The Battle for Middle-Earth II |Overview of the game Battle for Middle -earth 2

A few months ago in one of my posts, I decided to recall and make out one of the best games in the world created John Ronald Ruel Tolkien, a unique in its kind strategy in real time called The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth. Then the work of developers from the company Electronic Arts (which is now far from honored), a short but very strong and memorable game series of the same name was born, which absorbed gamers (primarily myself) for many tens of hours, which delighted, inspired and forced to return to it again until today. In this post, I want to rely again to the memories of the past days, when the EA screensaver, when starting a particular game, made me feel that a few hours were waiting for you, and in the case of The Battle for Middle Earth 2 – Something that will remain in your memory forever.

Released in 2004 “Battle for Middle -earth “ It became a success both for developers from the Los Angeles unit Electronic Arts, and for EA itself. The game was met with warm reviews of both critics and players;She received several awards, entered the TOP of the 21st PC-IGR, as one of the best-selling games in the United States, and by the end of 2004 it dispersed by a million circulation around the world. The cunning bosses of the ominous corporation again gathered under the cover of the night and decided to give green light to the development of the second part. And how wonderful it is when such solutions coincide with the aspirations of ordinary players ..

In 2005, electronics conclude another agreement with the company Tolkien Enterprises, which sold the rights to produce content based on the professor’s literary heritage, and now EA could develop games not only strictly according to the plots of films, but also to invent all kinds of stories that would closely come into contact with the original source, but did not follow him exactly. After that, the development of two rings of the rings started at once: these are the Lord of the Rings Tactics and The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II.

Developers, many of whom were fans of Tolkien’s work, lit up the idea of ​​showing in the new game what Peter Jackson did not show us in his films. New locations, new characters, new factions and new events. They wanted to do something unique that could cause the players still a delight than the first part. Was Electronic Arts managed to implement their plans and impress the hearts of gamers? I am sure that those who remember the game can now answer this question, but let’s pretend that I managed to intrigue you and begin to disassemble all the charms of imperishable classics in order.

The first “Battle of Middle -earth” retold the events of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy as not the professor presented to us, but the cheerful fat man Peter Jackson. In the game, we re-experienced the history of the heroes of the brotherhood and other characters that we could see in the films, although with some liberties regarding their fate: for example, Boromir did not have to die in Amon-Khen from the clutches of Uruk-Haev, and Gandalf, successfully dealing with the balrog in Moria, entered the Lorian forest, already suddenly becoming a white magician. The second part tells us about the events preceding the “lord of the rings”, and in the places happening in parallel to what we saw in the first game. The secondary heroes of the saga appear here: Glorfindel, Elrond, Gloin, Dain, Transduel and other characters, who were carefully hidden from us in the first part, but who nevertheless played an important role in the fight against Sauron.

In different missions, many famous heroes of the Middle -earth, known for the “lord of the rings”, “hobbit” and “Silmarillion”, but there are only two key characters in the campaign: good is Glorfindel (an elf, who actually saved Frodo and took Rivendell (papa gimli) and gimli)

In fact, any strongest fan of the “Lord of the Rings”, and even more so the entire literary part relating to Middle -earth, will catch the cring in almost every plot episode, so the developers could not restrain their fantasy in the bridle. But they were not going to make the game strictly according to books and films, and indeed the plot for them was needed only as a reason to show the players those places and organize for us those battles that originated in their heads. Otherwise, we would just once again play what we had already read in books and watched in films and saw in several games. Therefore, even the most clinging to the eyes and ears of the discrepancy with the original source I would not attribute to the minuses of the game, but for the fact that the developers showed us that the war of the ring is not only the story of a semi -line that dragged a single ring to the fatal mountain;Not only Saruman, who wanted to crush the country of horse breeders, or the confrontation of the gondor and Mordor, but the conflict, which has much more Middle-earth-for this, the creators of The Battle For Middle-Earth 2 Respect+.

Eh, goodbye, beloved … Unfortunately, the second part no longer pleased us with such a magnificent detailed elaborate interactive map of Middle -earth. In the Bfme 2 campaign, it is not at all.

