The Battle for Middle Earth II: Return of the Kings of RTS

I'm tempted to call The Battle for Middle Earth II the best game I've played so far this year. I have yet to experience a game that has gripped me past completing the satisfying single-player campaigns to the point where I look forward to settling down into a nice skirmish, if only to build a fortress and assemble a glorious army. Or perhaps it was the incredible War of the Ring mode, which allows players to wage war on the entirety of Middle Earth and change the outcome of the Third Age. The Battle for Middle Earth II captures the spirit of The Lord of the Rings the way the original game did not. As much style as The Battle for Middle Earth had, it felt like you were given the means to engage in a massive campaign, but the world beyond the borders of the film's story were blocked by glass walls. It was frustratingly limited, but in its own way still managed to contribute to the genre. The Battle for Middle Earth II is the game its predecessor should have been. It has built upon the first game's foundations and created classic real time strategy, rendered to compliment Peter Jackson's celebrated films and the literary work that inspired them.

The Battle for Middle Earth II is a return to form for the original Westwood team that brought real time strategy to the masses with Command and Conquer. They have maintained the strengths of the original game, and implemented some more conventional elements of the genre to create an experience that is pure RTS - the first I've legitimately enjoyed in a long time. However, given the advances in recent strategy titles such as Rise of Nations, Dawn of War and Rome: Total War, The Battle for Middle Earth II will initally come across as another game simply following the well-worn formula. And perhaps it is formulaic. Though it would be a grievous mistake to assume this is the extent of the game's substance.

After acquiring the rights to produce games about Tolkien's written works instead of just the films, EA has set out to create a game based on the War of the Ring in its entirety; the War in the North that takes place between Sauron's forces in Dol Guldur and the Elves and Dwarves being the focus of the single player campaigns. Each of the campaigns for the Good and Evil factions was a good collection of missions that exposed the game's new features, but they seemed a little too straightforward to be challenging for veteran RTS gamers. I was glad to see that the Evil campaign is more than just waging the War in the North from the other side - it adds a few gratuitous tasks like killing Celeborn, Lord of Lothlorien, in the first mission, already rewriting the history of Middle Earth.

The Battle for Middle Earth II is all about choice in the war for control of Middle Earth. Choices you didn't have in the original game by being led by the screenplays. The game has been expanded to six playable factions, all of them with their own unique assets: the Men of the West (Gondor and Rohan), the Elves, the Dwarves, Mordor, Isengard and Goblins. Every race and character is represented: from the Hobbits to the Corsairs of Umbar, from the Mouth of Sauron to Tom Bombadil. Whether they are buildable units or summonable allies they are available in the game, making it the most complete game based on the Lord of the Rings mythos.

Goblins cackle upon victory. The Riders of Rohan yell as they charge into battle. Batallions let out a hearty cheer after defeating the enemy. Things that should have area damage, do. Catapults launch enemy troops high into the air - on fire if you have the flaming shot. Mumakil (Oliphaunts) sweep the ground with their spiked tusks, tossing cavalry effortlessly aside. Cavalry units still trample on a charge - something that has strangely been absent from RTS games since their inception. Despite Age of Empires III's awesome use of physics, charging into a mob of enemies only caused your mounted units to grind to a halt and then engage with their weapons. I've since noticed this trampling effect copied in Rise of Legends. Every unit has a unique death animation: footsoldiers will run wildly when on fire, cave trolls will sway and fall, causing area damage when they land. There is personality in every unit.

You are now afforded the freedom to create your base however you choose. Beginning with a fortress, the production structures can be placed anywhere. Walls are available, complete with fortifications such as catapults, arrow towers and stationary "protector" units like Ents or Mountain Giants depending on your faction. Once complete, bases were always a sight to behold in their magnificent detail. The design of the structures is consistent for each race, influenced by the films for the structures that were seen, but taking some creative liberty with the ones that weren't, such as the dwarven stronghold and Goblin encampments. As with the first game, constructing a Resource structure is all that is required to begin building an army. But this time around, the placement of the structure effects its output efficiency. They can't be placed too close together, and end up indirectly expanding the footprint of your base. Though in the heat of battle when you're in need of additional resource and command points it becomes a little annoying, as you're stuck focusing on which plot of land will output the most resource instead of maintaining your battle strategy.

