The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth

The game functions quite similar to other games of the genre; the player must control the army, economy and production of troops. Unlike other RTS, buildings can only be built on certain areas that already exist on the map. There are various sections: villages (one building for the collection of resources: farms for good fractions or slaughterhouses or sawmills for evil fractions), outposts or outposts (citadel, three sections for buildings), camps (citadel, six sections for buildings, small segments of walls and up to seven sites for defense structures; Gondor camps have four defense sites and a wall that almost completely surrounds the camp) and castles (citadel; eight sites for buildings by the dark armies; Rohan receives 7 and 12 defense sites; Gondor receives 9 and a dozen defense at sections; Gondor and Rohan have walls on which troops can be located). Troops are trained by battalions / detachments, except for the strongest (for example, trolls and mumaki of Mordor, Ents Rohan, Isengard berserkers, siege weapons), which train individually.

The economy consists of building farms (Rohan, Gondor) or forges (Gondor); slaughterhouses, wood plants - sawmills, and smelting (Evil) in certain areas to receive resources. Also in the game there are improvements and special abilities to increase the speed of obtaining resources (Gondor can build a market to make big profits from the harvest of farms and steel production in forges; for Evil there is the skill of production - on the site on which the buildings that provide resources, use this ability gives a double increase in resources). Each resource building reduces the price of improvements or the cost of buying troops. For example, the forges at Gondor and the smelter at Mordor and Isengard reduce the cost of buying upgrades to 40%, such as fire arrows, red-hot swords, heavy armor and upgrading the standard bearer, and these buildings also reduce the cost of siege weapons. Farms near Rohan and Gondor reduce the cost of cavalry by 30%: knights and rohirrim. Mordor's meat slaughterhouses reduce the cost of mumaks, mountain trolls, and drum trolls by 30%.

Each map in the campaign is named after a well-known Middle-earth region (Westfold, East Rohan, Blackwood , as well as distant regions such as Rune and Harad . The game honestly follows the story in the correct order with special cases ( Battle of Hornburg , Isengard, Moriah , and Minas Tirith )

A rather unique building repair system is used in the game. Buildings cannot be repaired if they are attacked at that moment (with the exception of Gondor). Also, heroes can heal themselves, and units regain strength when not in battle. Wells at good can also heal troops and regenerate units. The story of the campaign is told by actors Ian McKellen (Good; in the role of Gandalf) and Christopher Lee (Evil; in the role of Saruman ).

The battle for Middle-earth is famous for its high-quality multiplayer (game on the Web). In multiplayer, players can test their tactical and strategic skills against each other in epic battles, as well as play in 3 on 3, 4 on 4 modes and participate in tournaments.

Due to the closure of official servers, the game is currently playing on the Internet on patch 1.06 through the Gameranger LAN emulator (download here) .

The BFME allows the player to go through the campaigns of Good and the perverse campaign of Evil that takes place during the War of the Ring, as shown in the Peter Jackson trilogy, with slight game deviations. Each campaign has its own ending. The Free Peoples (Gondor and Rohan) focus on a multitude of heroes such as Gandalf , Aragorn , Faramir , Theoden , Eomer and others. The Powers of Darkness (Mordor and Isengard) depend mainly on their squads of orcs , Uruk-hai, evil people, and monsters like trolls and mumaks. Also, the forces of the forces of Good usually contain fewer soldiers than the forces of evil, but their forces are approximately equal - the people of Gondor and Uruk-Khai are much better trained and equipped than the orcs and peasants. In addition, human troops are cheaper and take less training points than soldiers of Darkness. The final battle of the Good campaign is an attack on the Black Gate of Mordor to give Frodo time to destroy the Ring of Omnipotence ; Evil's campaign ends with the siege of Minas Tirith .

The good campaign begins in Moria , where the player must kill Balrog in a one-on-one duel with Gandalf the Gray. After that, Gandalf becomes White and when studying a passive ability, “Gandalf White” receives additional abilities.

The evil campaign begins with cutting down trees at Isengard and the first open skirmish with rohirrim.

In the interval between story missions, the player must conquer or defend the land.

The sequel to The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II has significant changes over the first game. Building construction is returning to the “standard” in RTS games: workers can build buildings anywhere. Also, the fractions of Rohan and Gondor were united into one - People of the West. New factions include elves and gnomes (Good) and goblins (Evil). Also, it became possible to build ships: elven (Good) and Umbar (Evil). The second game uses the events described in books, not in films: about how Sauron sent troops to the North to capture the lands of gnomes and elves. Both campaigns are described by Elrond ( Hugo Weaving ).

The supplement “ The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II: The Rise of the Witch-king ” ( Rus. Under the Banner of the Sorcerer King ) returns to the “past” and shows how Angmar was founded after the death of Isildur . The new faction in the game is Angmar, led by the Sorcerer King, consisting of black Numenoreans , orcs from Mount Gundabad, barbarians of Rudaura, wolves and trolls.

The game was generally accepted very well. She was praised for her good graphics at the time of release, the use of musical themes from the film written by famous composers, as well as for excellent multiplayer in which players can play with each other in various modes.