All game action takes place around the Northern Front of Middle -earth. After the fraternity sailed from Imladris, Elrond, who was bored, suddenly discovers that the goblins of the halsted mountains crawled out of their holes and began to scatter through the elven forests. Unable to endure the Goblin stench of the Lord Rivendell organizing a military campaign against the adversaries, but he understands that he will not have enough elven forces only to restrain a new threat. According to the happy (or not so) circumstances, the allies of the garthaura (aka Sauron) began to bother the gnomes, and therefore the non -loved people who did not especially love each other decided to unite and repulse the common enemy in order to protect their lands and pull the north as many troops as possible Black The dark lord, so that the fraternity of the ring has more chances to complete his mission.

In the end, after a series of battles who unfolded in places familiar to readers from the book “Hobbit” (and now by films), gathering all their forces, the allies advance to the Dol-Guldur fortress and destroy the stronghold of the enemy at the moment when Aragorn fights at the black gates, and dancing a dancing over the cliff, by chance.drops the love of lava. In general, nothing new, Happy end. But, as always, it was much more interesting to stand on the dark side and to destroy all the bright races with your own hands, because being evil is always cooler ..

Imagine it was – to become a witness to Sauron’s phenomenon, to observe how he is a flying gait goes to carry the elf nigris, how, from every wave of his hellish mace, the witty are scattered in packs, as in the gam of the “Brotherhood of the Ring” … Perhaps only the Balroe caused me the same enthusiasm when I first played in the first BFME.

And by passing the second campaign, we just head the same Dol-Guldur army of Sauron, sent to conquer the north. In parallel with this, the Black Lord forced to obey the goblins of the halsted mountains, which are advanced west and flood the Eriador, while the herald of Sauron arranges a massacre in the elven forests in the east of the mountains. Managing the King of the Goblins, dissecting the giant scorpion, and disposing of his henchmen, we even capture the width, but the end of our dark one as the night of the path is in the last bright denus in the west – Rivendella, he becomes the place of the final battle of the Evil campaign. In general, playing for the darkness once again turned out to be more interesting from the point of view of events, but it still remained much more complicated in my opinion … Well, I can’t play well for your orcs and goblin!

Despite the fact that by tradition there are only two plot campaigns in the game-good and evil-fractions in The Battle for Middle-Earth noticeably, it was for the new ones that we passed both plots. The fraction of the goblins joined the dark side of the force, where previously only Izengard and Mordor were located, but metamorphosis happened with the bright side. In the first “Battle of Middle -earth” we had Rohan, where the elven archers were clogged as elite shooters, and Gondor, in the second part of the elves of Rohan, they took away and pumped them into a full -fledged independent faction, but at the same time they spun Rohan himself and stuffed him into the gondor, so that the famous eorling and the descendants of the Numenores are now.Under one banner. Well, the third army of good, as you, of course, have already guessed for a long time, severe gnomes performed.

Erebor … one of the most memorable locations (and missions) in the game. And both in the campaign of good and evil

In principle, new races are a new experience and it is cool. For example, the gnomes are thick and in close combat can be supplied with noble bream, and besides, there is a special equipment: stenous guns, combat carts and catapults will be more powerful than Mordorine. But the arrows of them are unimportant. The elves, in turn, are the best in terms of bows and arrows, and also … Remember the imbal Legolas, so now the elves can also hire Thranduil with Haldir, these are of course not legoles, but also archers God. Well, people are balancing somewhere in the middle: they have citizens’ guards, who not only have spears, but they can also laugh against ordinary mili-lungs with dignity;On the spot there were so beloved by me in the first part of the Gondor trackers, which in shooting are second only to Lorian elves;And do not forget about the Rokhan riders who trample any infantry that has no copies.

