The first BFME is truly unique in a lot of ways. As an adaptation, the game does not try to be faithful to films. Rather, its primary goal is to re-create scenes --mostly battle scenes-- in a strategy game. This informs almost all of the design choices in the game, as examples:
- The unit and character roster is only as much as what is shown in selected scenes from the films. All unit portraits are directly from the movie.
- The ring powers and hero abilities are almost all inspired or directly taken by the same principle.
- While there are a few maps in the game that refers to locations that was not shown in films, they look rather generic in comparison to ones which do reference the films.
- The Good campaign is 90% about re-living the battle scenes, the rest is building up your units to prepare for said battles. While there are a few liberties taken -- notably you can make Boromir survive and make him fight in Helm's Deep - I would say this is a faithful recreation in the boundaries of the game's engine.
- The Evil campaign is more original but it also commits to be faithful as much as possible. This creates a weird situation where you end up killing Legolas three times in course of the game.
- Some units have effects that doesn't have a real competitive use put iconic in films. Such as Berserker Uruks being able to detonate bombs with torches. You can also just made them touch any kind of fire, which is way easier and does not spend money to merely sacrifice a unit.
- In in campaign screen, when you hover over certain maps, you can see clips on the small screen in the corner of the map.
- The visual designs are faithful to film as much as possible and voice actors from films do the voice work.
- The game uses movie's soundtrack but its original OST is also wonderfully in harmony with the movie's.
However, the game takes this commitment too far for its own good. LOTR have enough cultural recognition and the game certainly does not lack polish but what beneath the LOTR identity, we have an unbalanced RTS that does not have a good rhythm. I don't think every RTS game has to be competitively viable or even has solid balance to be enjoyable, this game is carried by its campaign and this is fine; but it is something that heavily hurts the game's replayability and appeal to non-LOTR fans. It didn't need to be this bad.
So, how bad it exactly is? In campaign, you are challenged with pre-set scenarios so most of the gameplay problems don't come to surface, but in skirmish mode everything gets crystal clear. Let's look at why the game does not have a good rhythm, I usually avoid explaining how gameplay is like since you can easily get that information but I can't talk about very specific gameplay issues otherwise:
- Buildings are constructed on pre-set tiles . This is an interesting concept, but with amount of tiles that you need to spend on economy alone, it hurts tactical diversity. The bases in the game are called outposts, camps and citadels, in the ascending order of their size. In maps without citadels you can build on even fewer tiles.
- The maps themselves are fairly irrelevant. There are outer spots for more income buildings, some wild caves you can fight to level up your heroes and earn a small amount of gold and sometimes there are a couple of strategic chokepoints but overalls maps are mainly plain and feels even a bit too large.
- The number of units you have is determined by command points, which is a fixed amount determined by map and number of players, and it only goes up when a players gets kicked of map. And it is usually filled up pretty quickly. The income is generated by buildings at a constant, unlimited rate with one exception I will mention later. You don't have to maintain an amount of workers to collect resources at an optimum rat. In addition to all that, the resource building all gives discounts on certain costs (For example, 2 Farms give 10% discount to cavalry, 3 Farms give 20% and it scales like that up to %30) but when it is coupled with fixed command point and building tiles, you can't simply spend your money at all in mid-late game. At a skirmish map, It's very common to have a ridiculous amount of money in your hand just sitting and doing nothing. In campaign, you collect additional resources from areas you have cleared, so economy just stops being an issue entirely after mid-campaign.
- As any RTS game, buildings upgrade and tech tree gets expended. In this game, it is not entirely in your control. Buildings rank up only when they generate a certain amount of units or upgrade research. That means, if you want good archers for example, you have to first produce several basic archers, regardless whether basic archers have a strategic value to you or not. This leads to several situations throughout the campaign where you send your basic units to suicide attack as you can't just get rid of units and unit caps are usually too low. And in skirmish mode, it encourages spamming over making a nice unit composition, best to reach Elven Archers as soon as possible instead of spending money for making a balanced army.
- Defending is easy. Even without walls, defensive structures are easily available, buildings are durable and it requires a considerable army advantage to overwhelm a full fortified base. In skirmishes, a decent player can take up against 3,5 or even 7 AI enemies at once without much too difficulty, it's just a matter of time when to beat. In maps with outposts seem interesting in paper and certainly makes offense possible but just ends a race of spamming instead.
- Because economy is easy, defense is strong, maps lack important points and unit cap is low, map control isn't really that important. Owning resource buildings above a certain point returns diminishing resources and you can't really successfully harass enemy out of resources, since the main ones in battle. Provided they both picked a Good faction, players with similar level of skill often just end up in a permanent stalemate, especially on citadel maps. In free-form levels of campaign, the most common cycle of an episode is 1. Beating the enemies initial army 2. Gathering some resources and 3. Rooting the enemy out of entire map. You can just take your army to a nice walk and destroy every building you see, the enemy can't do anything in response not because AI is so incompetent but because it is impossible to catch up even when you have the resources to do so.
- Evil factions are quite underpowered, it effectively reduces the competitively viable factions to 2 and even in campaign this issue rears its ugly head somewhat.
The general gameplay difference between Good and Evil is that on paper, Good ones focus on defense; with structures and healing powers and slow to build up a true offensive force. while Evil focuses on offense; being able to easily stack heavy amount of damage, better siege units and faster economy and not having walls or even certain unit upgrades on return. If you have read up to so far, you can see why Evil factions underperform in practice. But, it gets worse, especially for Mordor, so I will go over Isengard first.
