The Lord of the Rings - The Third Age (GBA) - Reviews | Game Boy Advance

The Lord of the Rings - The Third Age is a Tactical RPG game developed by Griptonite Games and published by EA Games in 2004 for the Game Boy Advance.

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The Lord of the Rings - The Third Age Reviews

Overall 8.7 Graphics 6.7 Sound 7 Addictive 8.3 Story 8.3 Depth 8.7 Difficulty 5.7

7.7

The review of Lord of the Rings rts for Gameboy Jidonika
The game is a wonderful turn based strategy game set in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The game's difficulty tends to go up with each level. The game starts from The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. The most difficult part of this game overall is being able to figure out how to win each round. Remember that this game is going to require actual brain work. Remember to review the map and such to beat the actual game.

Do not think this game should be considered easy, because it's not. The sound is rather well placed, but it's more or less going to be annoying to listen to the same themes per each battle. The sound system will remain the same through out. The addictive quality of this game comes from the need to think on how to beat the enemy, and the two campaigns in this game. Play as the Good Side or the Bad side. Both sides have heroes inside the entire game. Play with men, elves, and Heroes such as Legolas, or Aragorn. Play as the side of Evil with Uruk-Hai, Orcs, Trolls, and heroes such as Saruman, or Lurts. The game takes a while to beat for reasons said earlier.

To summarize, this game is a very addicting game for it's time. Remember that this game requires actual skills in strategy making. Sound quality is rather great for a gba system. The graphics are nice, but requires you to be able to get through some random pixelated images. Do not play this game if you are easily frustrated with difficult tasks.
Graphics 6 Sound 7 Addictive 7 Story 6 Depth 8 Difficulty 8
Review Rating: 5/5 Submitted: 11-01-14 Updated: 06-30-15 Review Replies: 0

7

The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age LegolasJJH
Here is a game that I never actually got the chance to play until becoming a member here on vizzed, it is a game that has both a lot of selling factors but also a lot of bad things. I don't think you need look further than my username to know that I am a Lord of the Rings fan, although I actually was a fan before the movies were even around and did read all of the books before the movies. This is another game that is more based off of the movies.

By the title of the game I was actually expecting the games setting to be more directed at events before the main Lord of the Rings story, being as the 3rd age began much before that story, but I was somewhat disappointed when you only visit that time frame at the beginning tutorials and after that the game takes place in the usual Lord of the Rings time frame. For anyone who hasn't already read the books or seen the movies to understand this story then I strongly recommend you go out and do so. For video game players it should nearly be a must because JRR Tolkiens writings played a huge impact on what we now know as the 'fantasy' genre which is hugely popular among video games. Our perception today of what an Elf or Dwarf or Orc or even Troll might be a little different if not for JRR Tolkien.

The game offers a fresh look on the Lord of the Rings gaming scene from the popular RPG to being a turn based strategy game. The game play is reminiscent of Final Fantasy tactics but also does differ from that formula. Unlike most games of that genre, your units are not all allowed to move once per turn but instead your Hero or Commanding units have a certain amount of Leadership which controls how many times you may move your units in that Commanders zone. Each level has different objectives you must complete for victory, varying from defeating a certain foe or a certain number of foes to capturing and controlling certain key points on the map.

GRAPHICS: 6

Upon first play of this game, the graphics were the first thing that glaringly stood out. They are really quite poor and leave alot to be expected. If not for the in-game portraits of the characters I think it would be difficult to even decipher the character sprites from their Lord of the Rings persona's. The game was made for the GBA so I feel like their is a certain level of poor graphics to be had for an older hand held game but I feel some other games on the GBA prove that better graphics could be had and that this game is just a very poor representation of the GBA's graphics capabilities.

SOUND: 5

Yet again this game leaves much to be desired. My first few sittings of the game had me realizing quickly that this was a game you would want to turn the volume down while playing. For people who have seen the movies, you will recognize all of the music because it is the same music from the movies, the problem is, the transfer to the GBAs sound made the music sound loud and annoying. Normally I love the Lord of the Rings movies soundtracks , but this games music is a butchery of those great compositions. The sound effects are also fairly bland and limited.

ADDICTIVENESS: 9

For how many harsh words and critiques I have for this game, I found myself surprised at how quickly I was coming back to it. Being a fan of both strategy games and The Lord of the Rings, this game is just an obvious choice for me.

STORY: 10

What can I say, from my opinion, The Lord of the Rings is one of the greatest book series ever written. I think anyone who enjoys to read alot should have already read these books and same goes for fans of fantasy. I don't want to spoil anything or ramble on forever so I will just leave this category with it's perfect score.

DEPTH: 8

The game offers many different choices throughout which I think is huge in adding depth to a video game. Once you have beaten the game you can always go back and play again making different choices in which heroes to use etc so that follow up play throughs are fresh and fun. The game covers the events of all 3 Lord of the Rings books unlike many other games which only cover the events of 1 book. You are also given the choice to play on the side of evil or good, effectively creating that much more replayability.

DIFFICULTY: 7

The game is not extremely hard if you are good at strategy games or have some experience with games like Final Fantasy Tactics or the like. If you do not have much experience in those areas then the game may offer some challenge and you probably will find yourself having to replay certain levels after losing and sort of seeing what you need to do to win. But usually after playing a level and losing on it you can pretty much see what went wrong and make the proper changes to win. For someone who only recently started playing the game it did not take me long at all to fully complete it.

OVERALL: 7

Overall I give the game a 7/10 which is really a fairly average score. I feel like the games graphics and sound hold it back tremendously and limits the people who could really appreciate this game. Although this game is extremely lacking in its presentation it does offer some pretty fun and addicting game play. As the game stands, fans of Lord of the Rings and fans of strategy games can rejoice and enjoy but people who are not so into those things will probably really wonder what all the fuss is about.