The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age
Bored of the Rings
Published: November 21, 2004
Oh, what a cruel trick you played on me, The Third Age. You teased me with your unapologetic pilfering of key elements of one of the best RPGs on the PlayStation 2, Final Fantasy X. You tempted me with tastes of playing alongside the Fellowship's journey into Mordor. You bit me early on by introducing a battle system that seemed incredibly promising, actually rewarding me for using my special abilities and spells, but tempering that with limited resources. I was your beeyawch, TTA, but then you turned on me.
It was a gradual thing, I'll admit, souring like a relationship that was doomed from the start. The battle system waned, mired by seemingly endless encounters and mere fluff for character development and growth. The deluge of items you gave me from the start meant the game would never really seem all that difficult. The speed of the characters and the save point to save point dashes, the unavoidable battles and the length of those battles that took FFX's system (click the link to get the lowdown on how it all works), slowed it to a crawl with superfluous animations, and slowly, steadily, drew the life and novelty out of what could have been one of the best RPGs ever made.
Instead, this is merely a passable effort -- one that absolutely drips with production values and quality at every turn, from the ornate level designs that perfectly mirror the sets in the movie to scattered events where you almost (but not quite) get to team up with The Fellowship in key moments from the movie to some of the best sound design ever heard in games -- but a game that at its core is really quite boring.
With all the money spent on the game, it still feels like it has no soul, and while the deception at the beginning of the game is nearly complete, the more you play through, the more things start to fall apart. The storyline is equally insipid; you play as a band of almost-but-not-quite Fellowship contenders essentially trailing the group on their way to destroy the One Ring, feeding on the leftovers and very, very rarely interacting in any real way with the Fellowship itself (a couple early exceptions include finding out exactly where the bucket Pippin sent clattering down the well in Balin's Tomb and continuity-ignoring fight with the Balrog).
And fight you will, over and over and over again to the point where Dreamcast (and later GameCube) uberRPG Skies of Arcadia starts to look positively inferior in the sheer number of battles. If the more or less skinned-and-slowed-down FFX battle system were as quick, it wouldn't be a problem, but the same canned animations that can't be skipped will drone on and on until you throw down the controller and walk away. Enemies (of which there are perhaps a dozen or so different types with minute variations) engage you in a marathon of literal back-to-back battles at times (Helm's Deep's joyous non-stop barrage of fights is enough to break even the most hardcore of RPG buffs).
It's a shame, too, because there are some redeeming qualities about the fights had they actually been spaced out and a real story thrown in instead of some kind of ham-fisted, shoehorned video sequences with Sir Ian McKellen trying to string things along with overly-recycled video clips (which, admittedly do include some scant footage from the Special Edition DVD releases). Instead of magic, TTA uses Action Points, which are used for both special attacks (that do everything from damaging multiple enemies to blinding, weakening and poisoning them) and spells (healing, attack, buffing spells to increase attack or defense, etc.). The more you use these skills from a particular group, the more points you earn in that category which eventually earn you more skills. It's a fantastic system, but the slower battles and lack of serious strategy (not to mention the shotgun approach to battles) mean you never really get used to using a set of skills.
A meter on the right side of the screen fills with each action (a sort of combined Limit Break meter a la Final Fantasy VIII) for the whole party that allows for some ridiculously powerful attacks (some of which recruit various creatures from Middle-Earth to help out). They're a nice addition, but take a rather long time to build up, so it's almost more of a random occurrence unless you save it until absolutely needed, thus negating its usefulness in all but a handful of cases.
I mentioned it before, but this has to be one of the highest-production games that have been this hollow that I've ever seen. The sheer grandeur and scale of some of the level designs is breathtaking, and the detail in animations (save for running, which doesn't have the kind of bounce that you normally get in someone's gait) is superb. Actually crawling through Moria or waging war in the middle of the Minas Tirith onslaught is a sight to behold, and it's enough to make any Tolkien geek crap himself. Even the areas that venture well beyond where the film cameras ever captured retain the feel of the levels.
Lavish textures and plenty of polygonal detail do a wonderful job of recreating the handful of Orcs, Wargs, Goblins and Uruk-Hai that you'll battle endlessly, but all of this detail comes at a heavy price, mainly in the form of a sub-20 framerate during most of the overworld exploration and downright slideshows during some of the heavier special effects explosions (the battle with the Balrog comes to mind). It's not a huge issue, since no part of the game requires razor-sharp timing, but it's still a little tough to stomach at times.