Mordor is still relied on on the GRAGUSH of cheap and smelly orcs, but also does not disdain the help of trolls, elephants, and with them the Istriling with Haradrims, to which the Umbar pirates also joined the new game. How did they enjoy me in a campaign of good … These devils have the habit of throwing enemies with Molotov cocktails, who set fire to the ground and cause damage to everyone who will step on a burning site. Unfortunately, Izengard was generally unchanged: no new units (not counting the weakly Dunland’s savages) and new pumping. Stupidly build an horde of Uruk-Hai and wolf riders on the patch.

Personally, I have always caused a half -trolls associations with Ogryns from Dow: Winter Assault

But the Gobbins are different: we saw ordinary https://gamblingdata.net/casinos/club-player-casino/ fighters before – in the first “Battle of Middle -earth” they were neutral animals guarding their shocks with treasures. Now they rallied around their own king and acted as a new power in the Middle -earth. Small spiders entered their ranks, in principle weak, but at the early stages of the game suitable units;Horsemen on large adult Arachnids is a sort of goblin cavalry (by the way, one of the best in the game);They were also joined by weak cave trolls, long-range mountain giants, and the half-trolls-copperians are quite cool in their business, after pumping which it is very difficult to eliminate, except that they fall from the arrows like cotton.

As for the set of buildings – there is nothing special to tell here. The fractions already familiar to us, including united in one Rohan and Gondor, all the buildings remained the same, and the new races have absolutely identical buildings. Of the innovations, except that the Goblin and Gnome tunnels, unlike all other races, served not only resource-mining buildings, but also fast-trowel for small-sized units. The process of rebuilding the base itself looks much more interesting in the game.

The strategic component in The Battle for Middle-Earth 2 has not fundamentally changed, but one very important difference from the first part has got. At first, we are also given only one main building, but now there are no cells around it for construction, from now on it has become absolutely free. Moreover, as a strategy, the “battle for Middle -earth 2” has become even more familiar: now a worker appears next to our citadel. That is, everything is again as in the good old days! Well, the truth with some reservations ..

From the former Rohana, only Rochirrim remained, who bared the gondor and the building of the shooting range, in which the dwarfs of the axes of the axes are now being trained

Workers can only build new buildings, and resource mining is still carried out in special buildings automatically. Here I should fix one jamb that I made in a review of the first part: there I said that people besides farms have no alternatives in resource -mining buildings, but I completely forgot that the Gondor forces in which we study the pumping for warriors also mined the resource and also reduced the cost of improvements. But already in the second part of their extractive ability they were deprived of.

Resource mining in BFME 2 also underwent changes. If earlier we could group all industrial buildings in one place, at least all the outpost is for them, then in the Battle of Middle -earth 2 such an act would be very rash. The thing is that the denser you stick mining mines, the less resources they will produce, while the cards are arranged so that far from any place your mine will give all 100% of raw materials. So you have to generously dissipate your mines across the map, so that the treasury is replenished faster and at the same time look out the most profitable places so that mines or farm or cattle -beams, well, you understand, do your work better. And it is logical that in this situation it has become tangibly more difficult to defend.

Although the possibility of free construction of the walls appeared, such a barrier could protect only a few weak detachments, in the case of an attack by serious forces, he only gave a little time to win.

Since the construction became free, we could now erect walls, where we like, within reasonable limits, of course. And where the walls could be built, it was possible to erect protective towers and guard towers, and, finally, put the gate so that at least your fighters could pass the barrier without looking for bypass paths. By the way, the goblin faction has one distinctive feature: their spiders and ordinary fighters can freely climb over your lovingly built outpost, so they had to constantly look after their fence when the main army was walking somewhere at the other end of the map.

But even if you did not have time to build the walls, even if you did not have time to build a guard tower, and the raid of lustful Uruks raids at your camp, you may not worry too much. From now on, your citadel is not just a beautiful turret in the middle of the outpost, it is a real fortress, under the walls of which in the places indicated by small markers, like those that were in the first “battle for Middle -earth”, you can build several types of defensive structures, whether it is the same rifle tower, and a spider land that produces small arahnids when approaching the proximityadversaries, catapult and so on. Each fraction has such structures and not in a single copy.

