The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age
Sep. 14th, 2009 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroI recently played The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, a Final Fantasy X clone that used only intellectual property that appears in the movies and is interspersed with film clips as semi-optional cutscenes. It has an interesting setup for an RPG: There aren't any inns or towns, but leveling up restores full HP/MP and most monsters drop items and equipment. The only way to get new skills is to use the ones you have, so you want to try to blow all of your MP before you go up a level. I suspect the key to this game is not trying to compare it to the works of Tolkien and just enjoying it as an AU fic of the movie.
It quickly becomes evident that they tried to mimic the skill levels of the various races depicted in the movie, which is why my elf character is super-badass compared to the two humans and the dwarf, and the hobbits were totally holding the hunters back—I found myself totally ripping through Creatures From A Forgotten Age that gave the fellowship no end of trouble. This was also amusing while defending Helm’s Deep—the members of the real Fellowship join your party for certain battles—Aragorn is badass, Legolas is mega-badass, Gimli...well, he’s okay. (And Eowyn is downright useless in the battle you have her for.)
The weaknesses in the game engine versus FFX shows itself with the existence of a number of game-breakers and significant ease in min-maxing. Case in point: There's a limit guage that fills up as you fight and then enters "Perfect mode", at which point you can do a one-shot super attack, which empties the guage. But you don't have to use the attack, you can save it, and for the most part, you don't really need it. This breaks when your characters learn skills that make all of their hits critical while in perfect mode--since you never have to exit perfect mode, you'll do double damage on every hit for the rest of the game. There are a number of battles where the difficulty seems entirely up to the random number god. Also, healing items become largely useless less than a quarter of the way through the game--you gain levels and hit save points often enough that healing between battles isn't necessary, but the mid-level items don't restore enough HP to be useful, and the top-level items are too rare. The elf character eventually gets a heal-all spell, but by "eventually" I mean "I might have it for the final battle if I'm careful." While crossing the plains of Rohan, you encounter a large group of orcs (six, about twice the size of a normal battle). This can be incredibly hard because of the number of attacks they can take before you kill them...or you can get the skill for your Ranger than lets him use sleep arrows on every enemy at once, and the battle is cake. The Oliphant battles at Pelennor Fields are either fairly easy or frustratingly impossible, depending if you learned the skill that makes the party immune to their stun-all attack.
The plot feels like it was written by a 12-year-old fanboy, complete with a Marty Stu and very little originality. You're playing as analogues of Boromir, Arwen, Aragorn, Gimli and Eowyn (and a Rohan horseman who was probably supposed to be Radagast in an earlier draft—he gets magic powers that none of the other human characters get); guided by visions sent by Gandalf (movie clip cutscenes) and trailing in the footsteps of the fellowship. The best example is the part where you rush in to help Gandalf fight the Balrog: It's REALLY COOL, but misses the point of the original story entirely.
The game is remarkably ending-light, especially considering the movie had an hour of denoument. Of course, the game also ends with a spontaneous battle against the Eye of Sauron at the top of Orthanc tower. It's the first game I've play in quite some time that, when I beat the final boss, I had finished the game. Like, 100% completion. No more sidequests, no bonus bosses, no "Julius Mode". What kind of RPG doesn't have 20 hours of underwater rugby or animal husbandry?
It quickly becomes evident that they tried to mimic the skill levels of the various races depicted in the movie, which is why my elf character is super-badass compared to the two humans and the dwarf, and the hobbits were totally holding the hunters back—I found myself totally ripping through Creatures From A Forgotten Age that gave the fellowship no end of trouble. This was also amusing while defending Helm’s Deep—the members of the real Fellowship join your party for certain battles—Aragorn is badass, Legolas is mega-badass, Gimli...well, he’s okay. (And Eowyn is downright useless in the battle you have her for.)
The weaknesses in the game engine versus FFX shows itself with the existence of a number of game-breakers and significant ease in min-maxing. Case in point: There's a limit guage that fills up as you fight and then enters "Perfect mode", at which point you can do a one-shot super attack, which empties the guage. But you don't have to use the attack, you can save it, and for the most part, you don't really need it. This breaks when your characters learn skills that make all of their hits critical while in perfect mode--since you never have to exit perfect mode, you'll do double damage on every hit for the rest of the game. There are a number of battles where the difficulty seems entirely up to the random number god. Also, healing items become largely useless less than a quarter of the way through the game--you gain levels and hit save points often enough that healing between battles isn't necessary, but the mid-level items don't restore enough HP to be useful, and the top-level items are too rare. The elf character eventually gets a heal-all spell, but by "eventually" I mean "I might have it for the final battle if I'm careful." While crossing the plains of Rohan, you encounter a large group of orcs (six, about twice the size of a normal battle). This can be incredibly hard because of the number of attacks they can take before you kill them...or you can get the skill for your Ranger than lets him use sleep arrows on every enemy at once, and the battle is cake. The Oliphant battles at Pelennor Fields are either fairly easy or frustratingly impossible, depending if you learned the skill that makes the party immune to their stun-all attack.
The plot feels like it was written by a 12-year-old fanboy, complete with a Marty Stu and very little originality. You're playing as analogues of Boromir, Arwen, Aragorn, Gimli and Eowyn (and a Rohan horseman who was probably supposed to be Radagast in an earlier draft—he gets magic powers that none of the other human characters get); guided by visions sent by Gandalf (movie clip cutscenes) and trailing in the footsteps of the fellowship. The best example is the part where you rush in to help Gandalf fight the Balrog: It's REALLY COOL, but misses the point of the original story entirely.
The game is remarkably ending-light, especially considering the movie had an hour of denoument. Of course, the game also ends with a spontaneous battle against the Eye of Sauron at the top of Orthanc tower. It's the first game I've play in quite some time that, when I beat the final boss, I had finished the game. Like, 100% completion. No more sidequests, no bonus bosses, no "Julius Mode". What kind of RPG doesn't have 20 hours of underwater rugby or animal husbandry?
