Nintendo Nes Console: The Lord of the Rings, Volume 1 Review

This game could have been one of the best on SNES, but Interplay screwed it up. Well, lets start with the good. The graphics are REALLY good. Very detailed trees, characters, enemies, etc. The in-game animations are very fluid, almost life-like. Interplay does an excellent job of setting the atmosphere. A light fog covers the Barrow Downs, giving it a very eerie appearance. The music can be chilling at times. Interplay also did a wonderful job of scaling Middle Earth. The world is HUGE. This is one game where you will definitely need a walkthrough, or risk being left behind, as I later was. Now for the downsides to this game. In this game, you control one central character, while the others follow you around (Like Secret of Mana). However, these other characters will sometimes wander off-screen, usually ending up getting themselves killed. I might add that this is a game where one traveler won't survive. You NEED those other party members, especially when you get in a fight with 2 or more orcs. My next complaint is the graphics. Great, like I said before, but pretty soon all screens start to look alike. ESPECIALLY the caves. Speaking of caves, some of the mazes in this game can be really frustrating--even with paper and pencil handy for drawing maps. There are not that many enemies in this game: wolves, bats, snakes, orcs, barrow wights, and dark riders, but that's all I remember after many hours of playing this game. The towns are boring and uninteresting--you can't walk into any building, only see it from the outside. Finally, there are some mandatory quests that you must undertake that were NOT in the books. Your very first one will be to find someone's glasses in a large cave. Overall, this game will seem exciting and interesting at first, but after you play it for a while you'll probably start to see what I mean.

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