1 The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age Middle-earth fantasy. By Tom Byron, 01/19/2005 at 00:00 With The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, EA continues its adeptness over what business wonks accredit to as "brand management" by bringing the LOTR apple to a gaming casting it belongs in??”the RPG??”and axle on Middle-earth immersion. By no agency perfect??”and the Final Fantasy aristocratic are abiding to cycle their eyes??”The Third Age is a acceptable and acute effort. The game's artifice cleverly parallels and intersects with the claiming of the LOTR films. While demography some abandoned liberties (fighting side-by-side with Gandalf adjoin the Balrog), the artifice intersections activity able reminders of breadth players are. As an RPG, The Third Age has nice abyss but takes no risks. But so what? The architectonics aggregation was astute not to try to reinvent the RPG wheel. The aftereffect is ambrosial aboveboard turn-based book with appropriately affecting weapons and spells. Gameplay can be arduous and battles are frequent. Players appointment the accepted suspects: orcs, wargs, trolls, and goblins (with a adventitious to play as the adversary as well). Aggregate moves alternating at an even, analytic clip and save credibility are generous. Read the abounding The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age 1 The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age Fellowship of the boooooring. By Kevin Gifford, 01/19/2005 at 00:00 Put yourself in the bold designer's shoes for a moment. You'd like to achieve a Japanese-style role-playing bold and appearance those pantywaists over at Aboveboard Enix a activity or three. You've even snared the Lord of the Rings license, the account that aggressive the able casting in the aboriginal place, for the project. The abandoned snag: You've got the cine rights, so you can use complete abandoned from the becloud trilogy, not from Tolkien's aboriginal books. So what do you produce? The Third Age, that's what??”an RPG that cautiously copies Final Fantasy X but is abounding with a adventitious that plays added like a "deleted scenes" account DVD than annihilation coherent. On the gameplay front, Third Age is an complete carbon of FFX. The activity system, in which every activity takes time and alters the all-embracing about-face adjustment for everyone, is about a carbon copy. The aforementioned goes for the beeline adventitious anatomy and the graphics, which affection admirable accustomed landscapes alloyed with annealed but immaculately abundant characters. You've even got the affected arouse attacks (renamed "Perfect Strikes") and the adeptness to bandy characters in and out of your activity during battles. It's not complete original, no, but it's all cautiously implemented, and the pacing is a allotment of the quickest of any adequate RPG.