Kiruvi
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
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
2022
The platonic ideal of the Souls series, everything in perfect tune and elevated to the ideal pitch.
A surprisingly enjoyable hack-and-slash for a movie tie-in game, despite some frustratingly steep difficulty spikes towards the end and annoying limitations such as being unable to replay any levels until you beat the entire game.
The controller support on the PC version is... predictable, for a game from 2003; but the animations are gorgeous and smooth, and with the widescreen mod and the ability to run at any resolution, the game looks frankly better than it has any right to.
The controller support on the PC version is... predictable, for a game from 2003; but the animations are gorgeous and smooth, and with the widescreen mod and the ability to run at any resolution, the game looks frankly better than it has any right to.
2018
Truly a perfect game. I'd give almost anything for some DLC or a couple new bosses to add to the rotation.
Honestly one of the rare console-to-handheld ports of this era where the handheld version holds its own or maybe even outstrips the primary version. Why aren't there more LotR-centric loot games?? It's pretty bare-bones and short, but those are expected for a GBA game and they honestly did more with the RPG trappings than I would have expected them to be able to in such a limited factor. And the art looks great and is highly legible, even when upscaled to 1080p in an emulator!
A real classic of the era, especially in an era of truly god-awful movie tie-ins. The animations and stage design are really well done and still look great today. The models even look halfway presentable when jacked up to 4K.
There are some truly egregious difficulty spikes towards the end that had me making liberal use of save states, and wondering how I ever managed to beat this without checkpoints back when it first came out.
There are some truly egregious difficulty spikes towards the end that had me making liberal use of save states, and wondering how I ever managed to beat this without checkpoints back when it first came out.
Honestly one of the rare console-to-handheld ports of this era where the handheld version holds its own or maybe even outstrips the primary version. Why aren't there more LotR-centric loot games?? It's pretty bare-bones and short, but those are expected for a GBA game and they honestly did more with the RPG trappings than I would have expected them to be able to in such a limited factor. And the art looks great and is highly legible, even when upscaled to 1080p in an emulator!