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Jan 06 2006
Lord of the Rings: Tactics Review
PSP Game Review | Strategy
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| Summary: Suprisingly Addictive and Fun
81
I had rented this game a month ago, and a few weeks ago decided to buy it. This is suprising considering that I finished the game on both campaigns while renting it.
Lord of the Rings: Tactics is a turn-based strategy game. Essentially, you play with one or more 'main' characters (ie. Aragorn), combined with one or more 'auxillary' characters (ie. Baromir) in an 'arena' (ie. Helm's Deep). The forces of good and evil square off, each with their own goals for victory. When a stage is completed, all your characters get experience and you get some gold which you can use to buy items or skills.
The gameplay consists of two modes: Movement and Combat phase. Both are pretty self-explanatory. You run through each of your characters, giving them instructions, and then you finalize everything and watch them all spur into action.
The game actually adds quite a bit of extra principles into this mix however, by having different terrain movement penalties, Zones of Control, High-Ground bonuses, Criticals and of course the variety of special moves and items each character can have.
As I stated, I had already rented and beat the game, yet it was appealing enough to purchase. Here is why:
The graphics were very good. There was a lot of movie clips in the game; very typical of Lord of the Rings games. The characters and terrain were well done, and I did not notice any anomalies or defects in the graphics.
The camera movements were good for the most part, allow the analog stick to zoom and pan around your selected character. It did get annoying while showing movement or combat sequences however - it is not uncommon to see an attack with a large wall in front of the camera, but to me this did not happen enough to be a big issue, and it definately did not obstruct gameplay which is the big problem with camera movements in the first place.
The sound was excellent. In addition to having the familiar movie music, there are quite a bit of ambient sounds that really add to the various stages.
Being a turn-based strategy there was not a big deal of control issues involved. My only real complaint was that the O button was the "accept" button and the X button was the "cancel", something opposite of what the default PSP controls are. For example, you use O to select "Save Campaign", and then it throughs you into a PSP Save Game File selection screen, which uses X to confirm and O to cancel. Little annoying but again it does not affect gameplay so its not a biggie.
I will admit that the game is fairly short. You run through all the stages of light and then start over with the forces of shadow. Once you are done you want to put the game down and not touch it for a while. For me however, I loved the gameplay so much that I found myself going back and retrying the game to see if I could do better. For instance, I must have played the Amon Hen level about 100 times. The first time I managed to complete it in 14 turns, losing 3 guys. Now I've been able to complete it in 3 turns, losing no guys. Lastly, changing the difficulty can really prolong the experience. Thie game keeps calling me back even though I have finished it 3 times already.
So in the end, I'll give the following scores:
Game Artistry and use of PSP hardware: 80
Camera Movement and Placements: 75
Control Usability and Logic: 85
Interest and Replayability: 75
Fun and Overall Experience: 90
REVIEW IT
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Comments
01/08/06
23 
trapper
| Ontario Canada
I like that review, that is how I feel about this game. It is just addiction in a way most games arent. Good review.
+
01/08/06
13
sthig
| Georgia USA
I agree with Trapper. Good Review. This is one of my fav games to play
+
01/12/06
24
overachiever
| Maryland USA
Good review. I agree with all your points.
+
01/16/06
10
yesurbius
| Alberta Canada
Its been 10 days since I wrote the review, and I've been playing LOTR nearly every day since. One of the worst things about this game is that you are thirsting for more everytime you finish it, and since you have no more, you lose interest in starting over again. The good news is that if you force yourself to start a new game, you usually can't put it down. I have now finished it on the hardest difficulty level for light, and am starting on mordor tonight. Addictive game.
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