Mordor’s citadel with extensions looked very ominous

And besides, inside the building itself, you can conduct unique studies that give certain bonuses, and one of them generally makes it possible to beat with lightning to any place on the map, send a ball of fire there, or call the eagle, and the eagles, as we remember, are noble and very clawed … In general, each faction has its own superpowers.

The maximum limit of the troops has increased significantly, and visually it seems that we are really governing a much larger army, and the battles unfold much more ambitious. But in reality, the number of units plus/minus remains the same, just now each such unit does not consist of 5-6 fighters, but draws up a full-fledged detachment of 10 or even 15 foreheads. Even the orcs in the first game did not dream of. And it’s great that now all units are not a handful of soldiers, but really resemble combat detachments. However, at the same time, we were deprived of another unique game chip: even before, the units were small, but they could be united, now all the combat units are purely independent.

Such a cool thing as power – the special abilities that we opened earlier for special glasses, and then used at any time of the battle – in the second part it became even cooler. We also open them when we accumulate a certain number of points, but instead of 12 for each fraction, we now have a total of 45 skills. At the same time, only 16 pieces for good and 20 are available to us in the campaign – for evil, that is, having passed the plot alone, you could not see almost a quarter of all magic buns.

Yes, some of them are repeated, for example, dwarves, people and Mordor orcs have the ability to call a guard tower out of the air – each race has its own tower and it is designated as a separate ability. Or here is the Izenghard flock of raven and the goblin bats – the abilities are kind of different, and the effect is absolutely identical. But there are very few such identical sorceresses, but the overwhelming majority are unique skills, and each fraction has their own, not all of course, some can be repeated, but no one has the same layout, and therefore I personally were interested in playing for each of the races, at least to see what their strengths are and how they work in business.

This is especially true for ultrasound: the villains now, in addition to the draft of the balrog, could now call for the dragon, drop meteorite rain at the enemy’s camp or pour opponents with napalm. The forces of order and rainbow had previously boasted only by the call of the army of the dead, certainly these are clear guys who could demolish everything and everything in their path … But there are more spectacular things such as a flood (just like in the first film, when Arven set a river on the Nazgulov);Earthquake, a solar outbreak, burning the orcs with radiation, and finally not so spectacular, but still useful – the call of the citadel, when a powerful fortress, the same as your main building, appears where you only wish, even right under your nose under your nose.

It is useless to describe each of these actions, and why should we waste time? All the Epic and the power of Middle -earth magic must be worried about personally and experience euphoria when the enemy’s base is ruined under a furious rockfall, when miserable elves burn in a dragon flame or horde of goblins overnight decays into atoms under the rays of a hot sun … or as an army of evil creatures, voluminous bombadils, or as detachmentsDrushes giant cracked!

There were neutral dens of monsters on the maps, which were always very tasty to rob, and in addition, also special buildings that could be captured, but could not be destroyed. Some made it possible to hire units that are non -standard for the faction, for example, the hobbits tavern, while others accelerated the restoration of superhen. In the campaign, this was very useful, because the enemy was also not averse to calling the balrog or in one fell swoop to kill our entire army, and therefore we needed to answer these bastards.

The main campaign, in my opinion, turned out to be quite modest in terms of scale. No beautiful volumetric map of the Middle -earth, no seizures of territories, conquering resources, power points and command … strictly 8 missions for each side of the conflict, well, very few in my opinion, especially taking into account the fact that each story passes from the force of 3 hours in 3 hours. However, it is too early to scold developers. Although I am an avid lover of plot single campaigns, I was by no means played in the “Battle of Middle -earth” for the plot, as well as the games of the Total War series. And where is Total War you ask?

In The Battle for Middle-Earth 2, a separate special game module called War of the Ring, which was localized as “Battle of the Ring”. This regime is interesting in that there they were just given what was deprived of the main campaign – to win the Middle -earth, smoking all the territories under themselves one after another, just like in the good old Rome or Medieval’s.

The developers apparently adored an old hinge called “risk”, the essence of which was also in the capture of the world divided into sectors, by moving the troops and throwing a cube. Electronics simply took the Middle -earth map and applied the rules of the game on it, looked at how it is played at all and decided to cut off the virtual version, which was subsequently stuffed into the main game.

