Recent reviews by Count Thrain

Extremely enjoyable game. It is very much one of those titles that is halfway between a game and a TV show. My play through focused on just the core story and not being too careful with completing everything took me about 26 hours. I would recommend playing the first game in this series before jumping to this one as the story builds from one game to the next.

The optimization and stability of the game is surprisingly poor. I ended up crashing to desktop about 5 times over the course of the game and noticed a little bit of stuttering in a couple of regions, but it was otherwise totally fine, and the boss fight zones all ran very smoothly.

Great game! Combat feels great, character interactions with the world are remarkably smooth (as is probably normal for new games but still feels great!).

I hope Sony maintains a more hands off approach to the game.

An extremely enjoyable game. The levels as of right now are at a very enjoyable to replay. They appear to be semi-random which lets you both face new challenges, but also you can also learn from the prior play through. It currently runs very smoothly on windows, and the developer has been very helpful answering questions and fixing any bugs that crop up.

I have put 62 hours of gameplay in, so far, and have greatly enjoyed this game. The setting of high fantasy is well portrayed, the gameplay (as of right now) is well balanced and enjoyable. I can play and enjoy all of the classes and options (although I've already develeped preferences).

The gameplay, I find, to be much more engaging than a game like Civilization V. You have many more options, and combat is far quicker and graphically more interesting to view. The gameplay for large maps, and multiplayer games, can be fairly slow. It will take a long time to complete large mulitplayer games, and hours at least to complete the small ones. However, the game is well set up so that in every phase of the game there is plenty for you to do and to plan out.

The stories are also quite enjoyable. The default campaigns are decently long with an interesting story and plenty of background on the world that it is taking place in. One drawback however is the main leader of your faction shifts in almost every level, which I find a bit annoying, but at the same time you get to play with much more diversity than you do in say Warcraft 3. My only other dislike about the campaigns is that the DLC campaigns are far shorter than I would prefer, and none of the campaigns are as long and complex as what you will find in Warcraft 3.

That aside the gameplay is fantastic, the options are great, and I would fully recommend this game to anyone who enjoys turn based strategy and/or high-fantasy game settings.

Lord of the Rings Online.. Is it good or bad? I would have to say this is a generally good game. This game is very much your typical mmorpg game. The controls are very simple and easily understood. You spend most of your time in third person observing your character, combat involves locking onto a target, then clicking (or using a hotkey) to trigger the different attacks that are displayed on your action bar. Area attacks do exist, and generally the physics play out reasonably well.

The World: The world is big. There is plenty of places to explore, and the graphical level is pleasing to look at. While it will not match up in freedom of movement, or detail to Skyrim, it is definitely a fun place to view and explore. At first the world will seem pretty small, it is only as you go along that the distances between locations grow to the point where it is unpleasant to travel there by foot. They did, however, do a good job of matching up when distances get long, with when you your character can get a horse. In summary: medium-big world that is aesthetically very pleasing to look at.

Questing: The questing system is very closed. You progress through them, some of them are voiced, most only have one or two lines of voiced dialogue the rest you have to read on your own, you rarely have any options. They do not support the player choosing to be evil or good, or making choices that will have impacts upon how the quest will progress. Despite the limited nature of it, they did a fairly good job of making stories that are interesting, and that fit with the lore of Middle Earth. Summary: lack of player options, but decently entertaining anyhow.

Characters: Character setup is highly limited. You can choose from four races (Dwarf, Elf, Hobbit Man). Then you have a group of Classes;[some titles may be wrong] Guardian, Champion, Burglar, Warden, Rune-Keeper, Hunter, Captain and Lore Master. The races share the classes, with a few classes being disabled for each race (for example no Dwarf Burglars, or Human Rune Keepers. Each class also has three 'paths' that they can follow, those will effect what kinds of weapons they will be good at, and how well your character is at solo play. In general, there is almost no cross-over between classes, and no way to change once you make your character, so research well before you make a choice.

Crafting: There is almost nothing to talk about here. You choose a craft that contains three skills. Some skills let you gather, others let you craft. No single craft you can choose is completely self-reliant, so you will need the help of friends or the general world market to level up all of your skills. Crafted weapons are, however, well worth the effort of getting. They are on average far better than what you can find through loot for your level.

General play: While this game is termed a "role-playing game", there is very little actual role-playing to be found on it. The role-playing servers rarely have players who actually actively try to take on their character's roles. There are some good communities that you can join in with, but if you are on your own do not expect players to be particularly sociable or in character. Outside of role-playing the community is very open and helpful. Questions are typically answered quickly and nicely, and there are almost always players around who are willing to help you out. There are also plenty of player friendly guilds/factions out there to join if you enjoy that kind of play.

tl;dr, generic mmorpg, with its biggest highlight being that it is based in Middle Earth.