was so worth it. It's Lord of the Rings with JRPG Turn-Based battles. Epic and so much fun.

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HultReviewed a game2 years ago

The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age

Soundtrack

Visuals

Gameplay

Story

jag gilar mycket lord av ringen, HO HA

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unpopular_onionReviewed a game2 years ago

The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age

Repetitive as heck, but there's a great sense of progression with your characters.

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