If in the first “Battle of Middle-earth” we hired troops during the Real-Time’s directly, and then simply moved the markers of the army on the map, now the global regime offered much more opportunities. In each of the subject provinces, two buildings can be erected: it is either a citadel or a resource building, barracks or forge. The presence of a particular building will give a certain bonus in the chosen province, and if on its territory there is a clash of your and enemy armies, these buildings will become the starting buildings at the beginning of the battle, which in turn will represent the usual single battle. By the way, as in the games of the Total War series, the outcome of the battle can be solved by the autoboye, if you directly reluctantly manage to personally lead the combat course, though the algorithm of this calculation is even more inadequate than in the first Rome.

Like buildings, in global mode, you can rivet units, and then move them, however, to capture unoccupied or other people’s possessions you need a hero-the local analogue of the Total-War’ov commander, without it, units can only move around the subject territories. There are only three such heroes to us so that there is no too light. All this action is divided into 3 phases: first construction, hiring and moving, then the battle phase, if two troops stepped into the territory of one province, and at the end of the retreat phase, when the loser of the commanders move back to start preparing a revenge.

When playing the Battle of the Ring, it is worth considering several game conventions that may seem illogical. For example, remember how in the first “Battle of Middle -earth” we created a cool army, defeated the enemy, and then if the same army entered the battle in the new territory, then we started with the same units? So here this will not work. All you hired during Real-Time’s disappear, only detachments hired in global mode remain with the hero. And the buildings rebuilt in advance at the start of the battle have completely different properties: the forge in global mode increases only the level of the detachment (and immediately right up to the 5th), and in the battle it works as an ordinary forge, that is, in it we study pumping for units. Also, being on the map of Middle -earth, only one building is being built to hire all available detachments – only one building also appears in the battle, and units in it are hired only those that we usually hire in this particular structure.

In fact, the War of the Ring mode is far from Total War and is not even close to a series of games from Creative Assembly, but it was precisely such associations that caused me this module in childhood. Already at the time when I met The Battle for Middle-Earth 2, I knew Rome: Total War and Medieval II: Total War. And the “battle for the ring”, of course, could not go with them in any comparison in the depths of the global strategic component. There are still absolutely no diplomacy, espionage, intelligence, religion, and the construction and hire of the troops are greatly cut. Nevertheless, I really liked this regime, and I spent quite a few hours in it … True, playing with bots, it was difficult to get a license then … However, as now. And yet the impressions were unforgettable.

In my surprise, this was not the last innovation that the Battle of Middle -earth 2 suggested. Another option, thanks to which I settled in this game for an extra couple of tens of hours, was the creation of my own, the balrog is chose, the hero! Yes, his external customization was extremely scarce, but I could create my own hero-magician, archer, warrior, Hero-Uruk, Hero-Isterling, and even the heroic troll! The game offered 6 classes with 2 or 3 subspecies in each. We could, at our discretion, scatter him points of characteristics between armor, strength, hits, speed and range of vision, and then create his own set of skills that this hero will use in battle. And finally, every such fighter has its own statistics and a bunch of aces that can be opened.

The last thing I would like to say about gameplay is the great role of one little man. Rather, the hobbit … former hobbit. Gollum has now ceased to be a fractional character, now it is a neutral hero who, in battles outside the main campaign, is certainly present on the map, and all he does is snooping here and hides there to protect his charm from our insidious paws. The one who manages to catch this “Snitch” and drag the gold nut to his citadel will receive the most powerful unit in the game. In light races, this is Galadriel, in darkness – none other than Gorthaur himself by his own person.

No matter how I love to play for the dark side in single scenarios, Sauron has always become the main argument.

