#THE BATTLE FOR MIDDLE EARTH PC DOWNLOAD MOVIE#

Overcompensating handsomely for this comes a strikingly colorful palette of hero units and god powers that keep you playing. Yet the game arbitrarily takes away control left and right: you canâ€™t remove archers from a sentry tower once youâ€™ve garrisoned them, nor separate archers and infantry once youâ€™ve combined groups of each to create a more effective battalion.

(Tolkien and economy just donâ€™t mix.)Īlthough both infantry and hero units gain experience and increased abilities, strategic niceties such as flanking maneuvers and battle formations are absent, the variety of unit upgrades spartan and, Nazgul screeches notwithstanding, battle morale doesnâ€™t seem to be a gameplay factor. As a result, many games tend to degenerate into sluggish exchanges of ebb and flow as each side strives to capitalize on enough of an economic edge to secure victory. Only citadels, though, can make defensive towers, which, especially on larger maps with widely spaced choke points, leaves your lumber mill/farm outposts a little exposed. Like Dawn of War, you expand by controlling certain points on the map that allow you to build outposts and settlements eventually, when you take over an enemy, you can pay to construct a new citadel on the ashes of his old one. This mercenary tech model may be psychologically well suited to Mordor or Isengard, but deliberately sending Gondor infantry off to die leaves you feeling a bit like Denethor on a grumpy day. So you basically create them to die by the legion in order to gain access to their hardier successors. The rub is that buildings can only produce higher tier units once theyâ€™ve acquired sufficient veterancy, which accumulates only through making sufficient numbers of cheap units that count against your population cap. As your economy gets rolling by establishing expansion farms or slaughterhouses at the limited number of designated spots, you prune away the ones at home to make space for your now affordable Troll cages or Mumakil pens. The designers commendably do away with peon convoys by having a single lump resource type â€”called, aptly, â€œresourcesâ€ â€” and by providing a limited number of real estate â€œlotsâ€ on which to place your structures. As in the Kohan series, infantry and archers are created in squads of five or ten, although bigger fun-bets like heroes, mountain trolls, and Nazgul arrive in sets of one. It â€œsimplifiesâ€ the usual real-time strategy gameplayâ€”removing or dressing down tactical options, unit types, depth, or any semblance of linear narrativeâ€” and becomes a repetitive grind.įour playable factions are available: Gondor and Rohan for the Good side, with Sarumanâ€™s Isengard and Sauronâ€™s Mordor answering the cattle-call for Evil.

It effortlessly trumps War of the Ring like a Nazgul but canâ€™t hold a candle to meatier fare like Dawn of War.

But the films were exhilarating all the same, while the game falls short.

#THE BATTLE FOR MIDDLE EARTH PC DOWNLOAD MOVIE#

Just as Peter Jacksonâ€™s spectacular Lord of the Rings movie trilogy evoked awe for its masterful visual presentation, the terrific-looking Battle for Middle-Earth likewise manages to impress through graphics rather than substance.

The battle for middle earth pc download