The Lord of the Rings: Conquest Impressions
August 8,2008 - The plight of licensed games is that they are often unable to live up to expectations of enthusiast gamers with high expectations and easily satisfied casual gamers who tend to buy them in droves. For this reason we often have to accept licensed games for what they are: usually serviceable fanfare, but sometimes trash. We recently had a chance to sit down with The Lord of the Rings: Conquest and it seems like it’s shaping up as more of the former, a decent enough hack-n-slash action game with a few wrinkles that attempt to keep things interesting.
The focus of the team at Pandemic is to recreate the most famous conflicts from the Lord of the Rings trilogy with the twist being this: you can play from any perspective. So you can fight for the virtuous “good guys” and occasionally occupy the bodies of heroes like Aragorn or flip sides and command Sauron and his legions.
As you make your way through these conflicts you’ll be tasked with a series of objectives, such as holding a strong point or taking down a series of enemy encampments that constantly spew more enemies until you destroy them. Every battle will consist of several of these small objectives that must be successfully accomplished in order to complete the scene.
There are two different styles of combat with two classes within each: archers and mages for long ranged fighters, and warriors and scouts for melee combat. They all have their obvious strengths and weaknesses, with warriors being the most physical but susceptible to becoming engulfed by a sea of enemies, scouts with their speed but lowered defense, and both archers and mages doing damage from afar before falling into serious peril when confronted by close-range fighters.
In our experience, combat flip-flopped between engaging and passive. At times we had to make concerted efforts to fight off the horde, especially when confronted with special types of warriors from the opposing forces. We noticed this when we took control of Aragorn; a thoroughly more enjoyable experience than when we fought with generic characters.
Other times, we simply smashed on buttons, wiping the floor with our adversaries while listening to the EA rep beside us say, “Wow, you’re doing well.” Unfortunately, we did so with no rhyme or reason to our actions, and as with most hack-n-slash games, you’re often lulled into a button mashing daze until a special event or especially hard foe jolts you back into consciousness.
In fairness, Pandemic has tried to enliven things by giving you special attacks for each class of fighter. The archer had several attacks including a fire arrow, triple shot, and poison arrow. The scout could disappear for some time and attack enemies under the guard of invisibility. And the mage could send a charged bolt of lightening through several enemies.
All of this does help break the monotony of battles, but there also seemed to be few instances where we felt compelled to use any of them. What is nice, however, is the ability to jump to different classes on the fly, though for some reason the option only appeared when we were near a statue.
While we didn’t get to play the multiplayer mode since it isn't far enough in development, we were clued in to some details. The multiplayer will consist of co-op play for all of the battles and sometimes a “leader” of sorts will be able to take control of a hero like Aragorn, which would apparently be determined as a reward to whomever is doing really well in the battle.
Overall, we came away from our time with The Lord of the Rings: Conquest with the impression that it doesn’t appear to be an incredibly deep game, but it does reproduce the scale of the battles pretty well and its objectives-based mission layout adds a little more focus to what would otherwise be a very straightforward and monotonous hack-n-slash title. It doesn’t seem to completely shake loose from the shackles of a genre muddled by repetitive gameplay, but it is what it is: a straightforward game meant to please fans. We’ll have the final word on The Lord of the Rings: Conquest when we get our hands on a review copy in the near future.
Written By: Anthony Perez | Tags: The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, Xbox 360, EA Games, Pandemic Studios
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As you make your way through these conflicts you’ll be tasked with a series of objectives, such as holding a strong point or taking down a series of enemy encampments that constantly spew more enemies until you destroy them. Every battle will consist of several of these small objectives that must be successfully accomplished in order to complete the scene.
There are two different styles of combat with two classes within each: archers and mages for long ranged fighters, and warriors and scouts for melee combat. They all have their obvious strengths and weaknesses, with warriors being the most physical but susceptible to becoming engulfed by a sea of enemies, scouts with their speed but lowered defense, and both archers and mages doing damage from afar before falling into serious peril when confronted by close-range fighters.
In our experience, combat flip-flopped between engaging and passive. At times we had to make concerted efforts to fight off the horde, especially when confronted with special types of warriors from the opposing forces. We noticed this when we took control of Aragorn; a thoroughly more enjoyable experience than when we fought with generic characters.
Other times, we simply smashed on buttons, wiping the floor with our adversaries while listening to the EA rep beside us say, “Wow, you’re doing well.” Unfortunately, we did so with no rhyme or reason to our actions, and as with most hack-n-slash games, you’re often lulled into a button mashing daze until a special event or especially hard foe jolts you back into consciousness.
In fairness, Pandemic has tried to enliven things by giving you special attacks for each class of fighter. The archer had several attacks including a fire arrow, triple shot, and poison arrow. The scout could disappear for some time and attack enemies under the guard of invisibility. And the mage could send a charged bolt of lightening through several enemies.
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While we didn’t get to play the multiplayer mode since it isn't far enough in development, we were clued in to some details. The multiplayer will consist of co-op play for all of the battles and sometimes a “leader” of sorts will be able to take control of a hero like Aragorn, which would apparently be determined as a reward to whomever is doing really well in the battle.
Overall, we came away from our time with The Lord of the Rings: Conquest with the impression that it doesn’t appear to be an incredibly deep game, but it does reproduce the scale of the battles pretty well and its objectives-based mission layout adds a little more focus to what would otherwise be a very straightforward and monotonous hack-n-slash title. It doesn’t seem to completely shake loose from the shackles of a genre muddled by repetitive gameplay, but it is what it is: a straightforward game meant to please fans. We’ll have the final word on The Lord of the Rings: Conquest when we get our hands on a review copy in the near future.
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| Published by: | EA Games |
| Developed by: | Pandemic Studios |
| Genre: | Action/Adventure |
| # of Players: | N/A |
| ESRB Rating: | Rating Pending |
| Release Date: | US: Q4 2008 |
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Gamer 2.0 Rating: 8.9 | User Rating: N/A
Gamer 2.0 Rating: N/A | User Rating: N/A
Gamer 2.0 Rating: 7.1 | User Rating: N/A
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