Lord of the Rings: Conquest

In Lord of the Rings: Conquest, it's neither good to be bad nor good to be good. That's because Pandemic, the developers, tried to do too much in too little time. On the surface, there's so much to do that you'll initially feel like a kid in a candy store. However, as you start to get farther in the game, you realize that the developers failed to polish the game.

The single player mode of 15 levels ends too quickly after about 13 hours. While much of it is on the easy side, the hard levels are terribly unforgiving. Sometimes, its environments seem unfinished as you find yourself moving through barren scenes. The gameplay is not always fluid, and you'll get choppy movement, especially in a massive battle scenes. Even walking doesn't always appear that natural. You can go back and play as different characters at different difficulty settings, but it is unlikely that you will because your first experience doesn't make you want to return. If you do return as a baddie, you'll eventually have to kill many hobbits and burn down the Shire. Online, the battles seem all too usual, and controlling those giant trolls and Ents is unwieldy because they move so slowly. This may be fun to Lord of the Rings loyalists, but even the true fan will likely wish that Pandemic had spent more time on the development of Lord of the Rings: Conquest.