Working with other players is a great way to shore up your defenses, and The Lord of the Rings: Conquest features a cooperative campaign mode for two players, both locally and online. However, when you're going it alone, you'll find that not only is friendly AI unhelpful, but the enemy AI also sees you as public enemy number one. You'll have to destroy the lion's share of the enemy forces and be vigilant for attacks that can kill you instantly (such as fire arrows, backstabs, and anything a troll or ent does). You have a limited number of lives, and with so many ways to die, they can go quickly. Restarting the level is mildly tedious, but it can be a blessing in disguise when a mismatch between friendly and enemy spawn rates has you facing an insurmountable tide of foes.It can be frustrating to be a grunt, so it's fortunate that The Lord of the Rings: Conquest offers many ways to make your battlefield presence more formidable. The simplest of these involve mounted weapons such as catapults and ballistas: powerful yet destructible machines of war that can be a blast while they last. You can also mount horses or wargs and ride through enemy ranks, sword a-swinging. Taking control of an ent or a troll lets you grab, smash, and throw enemies to your heart's content, and rampaging around on a massive, lumbering oliphaunt is unwieldy fun. Occasionally throughout the campaign you will also get the chance to play as heroes, such as Gandalf, Aragorn, Sauron, and the balrog. These units are powerful versions of the normal classes with their own unique special attacks that let you wreak all sorts of havoc. There is a pleasing variety of heroes featured throughout the campaigns, enough that there is an entire online mode dedicated to hero play.
Hero Deathmatch is just one of the 16-player online modes available in Conquest. There is also normal Team Deathmatch, as well as Lord of the Rings versions of Capture the Flag and Territories. Everyone chooses a soldier class to begin with, but the many maps feature the aforementioned machines and mounts to spice things up. When a team reaches a certain percentage of points needed for victory, the top-scoring player will be offered the opportunity to spawn as a hero. It can be tough to break a team's momentum at that point, but success really depends on the players' willingness to work together. Playing against human opponents is both more exciting and more frustrating. It's more satisfying to work with human teammates to kill characters with human minds behind them, but those same human minds are more capable of getting the best of you with aggravating combat techniques. This makes online battles legitimately challenging, so you'll want to polish your skills in the campaigns first.
War is messy, and The Lord of the Rings: Conquest isn't a clean gaming experience. Combat can be as exasperating as it is exhilarating, and playing solo can be a trying endeavor. Nevertheless, these pitfalls are somewhat compensated for by two epic campaigns that draw you into a rich world in new and exciting ways. Fans of this world will get the most out of The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, but gamers who are looking to battle in an epic setting and willing to weather some frustrating elements will find plenty of excitement on this journey through Middle-earth.
0 comments
Post a Comment