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.

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!