Lord Of The Rings Battle For Middle Earth 1 Crack Free Download
Elliott Davis
The Battle for Middle-earth is a real-time strategy game. Warring factions gather resources, then use them to construct military bases and armies on-site. In The Battle for Middle-earth, buildings may only be constructed on the building slots of predefined plots. Plots range from farmhouses to full-fledged castles, with different slot arrangements and available buildings, and plots can be purchased when they're in the sole presence of a side's forces. The only resource are the nebulous "resources," which are produced inexhaustibly in dedicated buildings. Four factions on two sides wage the War of the Ring: Representing the Free Peoples are the horse-lords of Rohan, and Gondor with its forges and battlements. The Forces of Darkness are the fighting Uruk-hai of Isengard, and Mordor's orc hordes, bolstered by Haradrim, Mûmakil, and Trolls.
The good and evil forces of Middle-earth each have a campaign. They take place on an animated map of western Middle-earth, where each battle represents the defense/sacking of a territory. Armies and characters move on the map, and moving the cursor over them shows snippets of the movies (whereas battle cutscenes use the game engine).
The critical response to The Battle for Middle-earth was fairly positive. The video game review aggregator GameRankings displays an average critic score of 82.5%, with about two-thirds of the reviews in the 80%s.[15] IGN praised the game for its visual flair and impressive audio, but pointed out its lack of depth in gameplay, giving out a score of 8.3 to the "decent, if not spectacular, game.[10] GameSpot, with a score of 8.4, also commented on the visuals and sound effects as well as its focus on large-scale battles that "befits the source material".[8] GameSpy gave 4 stars out of 5, calling the game "a perfect example of a license enhancing the final product."[9]
Fight alongside your favorite heroes from JRR Tolkien's high fantasy classic, The Lord of the Rings, against the powerful forces of Sauron in The Battle for Middle-earth. To defeat your enemies, you must create your own Fellowships of Companion Cards and send them into battle. Despite having numerous Companions to aid your attack, the Eye of Sauron is always vigilant and you must beware of a Counterattack by the Enemies of Mordor. The player who defeats the most dangerous Enemies, and collects the greatest number of victory points, wins the game.
For the final battle, the Goblin horde and Sauron's forces from Mordor converge at Rivendell, the last surviving stronghold against Sauron in Middle-earth. Eagles, the Army of the Dead and the remnants of the Fellowship of the Ring arrive to help Arwen and Elrond, but Sauron (having attained full power through recovering the One Ring from the dead Frodo) and all his gathered forces enter the battle and completely destroy the remaining Good forces in the North.
I still remember running home with the first part disk in my hand ( -lord-of-the-rings-the-battle-for-middle-earth) after school and playing it all weekend. And when the second one came out I was blown away by the awesomeness of it. Thanks for the memories, maybe I will try to get my disk from the old house.
WARNING THIS REQUIRES CHANGING GAME DATA FILES. CREATE A BACKUP COPY BEFORE EDITING.
To change the values of your units, you need to go into the computer directory where you installed the game, e.g. C\program files\electronic arts\battle for middle earth. Then locate the INI.BIG file and open it with notepad. When open, locate (use ctrl+f to open find) the line "GENERIC UNITS/STRUCTURES" and under this you will find the values for damage, move speed, heal delay, amount, health, build time and cost. This works for the characters, structures and upgrades. Just scroll down and change as much or as little as you wish
Battle for Middle-earth II focuses mainly on the northern part of Middle-earth, where elves, dwarves, and goblins battled it out while those pesky hobbits trekked to Mt. Doom. That means there are new races and factions that we didn't get to see in the original game, complete with their own heroes and specialized units. The elves are supreme archers, the dwarves are miners who build giant war machines, and the goblins rely on spiders and sheer numbers to swamp you. Battles take place in familiar places, such as the Shire, and in unfamiliar places, unless you've read the books, such as Dol Guldur. And if you liked the factions and settings from the original game, don't worry, because they all appear in the game's overarching War of the Ring mode in one form or another.