This is also arguably the best-sounding game, effects-wise, that has ever been released. It's obvious that EA was allowed to dig deep into New Line's libraries and assets, and the result is a game that snarls, roars, clangs, clomps, thuds and explodes with every bit of the punch of the movies. Given that a significant effort went into the foley and effects work, it's wonderful to see all of this used in the game, where even simple footfalls have the kind of clarity and richness that few games possess -- on any platform.
Most of the deep, throaty, brassier pieces were picked for the majority of the game's music, with the exception of a couple of pieces that reverberate with Howard Shore's score. It's a good fit, of course, and the variety that came from writing a soundtrack for more than 10 hours of movies means the game is rife with variety. Even the victory themes for battles (or at least the screens for experience and spoils) often changes, offering just a tease of some of the better themes in the game. I suppose it's also a credit to the source material that so much of this holds up to the literally hundreds of times you'll hear them while playing the game, though if you play through to the end, it's likely you won't want to hear much of the music for a while.
The voice acting, with the exception of perhaps Ian McKellen's Gandalf reprisals, is decent, and clear enough, but the dialogue itself is wooden and lacks any real depth. There are some basic uses of Elvish, but most of the lines feel as though they were purposefully lifted from the movie and tweaked just a bit so they'd work in the game's context (there are even heavy edits for the video clips that just plain don't fit on more than one occasion). It's almost painful to hear the pedestrian exchange between characters and the complete lack of development means you'll never really get a sense that this so-called adventure is affecting any of them.
This is an amazing looking and sounding game, and hands-down offers the best example of a movie studio and a developer collaborating to use resources from the finished film in the game. Unfortunately, it seems like almost all of this effort was lost, because as good as it sounds, and as impressive as the visuals can be at times, there's little else to keep you playing after a few hours. The combat system could have meant the difference between a mediocre game and one that brushed the surface of what Middle-Earth could have offered but at least teased enough to keep one interested, but instead gamers will be forced to wade through countless battles that suck all of the fun out of trying to ride on the Fellowship's coattails.
RPGs are not just a cool battle system and pretty effects everywhere. The whole idea behind a 40 hour game is that you grow to like (or hate) a character, and then experience their transformation in real-time as they grow, gain new abilities and apply them in a way that affects the storyline. The Third Age offers little -- if any -- of this in all but the most cookie-cutter fashion and often bastardizes the reference material that it tries so hard to pay homage to. Give this a rental if you're still curious, but the limited time you spend with it will be more than enough to know the full game.
It was a gradual thing, I'll admit, souring like a relationship that was doomed from the start. The battle system waned, mired by seemingly endless encounters and mere fluff for character development and growth. The deluge of items you gave me from the start meant the game would never really seem all that difficult. The speed of the characters and the save point to save point dashes, the unavoidable battles and the length of those battles that took FFX's system (click the link to get the lowdown on how it all works), slowed it to a crawl with superfluous animations, and slowly, steadily, drew the life and novelty out of what could have been one of the best RPGs ever made.
Instead, this is merely a passable effort -- one that absolutely drips with production values and quality at every turn, from the ornate level designs that perfectly mirror the sets in the movie to scattered events where you almost (but not quite) get to team up with The Fellowship in key moments from the movie to some of the best sound design ever heard in games -- but a game that at its core is really quite boring.
With all the money spent on the game, it still feels like it has no soul, and while the deception at the beginning of the game is nearly complete, the more you play through, the more things start to fall apart. The storyline is equally insipid; you play as a band of almost-but-not-quite Fellowship contenders essentially trailing the group on their way to destroy the One Ring, feeding on the leftovers and very, very rarely interacting in any real way with the Fellowship itself (a couple early exceptions include finding out exactly where the bucket Pippin sent clattering down the well in Balin's Tomb and continuity-ignoring fight with the Balrog).
And fight you will, over and over and over again to the point where Dreamcast (and later GameCube) uberRPG Skies of Arcadia starts to look positively inferior in the sheer number of battles. If the more or less skinned-and-slowed-down FFX battle system were as quick, it wouldn't be a problem, but the same canned animations that can't be skipped will drone on and on until you throw down the controller and walk away. Enemies (of which there are perhaps a dozen or so different types with minute variations) engage you in a marathon of literal back-to-back battles at times (Helm's Deep's joyous non-stop barrage of fights is enough to break even the most hardcore of RPG buffs).
