The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

There’s no real need to go into detail about the story here. Although, I should again mention that this game is based on the book instead of the movie, so you’ll see a lot of things that never made it to the movie. You’ll encounter Tom Bambadil, Old Man Willow, and the Barrow, to name a few. It’s also worth mentioning that this game does a pretty good job of relaying the story, especially when compared to The Two Towers, which seemed to jump around a lot with the story.

Frodo’s mission is all about using stealth and cunning, so it makes some sense that you won’t do a lot of fighting. Frodo has the ability to go into a “stealth” mode where he’ll begin to sneak around, and he can also jump and climb, unlike the other characters. Equipped with the one ring, Frodo can become invisible and hide from enemies. Unfortunately, this aspect of the game was poorly done. Frodo has a purity meter, which rapidly decreases when Frodo wears the ring. It goes down so fast that you can never really get any use out of the ring. On top of that, Frodo can either sneak by or outrun nearly every enemy he’ll ever encounter. When Frodo does good things, such as completing quests for people or saving his friends, his purity meter will increase, allowing him to wear the ring for an increased period of time. Unfortunately, the quests that increase his purity meter pretty much end a few hours into the game.

Last is Gandalf, who is easily the most enjoyable character. Gandalf’s main weapon is his sword, but he’s also equipped with five magic spells, such as heal and lightning. You really don’t need to use his magic much, and simply hacking with his sword is usually enough to kill most enemies, but the spells make things a lot more interesting… and they can be pretty handy when fighting off a Balrog. Speaking of Balrogs, the battle with the Balrog is really pretty cool to watch (and hard to fight!). Unfortunately, you don’t get to play as Gandalf a whole lot. You don’t start playing as him until you reach Moria… and once you reach Moria, well, you know what happens. So, even though playing as Gandalf is much more enjoyable than the other characters, it’s not developed as well as it should be because of the fact that he’s not playable for very long.

The graphics are definitely a mixed bag in Fellowship of the Ring. The game is full of huge and often beautiful environments with a lot of detail. On the other hand, some of the effects are horrible, like the water for example. There were points where I had trouble differentiating between the ground and the water because the water was so poorly done. Other effects are decent though, like the lighting from Gandalf’s magic. The fight against the Balrog ends up a splendor for the eyes. Also, I don’t know about the other versions of the game, but the loading times in the PS2 version are AWFUL. It takes forever just to go from screen to screen, and saving a game takes even longer.

Aside from voices, the rest of the sounds were of good quality. The sounds of battle, like swords clashing and arrows firing, sounded convincing and really pulls you into the battle, even though the gameplay of combat is so dull. The soundtrack was also excellent, featuring tunes that fully capture the magic of Tolkien’s world.