A couple of words about music: During the passage of the campaign, I often heard compositions from the previous game of the series, and yes, they are still good, but in the second “Battle of Middle -earth” my own music, that is, I did not like the tracks not taken from the film, I personally liked it even more. Very atmospheric melodies directly to match the movie trilogy, which I then listened for a long time separately from the game. Oh, I love this … They also brought a good Russian voice acting in the game, but as in the first “Battle of Middle -earth”, I would advise you to go through the game only with Russian text. Localized voices do not sound as epic as in the original, and somewhat violate the authenticity of the screen action. And KAT-scenes in the English version voiced Hugo Wiwing (which is also agent Smith and Elrond part-time), and this is another plus in favor of the original. In general, you decide.

Not to say that in the part of the visual the game took a big step forward, in the Bfme 2 her predecessor is still very recognized, but the game became brighter, more clearly, replenished with details, the shadows became softer and … Lord Jesus (that is, the era of Iluvatar is an almighty!), what a beautiful sea was in it. The developers decided to bring the battlefield beyond the borders of the land, so in the game it became possible to hire their own fleet and fight at sea. And so that the sea battles look no worse than the land battles, the electronics did very carefully worked on the graphics of water, so that it began to look like natural, I remember in my childhood I could not tear it away from it.

I was happy about how the creators of the game worked on the design of each of the factions: on the external appearance of buildings, units, heroes. The creation of the goblins faction was generally a real test for electronics, not because they needed to come up with special units, to balance goblins with other factions, and elementary due to design. Yes, the creators of the game this time were unleashed much more than in the first part and now they could show more fantasies, but it did not mean that the game could be sculpted by everything that could have taken off to their heads. All the same, the developers in everything had to push them away from the film, but what to do with the Goblin buildings, because the films never lit up anything like that? The problem was solved in a rather tricky way. Designers carefully studied the appearance of Jackson’s goblins, their armor and weapons, and already on the basis of this began to make sketches of future buildings for the new faction. And it is worth paying their due, it turned out quite interesting and very authentic.

Sorry screenshots are not able to convey all the beauty of the water surface … In the movement the sea in the Bfme 2 was incomparable

One of the most impressive visual features of the battle for Middle -earth was how units move, how they fight, how all their movements are honed. The developers used Motion-Capture technology to breathe life into these miniatures … I imagine how the actor had to be allocated from which assets for mountain giants had to be laid out. By the way, for this EA they called the Canadian Kick Boxing champion, and in my opinion he managed, let’s say, to “play” this giant.

In the review of the first part, I complained about the slowness of the Ents, which began to accelerate only under certain conditions (the death of the ally, the type of ominous sawmill, etc.D.). In the second part, all these conditions were eliminated and I have not met problems with the slowness of their units. But here I will make one remark. Not only my trolls and entes accelerated, other units began to move a little faster, sometimes even through the chur, so that their animations lost their smoothness and grace that I stared earlier. Although in the first part, jambs and animations sometimes abruptly broke off in this regard.

You know, I’m looking at the battle for Middle -earth and it seems to me that it came out only yesterday, she is so beautiful, spectacular, spectacular … But then I suddenly remember that she came out as much as 14 years ago and … what kind of old I am.

The Battle of Middle -earth 2 significantly expanded the capabilities of the first part, I wanted to stay in it for a long time, and then, after a few years, to return to it and stay again for a long time. And although it was close to the standards of modern RTS, and as a result, it is deprived of the unique feature, that twist that was inherent in the first part;Although the campaign in it has become too short, light and boring, and the gameplay has not received deep development in the field of tactics, it still remains one of the most memorable, unique, epic and colorful strategies. It’s not a shame to play it now, and I will not be surprised if someone continues to cut on the network in “Battle for the Ring” or in standard battles in 2k20, and even just once again passes the campaign or freezes in the menu of creating a character, and then stuffs Achivka for him.

It was what crashed into memory and remained in it forever, a game that you still remember with warmth, and you think “eh … But once the electronics made really cool games …”. Addition “Under the banner of the king-chain” Or Rise of the Witch-King was a great completion for this short but magnificent series of games. This addon developed The Battle for Middle-Earth to the maximum and sent fans of the game in the game nirvana … But I will tell you about the final of this story another time. Thank you for your attention!