The good news is that things get really interesting once you play with the new War of the Ring mode. Essentially, War of the Ring links all the real-time battles to an overarching strategic campaign, but one that's deeper than the superficial strategic mode in the original Battle for Middle-earth. There are a number of different War of the Ring scenarios to choose from, but the basic goal is that you will try to lead your side to victory by conquering all of Middle-earth, province by province. You can re-create the entire epic scale of the war, with the elves, dwarves, and men battling the goblins, Mordor, and Isengard--you control one of the factions, while the computer controls the others. Or you can set it up so perhaps the dwarves and elves battle each other, or any combination.
War of the Ring does suffer from some issues, though. For one thing, the world's not as persistent as it should be. You can develop a huge base in a territory during one battle, but if the enemy reinvades that territory, most of your structures will disappear and you have to start from scratch again. And while it's understandable that this is so (a contest between a fully developed real-time economy and a nonexistent one isn't really a contest), it's a bit frustrating, not to mention illogical, to have to rebuild everything all over again. The same goes for armies on the battlefield. Only the units that you build on the strategic map are persistent, which means that the huge armies you may build during a battle disappear once the battle is done. And while those strategic units gain experience, it still doesn't make much sense to see fully developed armies suddenly vanish in the middle of war. It's these kinds of issues that prevent War of the Ring mode from being the ultimate Lord of the Rings strategy experience that many of us have been waiting for, but it still makes for a good lightweight strategy game.
EA has made some changes to the battlefield gameplay mechanics, though not much has changed. Naval warfare is a pretty addition, thanks to the shimmering reflections of ships on the beautifully rendered water. However, ships are featured only a handful of times in the campaign, and they don't come in most of the time during the War of the Ring mode, since most territories are landlocked. Meanwhile, the new emphasis on being able to build defenses such as walls seems a bit misplaced, since walls can be incredibly easy to knock down and defensive towers are something of a joke, making their value suspect. Other new features in Battle for Middle-earth II aren't fully fleshed out. For instance, the new build-a-hero function is pretty lightweight. Basically, you can create your own hero or heroine, and he or she appears as a hero unit in the game. However, the actual build-a-hero function is quite limited, since you can't alter your character's appearance aside from selecting between a few armor types, weapons, and colors--you're stuck with the physical features that EA gives you. Normally, this wouldn't be a big thing, but since practically every other EA game features a much more powerful build-a-character mode, Battle for Middle-earth II's build-a-hero mode comes off as disappointing.
Visually, Battle for Middle-earth II packs a few graphical improvements over the original. For instance, there seem to be a few more shader effects at work, so surfaces such as ice have a nice sheen to them. There's also some improved lighting and shadowing at work. But in general, the graphics haven't evolved much from the first game. That's not a bad thing, though, as the original game still captured the look and feel of Middle-earth quite well. Though the battles are nowhere near as large as those seen in the movies (or in the game's own cutscenes, for that matter), you still get a sense of the clash of arms as companies of human soldiers clash with hordes of goblins and orcs. And, once again, the biggest units in the game are some of the best looking--you can send impressively rendered dragons and fellbeasts into battle or watch the noble eagles swoop down from the sky and rip apart an enemy building with their talons. It's interesting to note that the in-game cutscenes taken directly from The Lord of the Rings have disappeared in the sequel, probably because the developers would have had to recycle the same cutscenes over again given that there has been no new movie footage since the first game.
The Battle for Middle-earth II is certainly a better version of 2004's great strategy game. With that said, for all the things it does new or differently than before, some aspects feel a bit undercooked. Still, this is probably the best Lord of the Rings RTS available, and by encompassing the whole of Tolkien's mythology, it really lets you battle for all of Middle-earth this time around.
Expanding on The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth, the new real-time strategy (RTS) game will allow players to engage in heated battles with Elvin and Dwarve armies plus heroes and creatures that have never been seen in The Lord of the Rings films. The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth II Collector's Edition will offer everything the sequel does plus entirely new and exclusive content.
For more information about The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth II and The Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle-earth II Collector's Edition please visit: www.eagames.co.uk/thelordoftherings For information about all of EA's games, please visit EA's press site at www.electronicarts.co.uk/press
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