- Aside from not having citadel walls -- which can be solved by playing on Camps -- Isengard seems fine until you remember they have only two Heroes against seven of Rohan's, four of Gondor's. Unlike every other unit, Heroes does not take up command points, you can infinitely recruit or revive them as long as you have money and a standing central tower, and they keep their rank upon revival. While Lurtz and Saruman are powerful, simple math wins here. As time passes on the Good side will just become stronger and as established before, you can't really rush through defenses without a significant advantage. especially if your opponent knows you have to do so.
- Isengard units are powerful but it doesn't have Tier 2 units such as Elven Archers and Fountain Guards. The Berserkers mostly exist as a loyalty to film scenes rather than a genuine competitive asset, they are simply not worth command points majority of time.
- It gets the short stick in powers department. To starters, one of the first powers is Palantir, which allows you to see an area in the map. But it's not worth purchasing at all, other one gives you a very crucial and always useful punch against enemies and spamming and lack of map control makes scouting almost entirely irrelevant.
- It gets three economic powers, "Industry" increases output from resource buildings (Furnace or Slaughterhouse) temporarily, "insert name" one gives permanent bonus to all [insert name], and Devastation clears all trees in an area to give their value instantly. Industry is clearly the best choice, because it is not really temporary; resources buildings rank up as they generate resources, and they generate more when they rank up, so they rank up faster when you used the power on them and you will get more resources in the long run. Even using it just once can give you a great edge. Considering the easiness of the economy in the game, the other two are overkill and not as generally applicable. They both concern the wood resources Evil factions generate from Lumber Mills. Trees are a finite resource, collected by workers that is spawned from building. Devastation basically gives the resource lumber mill would collect at once. So, it is actually contradictory with the passive bonus of [insert name] in long run. Not to mention certain maps are very thin on woods, so having two powers on an effectively dead resource while other factions have useful powers they can use.
- The final power of Evil factions is summoning Balrog. Balrog is very strong and cause heavy damage but it moves slow, lasts very short amount of time and needs to be guided well to use effectively. The final power of Good factions is summoning Army of the Dead. [1] They have less raw damage than Balrog but they last longer and are faster, they be used both against armies and bases more effectively. In terms on effectiveness, there isn't a noticeable difference but Balrog is worse for a single reason: It costs 20 power points while Army of the Dead costs only 10. It really is just a matter of a time before Good teams gain an ultimate victory, on top of other disadvantages Evil governments face.
- Mordor units do not have armor and weapon upgrades. For some units this make sense, like Itilien archers or even orcs; but for example why Harad or Rhun soldiers can't? Maybe developers feared that would make Mordor too strong? If that's the case, they have gone too far as they can't even function in campaign properly. A major element of campaign is carrying your units from one mission to next, slowly ranking your units and heroes. This is impossible for Mordor as no matter how experienced your units are, they die so easily without heavy armor.
- Mordor has four heroes: Gollum, Witch-King, and two Fellbeasts. [2] Gollum is a complete meme, he doesn't have the advantage of being a cheap hero like Hobbits, which is weird as he is clearly shown as resilient and stronger than Hobbits. The Nazguls are exclusively flying beasts. In theory, they would be excellent harassment units but map control is not important in this game, so they are practically expensive archer fodder. In campaign, Mordor has essentially no heroes to level up and use like you would do in Good campaign. It certainly didn't have to be this way. There is no reason why Nazguls --especially victims-- can't fight on foot. The orc chieftain Gothmog is iconic in LOTR fills and he could be easily in at least 3 missions. Why you can't ever control Sauron at any point when you have a full mission capturing the One Ring? Giant spider Shelob is the game as playable for one mission but not available on skirmish for some reason.
- Mordor units are mostly sub-par. Orcs are a free unit but they are weak, slow and can't do anything much without powers. Orc archers are more useful, at least they provide some fire. Haradrim [3] soldiers hit hard when they fire but they die so easily to archers. Rhun spearmen are strong but they die easily to arrows as they can't get armor. Trolls are comically weak, they make good damage but fall to archers easily. Mumakils [4] are big, slow, overly expensive arrow fodder. Catapult starts with fire damage and can spread fear, the second decent unit. Grond [5] is playable in Minas Tirith but once again mysteriously missing from Skirmish. Mordor has no cavalry. As you see the pattern, Mordor has no counter to archers and have basically no strategy besides spamming archers and occasionally catapults.
- Mordor has actually a good power tree that suits very well to attack quickly do a lot of damage but having weak units make Mordor too dependent on them, as opposed to tactical weapons that can you the upper hand when used right time.
(I am serious about 1 vs 7 thing btw)
This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Acelin, Alexandra Morgan, Laura Watson, MasterofCubes, Maciej Paszkowski, Otakundead and Spencer Gill.[1] The demon who fights against Gandalf in first movie/book.
[2] Winged beasts that Nazgul, or the Nine ride on.
[3] Evil men who fight for Sauron. Harad mins South, Rhun means East in Sindarin.
[4] Giant elephants which are used by Haradrim.
[5] The giant battle ram which destroys the gates of Minas Tirith.
[6] The movies downplay Mordor's strength a little bit. In books, it's made clear that the Fellowship, Gondor and Rohan armies go to the Black Gate not just because they have a slim chance of helping Frodo but because they have no chance of defending themselves from Mordor anymore. Mordor's army is so large that they have sent soldiers to attack Elven, Dwarven and Gondor lands at the same time and what remains is easily enough to conquer Minas Tirith. Sauron's only real loss in Minas Tirith is Witch-King while Gondor has barely any soldiers left. So, helping Frodo is not just a gamble is not actually a suicide mission, it's their only chance.
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