Luckily, nearly every area from the movies and books of Middle-Earth are on full display in Conquest. Whether it be from Weathertop to Minas Tirith, the game boasts just about all of them. While some are more limited than others, most of the maps feature some very open environments allowing for some creative paths when you take the battle online. While the game isn’t graphically astounding, the frame rate holds up under an impressive number of enemies onscreen, and some of the cities in the game are quite detailed. The character models may not be breathtaking, but they are certainly more than acceptable. Possibly even more important than the game’s graphics, Conquest features the great score that made the movies pleasing. The in-game dialogue isn’t great, but there’s nothing like charging into battle with the theme song from Lord of the Rings blaring behind you.

Also, I have to say that Conquest’s evil campaign is one of the more interesting things I have seen done with a franchise. You see, the evil campaign revolves around if Frodo had never destroyed the ring at Mt. Doom. What if Sauron had taken the ring from him only moments after he fled the volcano. I don’t know if I can see myself playing through it more than twice, but it was defniitely an interesting direction for the game. This is truly sad, because I doubt many players will want to take the battle online where imbalanced character classes plague nearly every session of the game, with the exception of the single-player. Although, I’m sure some will find solace in the online coop or the fact that the game supports up to 16 players in the deathmatches.

Lord of the Rings: Conquest takes some interesting steps, but it does kind of feel like half of a game in every sense of the word: half of a movie tie-in, half of a new IP, half of a previous game. The game just can’t seem to find a full identity to carve itself out a niche as one of the great post-holiday releases. Maybe with a little more time, Pandemic will be able to improve upon many of the mistakes with a sequel, but those with some extra gift cards to spend should look closely at what is being offered right now in the first version of the game.