Reviewed: December 18, 2005
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Electronic Arts

Developer
Amaze Entertainment

Released: November 8, 2005
Genre: Strategy
Players: 1-4
ESRB: Teen

7
7
7
8
7.1

Supported Features

The Lord of the Rings: Tactics is their latest installment in this timeless fantasy franchise, this time a turn-based strategy game on the PSP. And while the designers did an admirable job of making the most out of the licensed characters, events, and other specifics, Tactics often boils down to nothing more than a spiffy version of chess.

If for no other reason than name alone gamers will instantly want to compare this game to Final Fantasy Tactics, and in many ways Tactics cannot compare. The biggest drawback is the overall lack of presentation, story, and motivation for playing. You pick your characters and jump into a battlefield to win the fight and move on to the next. It’s like every significant battle has been lifted from the movies and books and presented as a standalone challenge.

But if you can put all that presentation fluff aside you might just find a pretty compelling strategy game lurking behind the menus and movie clips. You are presented with a nicely rendered map of Middle Earth where you can move your army from point to point in a rather linear fashion.

The game offers two campaigns, once again allowing you to play as either The Fellowship or the Host of Mordor. Each side offers more than 20 missions including several optional quests for bonus items and additional experience.

The game packs in the units including all of the heroes and villains from the story. They all have your standard list of attributes including strength, speed, dexterity, etc. that can be tweaked in RPG fashion as you progress through the story. Sadly, neither the game nor the presentation makes much distinction between a “hero” and a normal unit.

Gameplay unfolds on a variety of grid-overlaid battlefields that recreate all of the famous locations from the movies and books. Your army will start on one side of the map and the enemy on the other and the battles take place as a dual-phase turn.

In phase one you move your characters, positioning them into various strategic locations to attack, defend, or support somebody in their own team. The tutorial will teach you how to use elevated terrain to your advantage, especially for ranged attacks like archers and rock-throwing Hobbits.

Of course the trick here is that the enemy is also moving their units around as well so you might not always end up where you think. If any unit crosses paths with an enemy unit melee will ensue at that spot. This adds a whole new level of strategy since any unit can effectively block another regardless of size or strength. So not only do you have to plan your own strategy, but anticipate what the enemy might be doing on their next turn.

Assuming that units make it to their destination, phase two is combat where you can pick your weapon and your target and let the animated carnage ensue. Balance and unit strength is balanced almost to the point of being illogical. We all know that Sauron is one mighty bad ass but in this game he starts off more like Harry Potter, at least until you can build up his abilities. And if you ever dreamed of playing as the Balrog, you might want to save those demonic visions for another game. In Tactics, the sword-wielding fire-spitting demon is pretty tame.

The upgrade system is a slow and tedious one. Rewards are few and money is scarce throughout the entire game, and when you do finally get to go shopping you’ll probably need to buy health and power-ups rather than new spells and weapon upgrades. It certainly keeps you thinking, but it also saps a lot of the visceral Third Age fun from the game.

One aspect that certainly takes away from the user-participation factor is the fact that your units are limited to their own specific armor and weapons. Sure, these can be upgraded, both in skill shops and through in-game rewards for completing missions, but it takes away from the overall customization of your characters and the larger group.

Skills are admittedly one of the cooler elements of Tactics, both conceptually and visually, but most characters only have a few specific skills while sharing the rest of the library with the entire party. This makes each specialty unit just a bit less special, but you can at least relish those few awesome spells and skills they do possess.

Tactics is perfectly suited for multiplayer and EA gives us a nice skirmish mode where up to four players can battle for supremacy using all the classic characters and fight in all the famous locations. Just pick your map and set a time limit then prepare to fight. Of course preparing for the fight is one of the more interesting elements since you must first build your army by spending a set amount of points on your various units. Do you spend a lot for a high level hero or use those points to buy a group of less-powerful support troops. Choices like these guarantee that no two battles will be entirely even-matched and that is where “tactics” will come into play.

After stumbling through the tutorial I was looking forward to my first real story-battle but guess what…it was a night battle at Weathertop. That is where I put my PSP to sleep and resumed playing later in the darkness of my living room and bedroom, and that is the only place you can play this game…in total darkness. The screenshots don’t lie. Even the outdoor levels during the day are dark and moody.

But once you and your PSP are in an environment suitable for actually seeing these graphics you’ll find that Tactics offers some really great character models and animation as well as some of the best special effects around. The environments aren’t much to talk about, but they do manage to faithfully recreate the locations.

Sound effects are pretty standard with all of the typical battle sounds. Things get a bit more impressive when you start letting loose with the high-level spells and watching people get zapped.

Tactics is easily one of those games that is more fun played with friends than fighting a computer, and with the unique point system used to create your own armies, no two games will ever be alike.

I can think of a dozen things that would have made this game better, or at least more attractive to the casual gamer, but for those who love the Lord of the Rings and need a solid strategy fix on their PSP, this will easily fill that need for a few months to come.