It's a shame, too, because there are some redeeming qualities about the fights had they actually been spaced out and a real story thrown in instead of some kind of ham-fisted, shoehorned video sequences with Sir Ian McKellen trying to string things along with overly-recycled video clips (which, admittedly do include some scant footage from the Special Edition DVD releases). Instead of magic, TTA uses Action Points, which are used for both special attacks (that do everything from damaging multiple enemies to blinding, weakening and poisoning them) and spells (healing, attack, buffing spells to increase attack or defense, etc.). The more you use these skills from a particular group, the more points you earn in that category which eventually earn you more skills. It's a fantastic system, but the slower battles and lack of serious strategy (not to mention the shotgun approach to battles) mean you never really get used to using a set of skills.
A meter on the right side of the screen fills with each action (a sort of combined Limit Break meter a la Final Fantasy VIII) for the whole party that allows for some ridiculously powerful attacks (some of which recruit various creatures from Middle-Earth to help out). They're a nice addition, but take a rather long time to build up, so it's almost more of a random occurrence unless you save it until absolutely needed, thus negating its usefulness in all but a handful of cases.
I mentioned it before, but this has to be one of the highest-production games that have been this hollow that I've ever seen. The sheer grandeur and scale of some of the level designs is breathtaking, and the detail in animations (save for running, which doesn't have the kind of bounce that you normally get in someone's gait) is superb. Actually crawling through Moria or waging war in the middle of the Minas Tirith onslaught is a sight to behold, and it's enough to make any Tolkien geek crap himself. Even the areas that venture well beyond where the film cameras ever captured retain the feel of the levels.
Lavish textures and plenty of polygonal detail do a wonderful job of recreating the handful of Orcs, Wargs, Goblins and Uruk-Hai that you'll battle endlessly, but all of this detail comes at a heavy price, mainly in the form of a sub-20 framerate during most of the overworld exploration and downright slideshows during some of the heavier special effects explosions (the battle with the Balrog comes to mind). It's not a huge issue, since no part of the game requires razor-sharp timing, but it's still a little tough to stomach at times.
This is also arguably the best-sounding game, effects-wise, that has ever been released. It's obvious that EA was allowed to dig deep into New Line's libraries and assets, and the result is a game that snarls, roars, clangs, clomps, thuds and explodes with every bit of the punch of the movies. Given that a significant effort went into the foley and effects work, it's wonderful to see all of this used in the game, where even simple footfalls have the kind of clarity and richness that few games possess -- on any platform.
Most of the deep, throaty, brassier pieces were picked for the majority of the game's music, with the exception of a couple of pieces that reverberate with Howard Shore's score. It's a good fit, of course, and the variety that came from writing a soundtrack for more than 10 hours of movies means the game is rife with variety. Even the victory themes for battles (or at least the screens for experience and spoils) often changes, offering just a tease of some of the better themes in the game. I suppose it's also a credit to the source material that so much of this holds up to the literally hundreds of times you'll hear them while playing the game, though if you play through to the end, it's likely you won't want to hear much of the music for a while.
The voice acting, with the exception of perhaps Ian McKellen's Gandalf reprisals, is decent, and clear enough, but the dialogue itself is wooden and lacks any real depth. There are some basic uses of Elvish, but most of the lines feel as though they were purposefully lifted from the movie and tweaked just a bit so they'd work in the game's context (there are even heavy edits for the video clips that just plain don't fit on more than one occasion). It's almost painful to hear the pedestrian exchange between characters and the complete lack of development means you'll never really get a sense that this so-called adventure is affecting any of them.
This is an amazing looking and sounding game, and hands-down offers the best example of a movie studio and a developer collaborating to use resources from the finished film in the game. Unfortunately, it seems like almost all of this effort was lost, because as good as it sounds, and as impressive as the visuals can be at times, there's little else to keep you playing after a few hours. The combat system could have meant the difference between a mediocre game and one that brushed the surface of what Middle-Earth could have offered but at least teased enough to keep one interested, but instead gamers will be forced to wade through countless battles that suck all of the fun out of trying to ride on the Fellowship's coattails.
RPGs are not just a cool battle system and pretty effects everywhere. The whole idea behind a 40 hour game is that you grow to like (or hate) a character, and then experience their transformation in real-time as they grow, gain new abilities and apply them in a way that affects the storyline. The Third Age offers little -- if any -- of this in all but the most cookie-cutter fashion and often bastardizes the reference material that it tries so hard to pay homage to. Give this a rental if you're still curious, but the limited time you spend with it will be more than enough to know the full game.
