The Lord of the Rings: Conquest for Nintendo DS is a really cool game. While no doubt scaled down compared to the PC/Home Console versions, it still achieves a sense of raging war of epic proportions. Well, kind of.
During the battle, you can choose between three classes, warrior, mage or archer, with their unique abilities, warrior can block small attacks with their shield and stun the enemies around them, mages can heal others and cast offensive spells at long range, and archer who can charge their arrows to do fire/poison damage and do an arrow spread attack. After some time you can also unlock a heavy unit, a troll or ent depending on which side you're on, and as you'd expect its a tanky unit that hits hard, but is slow. You can also unlock a special unit depending on the map you're on, like Gandalf, that fit into one of the three classes, but stronger and with altered abilities. You're not alone in this fight, as some units will follow you around, the units offscreen basically autobattle with the opposing side. The AI varies from surprisingly helpful, to dumb, you don't have control over offscreen units, so there's no real strategy in this game, it all boils down to your on-screen action. When you die, you can respawn from any of the captured flags, unless the flag is already being captured, however the enemies can respawn at the flag YOU are currently capturing, which feels a little unfair, otherwise I don't have many complains regarding the gameplay.
When in campaign mode, you're given objectives you must follow to progress, such as defending flags, capturing flags or killing units or destroying some structures. Admittedly, there's little variety and the gameplay is fairly repetitive, as it's pretty much all just fighting, but the game is still enjoyable. The game also allows you to play as the enemies, which is cool, basically dark side missions take place in all the same maps but in reverse. The only addition to the dark side campaigns is objectives where you have to pick an item and deliver it to a certain location. The game says you can't attack anything when holding an item, but it doesn't really come out as a handicap, because I don't run into enemies during these, aside from the very first mission, all you're carrying is a bomb on a suicide mission to clear the path and on a time limit. Speaking of the first mission of the dark side, it's probably the most unique, as you're tasked with delivering a message by getting through enemy camps. Not quite stealth, but at least something unique, then you crush the enemies from both ends of the map.
Graphically, the game looks pretty decent, the landscapes and structures are varied and look quite solid, although the game does lag when there's too many units and/or too much geometry on-screen, in a few extreme cases, the textures start disappearing, likely a result of hitting hardware's poly count. Sometimes when the enemies die, they display an animation, but sometimes they just vanish, not sure about that. Audio-wise, the game mostly uses songs from the movies. It does credit a freelance musician, and if there are original tracks, they sound faithful to the movie soundtracks, at least.
Overall, the game may not have the best gameplay, but it wins points for style and scope, having a massive war from the movie in your pocket sounds really cool, I think it's quite solid. The game is probably good in multiplayer as well. The only real issue I have with the game is what plagues many of these licensed games - the game is pretty short, there are only 6 maps for both sides, and I beat the entire campaign (and 1 quick round of instant action) in just under 4 hours of in-game time, although there are in-game achievements if you're into that sorta thing. But still, the game was a pleasant surprise from the usual licensed mediocrity.
During the battle, you can choose between three classes, warrior, mage or archer, with their unique abilities, warrior can block small attacks with their shield and stun the enemies around them, mages can heal others and cast offensive spells at long range, and archer who can charge their arrows to do fire/poison damage and do an arrow spread attack. After some time you can also unlock a heavy unit, a troll or ent depending on which side you're on, and as you'd expect its a tanky unit that hits hard, but is slow. You can also unlock a special unit depending on the map you're on, like Gandalf, that fit into one of the three classes, but stronger and with altered abilities. You're not alone in this fight, as some units will follow you around, the units offscreen basically autobattle with the opposing side. The AI varies from surprisingly helpful, to dumb, you don't have control over offscreen units, so there's no real strategy in this game, it all boils down to your on-screen action. When you die, you can respawn from any of the captured flags, unless the flag is already being captured, however the enemies can respawn at the flag YOU are currently capturing, which feels a little unfair, otherwise I don't have many complains regarding the gameplay.
When in campaign mode, you're given objectives you must follow to progress, such as defending flags, capturing flags or killing units or destroying some structures. Admittedly, there's little variety and the gameplay is fairly repetitive, as it's pretty much all just fighting, but the game is still enjoyable. The game also allows you to play as the enemies, which is cool, basically dark side missions take place in all the same maps but in reverse. The only addition to the dark side campaigns is objectives where you have to pick an item and deliver it to a certain location. The game says you can't attack anything when holding an item, but it doesn't really come out as a handicap, because I don't run into enemies during these, aside from the very first mission, all you're carrying is a bomb on a suicide mission to clear the path and on a time limit. Speaking of the first mission of the dark side, it's probably the most unique, as you're tasked with delivering a message by getting through enemy camps. Not quite stealth, but at least something unique, then you crush the enemies from both ends of the map.
Graphically, the game looks pretty decent, the landscapes and structures are varied and look quite solid, although the game does lag when there's too many units and/or too much geometry on-screen, in a few extreme cases, the textures start disappearing, likely a result of hitting hardware's poly count. Sometimes when the enemies die, they display an animation, but sometimes they just vanish, not sure about that. Audio-wise, the game mostly uses songs from the movies. It does credit a freelance musician, and if there are original tracks, they sound faithful to the movie soundtracks, at least.
Overall, the game may not have the best gameplay, but it wins points for style and scope, having a massive war from the movie in your pocket sounds really cool, I think it's quite solid. The game is probably good in multiplayer as well. The only real issue I have with the game is what plagues many of these licensed games - the game is pretty short, there are only 6 maps for both sides, and I beat the entire campaign (and 1 quick round of instant action) in just under 4 hours of in-game time, although there are in-game achievements if you're into that sorta thing. But still, the game was a pleasant surprise from the usual licensed mediocrity.