THE LORD OF THE RINGS: CONQUEST (2009) REVIEW

Star Wars Battlefront - Lord of the Rings edition.

PS3 version reviewed.

The Lord of the Rings: Conquest is an action game published by EA Games and developed by Pandemic for the Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.

GAMEPLAY
Obviously it's usually pretty hard to create well adjusted classes that all seem to be level with each other, and Pandemic, unlike the Battlefront series, dropped the ball here. Classes are pretty unbalanced, any mage or archer will have an advantage over a warrior or scout.

Heroes in online are pointless, as the whole opposition team will switch to the scout class and attempt to backstap whoever the hero is. Perhaps even more bizarre, is that Sauron can be backstabbed, despite being far to big to actually get thrown down.

STORY
While the campaigns are simple, playing through the evil campaign in a "what if?" scenario was quite fun.

GRAPHICS

They're not great when compared with most other big titles

SOUND
Hugo Weaving is the only actor to actually reprise his role from the movies, and ironically he isn't one of the playable heroes. The heroes that are in the game don't sound anything like their movie counterparts most of the time, whether that was the voice actors, the direction or what, it certainly ruined immersion a bit.

VALUE FOR MONEY

Plenty of hours of content if you enjoy the instant action feature.

OVERALL
Despite not being in the same league as the Battlefront series, major balancing issues and having quite a few rough edges, I still found the game enjoyable.