The Third Age

Had a really good weekend, about which more later. But what consumed me last night and today was The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, which I finally managed to find a GameCube copy of. Anyone who's not a fan of RPGs can move along.

Plot: The game is basically a Tolkiensque version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: you lead a sort of second-string fellowship, with members of the various races, that follows in the footsteps of the real Fellowship. Sometimes you're clearing the way for them; sometimes you're cleaning up their mess; from Moria to the Pelennor Fields. It lets the game follow the plot of the book, in a rough sort of way, but still introduce new locations and perspectives.

Chapters: Each chapter (which correlate to geographic areas) has a series of objectives you have to finish; complete them all to move on to the next chapter. If you missed a chest or want to level up, you can come back to any chapter you've finished.

Battles: As many sources have pointed out, it's precisely the battle system that Final Fantasy X had. That's pretty much it. There are two indicators on the world map, which indicate when you're getting close to a mandatory/scripted battle (blue) or an optional/random battle (red), the latter of which are limited to certain parts of a chapter.

Items: Gained only from chests, enemy drops, or later in the game, from crafting. No stores. The chests are absolutely everywhere and not marked on the map, so you have to keep your eyes open. Gives the game a bit of a... Krondor-esque feel, for lack of a better comparison.

Skills: Each character has a number of skill trees; learning one in a level opens up the next level, so you can skip ahead and then come back later. Each time you use any skill in a given tree in battle, you earn one skill point. Earn enough to learn a skill and move on to the next. Oddly, skills tend to take 30, 50, even 100 skill points to learn. So you find yourself using nothing but skill attacks. Plain old attacks are available, but I don't think I've used one the entire game.

Modes: Easy, Medium, and Hard. They can be changed at any time, and live up to their names. Why don't more games do this?

Evil Mode: After you've finished a chapter, you can go back and play the key battles again - this time, as the enemy. Pretty difficult, as you're trying to beat down the same party that kicked your ass before. If you manage it, you get some really nice (and otherwise unavailable) weapons/armor/etc. All in all, a rather brilliant idea. It's unbelivevably satisfying to be the Balrog and beat Gandalf to a pulp.

Overall: A lot of fun, if you have any love whatsoever for Tolkien, RPGs, or preferrably both. At minimum, worth a rental, as you'll know within the first few hours whether you want to finish it. Me, I'm pretty satisfied.