This was a fun co-op focused successor to Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (even being made by the same developers).

It has a virtually non-existent story with comically bland characters, and the plot all too conveniently lines up with the timing of Frodo's journey. The three main characters are kind of meant to be vessels for the three of you to inhabit, but even as vessels they fail. I feel little connection to any of them. The only time there was any real presentation of character traits and flaws was at the beginning of the final level, when Eradan helps Farin climb a mountain despite his stubbornness. More of this would have been great, and especially fun to discuss with friends while playing. Beleram the Eagle was by far my favourite character because he was always there in time.

The game was also buggy, but rarely in an intrusive way. Most of them were really entertaining, as bodies would collapse during combat or fly every which way, particles floating around when our weapons disappeared in cutscenes, hair clipping through armour, as well as cutscenes having visual bugs like the other eagles being frozen in the corner of the screen, or two of the same character appearing at once. There were also some hilarious pacing issues when cutscenes would trigger; combat would be cut short and then the characters would just be standing around talking. The most intrusive bug occurred when we'd choose to return to the hub mid-level, and then try to go back to where we were, and we'd be separated, forcing a level restart. The game is not polished overall; I've had a few instances where I was locked into a combo by multiple enemies. You don't have any invincibility frames in the game, to my knowledge. It's awkward.

With all of this said...the game, at its core, is really fun. I think the gameplay loop is solid, and though its level design and variety pales in comparison to Dark Alliance, it provided enough engagement and strategy to keep things fresh throughout, despite repetition seeping in toward the end. It was great fun to experience with friends; just an man, elf and dwarf on a quest together. Sharing laughter and commentary on the game itself. It was just as much fun to pick on as it was to actually play. The environmental design was also GORGEOUS, a beautiful realization of Middle-Earth in the interactive medium for sure.

I completely understand why the game flopped upon release; going up against Dark Souls the same year and Skyrim the same WEEK wasn't going to be easy. It also isn't the most polished or interesting game from the outside looking in. Hell, even on the inside, it doesn't have a lot to call its own. But it was fun, and I'd recommend it if you have a couple of friends that love Lord of the Rings and want something goofy and fun to play. (Actually the game was delisted, you can't get it anymore on digital storefronts lmao)

A really solid One Of Those (being a B-Game RPG/looter-slasher) that actually does quite a lot with the Lord of the Rings license that I wish other games would have done.
It connects to the story of the books just enough to provide context, but not so much you feel like the Tardy Tag-Along Crew from The Third Age. Getting to see places like Fornost, the Barrow-Downs, and Gundabad mentioned in the books but never visited in the films is fun.
In my opinion, this is the way to handle licensed content - a competent story about new characters, largely (or ideally, completely) independent of the parent story, respecting the tone and ideas of the original but doing something new.
It's a shame the game did pretty poorly and sank any chance of ever seeing anything like it going forward.
Great

So close to greatness, the art-style is still gorgeous with levels that look like paintings, excellent animations and flowy combat. But the game is weighed down by uninteresting main characters, a shorter campaign, and lots of bugs. Music is fantastic, the writing feels appropriately Tolkien (if albeit sometimes simplified) but seeing characters from the lore in the Peter Jackson aesthetic universe like Elladan and Elrohir as well as Halbarad is awesome and they fit the movie's aesthetics perfectly. Voice acting is all over the place, some Fellowship members especially are jarringly different from their movie counterparts despite having the same design as the films (Elrond is especially very different from Hugo Weaving's performance as Elrond). The player characters are all blandly voice acted, but there are some good performances here! The fantastic original character of Beleram the Great Eagle is amazingly voice-acted, the before-mentioned lore characters of the Elven twins Elladan and Elrohir sound perfect for the setting and characters. Gandalf (while sounding different from Ian McKellen), is a fantastic interpretation of the character. Legolas and Gimli sound good, as well as a few others! If they gave this another half year to year in development, I think this could have been one of the ARPG greats, but sadly it is instead a truly flawed hidden gem, it is very much worth playing and is a blast doing so, but it could have been so much more. I overall recommend it for the fantastic aesthetics straight from the films and greater Legendarium of Tolkien, very fun hack and slash combat with gory finishers, and just sheer enjoyment! Have fun!

i borrowed this game from a guy i went to high school with and i played it nonstop because it was so satisfying and fun to play but then i stopped talking to that guy because he was a FREAK and forgot that i had the game but he kept coming to my house repeatedly and calling me all the time for MONTHS and then one day my brother answered the door and found out he was using getting this game back as an excuse to keep trying to contact me and my brother went to get the game for him and i remember the heartache i felt watching him walk to the door with this game in hand from where i was hiding out of sight in the hallway. i miss it but i never heard from that guy again.

Combat is simple and repetitive, but that's fine because it's so satisfying. Animations are incredibly clean, combos and crits are intuitive but not so easy it's boring. Seriously wish Skyrim's melee combat was like this. All equipment and weapons are also fantastically visually designed. No one's here for the story but that's just as well because whoever wrote the dialogue needs to be shot, it was cringe when I was 10 and it's unbearable now. Extra half a star for combining multiplayer and unique classes/skill trees. Seriously if WitN and Skyrim combined it would be the best high fantasy game of all time

I had to abandon this halfway through due to the game-breaking Beleram/Mirkwood glitch (that this remained unpatched speaks for the game's lack of polish), but I wasn't that annoyed to let it go. The gameplay is rather simple, with basic hacking n' slashing, basic levelling, and basic loot. I alternated between the three characters each level, yet they play largely the same (and character-wise they're bland). I would've liked to switch between characters mid-level (for the character specific actions), but it seems this game was mainly designed for co-op. It is at least neat that the plot runs in tandem to the main story, and that you get to visit some of the unseen locations.