In recreating the setpiece battles from the films, The Battle for Middle Earth made sure you spent the least amount of time inside your base as possible. The Citadel, or central structure in each base, had to be protected or else you wouldn't be able to produce any new units. But the game wouldn't end if you still had units in the field. In the Battle for Middle Earth II, instead of having to wipe out all enemies, destroying the main stronghold is often enough to ensure victory. Though this may promote rushing strategies, at least it allows attackers to focus on preparing an adequance siege force instead of spreading their army too thin over the map looking for stragglers.

In general I found that buildings (especially defensive towers) are weak and are easily destroyed, making mobile forces more of an asset. The game is almost asking you to be on the offensive all the time, which is unfortunate after all the effort that went into making base building such a enjoyable process. As a result of focusing on building large attack forces, the skirmishes are occasionally short, and depending on the level of AI do not reach the epic scale of the films.

The number of units per build has increased, increasing the scale of the battles. You can also form up your army using a mouse shortcut that creates a default Calvary in front, archers at rear formation. This can only be widened or narrowed; there are no other formation options. However, coupled with the available battle stances it can be extremely useful in open areas: I found that Dwarven Guardians made an excellent wall in a defensive stance to protect my axe throwers so they could safely launch volleys at incoming cavalry.

This increase in numbers on screen made me wish for the "ultimate" zoom out of Empire at War's ground battles that flattens the map and creates a bird's eye view showing everything under your control - and it allows you to select single units or the entire army instead of constantly mousing around terrain. It is also difficult to keep track of unit types in a large selection group in the Battle for Middle Earth II. The only quick-select units are the builders and heroes. This makes it hard to pick out a particular battalion that is already engaged in the often messy clashes that take place. In this regard, it would have been nice to have a pause feature similar to the Total War series to issue commands on multiple fronts instead of wasting units by hastily sending them to the enemy's positions.

With this larger number of units comes some performance issues during particularly chaotic skirmishes. My current PC exceeds the requirements for the game, yet I had to run it at a lower resolution just to get my army to move at a normal pace instead of perpetual slow motion. Like Rise of Legends, the engine felt unoptimized and unnecessarily taxing given the quality of the visuals. Which isn't to say that the Battle for Middle Earth II was lacking in that department - I'd easily compare it to the level of detail presented in Age of Empires III.

Overall, the game feels easier. While the factions try to seem balanced with corresponding footsoldier, cavalry and seige units, I found that the Goblins were my least favorite faction to use. Even though they were cheap and quick to produce, hinting at the Zerg strategy from Starcraft, they were still far too weak even with armour upgrades to be of any use as an assault force. Archers would easily take care of warriors before they even reached the front lines. It also seemed to be a mishmash of leftover items from the other evil races - I don't see what spiders have to do with Goblins, unless of course they're deferring to Warhammer. Elves are clearly the most powerful faction, with their archer units being able to completely decimate the ranks of any battalion once equipped with silverthorn arrows. Though heroes, most of all, are overpowered - I was able to fend off an entire army of Mordor with King Dain of the Dwarves as long as a Hearth was nearby to heal. It may keep with the heroic nature of the stout-hearted king, but it just felt unrealistic.

The Battle for Middle Earth series uses Command Points to control the size of your army. Even though it can be incrementally improved through buidling resource structures, building an army is still a balancing act. The system promotes battlefield strategy, encouraging you to make use of what you have and to build each unit wisely, despite an excess of resource to pay for them. For example, the larger siege units and monsters in the evil factions are more powerful, but they cost more command points. Cavalry are good to have for assaults, but are expensive to produce just to defend a base. Therefore, the game is not necessarily about collecting a mob of units and throwing them at the enemy. They must be used as intended, or else you will lose them quickly. This became readily apparent in base sieges where my catapults with the expensive flaming shot were left undefended and were destroyed by one boulder lobbed by a cave troll.

