rise of Angmar

EA announced yesterday the upcoming first expansion to The Battle for Middle Earth II, called Rise of the Witch-King. And while I think the Witch-King is undoubtedly the most pointy and fearsome-looking character in the films to be killed by a woman, I am not sure he deserves his own game. In fact, I'd be quite happy if EA simply supplied us with some new skirmish maps for free on the official site like Blizzard does with Starcraft and Warcraft III. But that's not how the games industry usually works.

With access to the entire Lord of the Rings canon, EA has elected to adapt The Witch-King's ascent to power in the North in Angmar as a new "Evil" single player campaign. The subsequent war that is waged against Men, Dwarves and Elves to eradicate the Dunedain presence in the North provides an appropriate bridge with the campaigns in the main game. Though what I'd like to see is an accompanying Good campaign that culminates in the Battle of Fornost, where the forces of Angmar are defeated.

Amongst hyperbolic descriptors like "the ultimate RTS Middle-earth experience" and "innovative new units" in the press release, improvments will purportedly be made to the shortcomings in War of the Ring mode, which I described in my review. Upgraded army persistence, additional siege options and "unified territories that serve as major control points" are some of the additions to this game mode. I'll speculate that "unified territories" implies some kind of Resource point or even free unit bonus to an army, as it follows that a combined frontal assault would be more devastating than attacking from satellite territories. But I'd settle for adding back unit veterancy and persistence between the strategy map and battle map.

I can't say that the new faction is inspiring; anyone could have added spikes to generic looking medieval structures. How about taking advantage of the ominous appearance of Minas Morgul seen in the films? The "new" units are equally unimpressive.

I consider The Battle for Middle Earth II the greatest game of 2006, but I almost wish they would just leave the game alone. It hasn't even been six months since the original game's release! But this is an incredibly unrealistic sentiment, because I know very well that this is just the beginning of another multi-part franchise that will offer the bare minimum to its supporters while exploiting the most esoteric details of Tolkien's beloved mythos.