At the end of each battle, along with the standard production charts and game summary, you are given a rating for "Tactical Skill" and "Strategic Skill" used in the battle. This is a great addition for those serious about strategy. If you just pump out units and throw them at the enemy your ratings will be low. If you constantly run your cavalry into a phalanx of pikemen the game is sure to let you know you're an idiot. If you're just interested in completing the mission this isn't a big deal, but for me it made me reconsider the strengths and weaknesses of each unit, using battle stances and formations to greater effect.

The Battle for Middle Earth II introduces naval battles as well, but it doesn't benefit the gameplay as much as fans of the original thought. The exposure to war on the high seas is limited to ports or enclosed bodies of water, and don't really offer any strategic advantage. If anything, they were used in the Good and Evil campaigns to show off the beautifully rendered water - but that's about it. The ships and explosions are not as detailed or satisfying as Age of Empires III, and seem like they were given the least amount of attention in the entire game. The boat AI behaves like ground units in lesser RTS titles: they attack anything in their vicinity. It doesn't make tactical sense to watch them charging towards the enemy, when most of the naval units are pretty weak and will be destroyed quickly if caught on their own.

The Battle for Middle Earth II may disappoint those that wanted a campaign with the Men of the West, since the game follows these unwritten details of the War in the North. The good news is you can make your own campaign with the War of the Ring mode, which consists of a strategic map where territories are claimed through real-time battles. It feels like a totally different game, and while taking its influence heavily from the Total War series there are still some things holding it back from being the same brand of epic real time strategy.

It's clear that EA took their newfound sense of scale and tried to implant it in this overall strategic mode. The War of the Ring mode has a multitude of scenarios to choose from (e.g. take control of 5 territories, take control of everything, take control of a capital...it's quite flexible), and plays more like a turn-based strategy game while in the overall strategic map. Units are built or armies consolidated in the first phase, attacks or movements are made in the second, and resolution takes place in the third. As expected, fighting for a territory takes place in real time on a battle map, or can be auto-resolved. The problem with the auto resolution is that it takes the raw performance of each unit and multiplies it by however many you have - it's pure number crunching. If you decide to resolve combat on a battle map, what happens is entirely up to your skill or your willingness to hunt down a solitary enemy unit. The problem is, if that unit is especially powerful, two or three batallions of archers might not take it down and you'll lose the battle. However, auto-resolving it would probably result in a win due to the base numerical advantage.

One of the things that bothered me the most about the game overall was the lack of veteran units. Part of the original game's appeal for me was how it rewarded players that used units as they were intended. If they stayed alive long enough, they levelled up and became more powerful. They could be carried between missions, eventually creating a veteran force that would make up the backbone of your army. Units can still be levelled within skirmishes or the campaign in the Battle for Middle Earth II, but they aren't kept between battles. This disparity is exaggerated by the War of the Ring mode, in which units created during the resolution of battles are "lost" upon returning to the world map, regardless of its outcome. Only the batallions created on the world map are retained. This undermines the entire purpose of the game mode. The general willing to risk his veteran forces should be rewarded later in the game with more powerful troops. Each battle for territory shouldn't involve starting from scratch - it eliminates continuity between the two playing fields.

The Battle for Middle Earth II's detractors claim it's too much of an RTS in the conventional sense. Indeed, when compared with its contemporaries, it wouldn't seem that ambitious - but I propose that it was never the game's intent. EALA has created a game that is infused with the qualities of the films, while staying true to Tolkien's original mythos. Jackson's interpretation of the classic fantasy trilogy will always be remembered for its sense of scale, its grandiose setpieces and extended edition DVDs that gave fans everything they could have possibly wanted. The Battle for Middle Earth II never forgets this, having been affectionately crafted by some of the very founders of the strategy model that we know today. It may bear the weight of licensed material, but those quick to dismiss it on these terms are missing out on one of the finest games to be released this year.