BFMEII is an RTS developed and published by Electronic Arts. It is based on the fantasy novels The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien and the film trilogy. The game is the sequel of The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth. The Windows version of the game was released on March 2, 2006 and the Xbox 360 version was released on July 5, 2006. A Windows expansion pack for the game was released on November 28, 2006, called The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II: The Rise of the Witch-king, which features a new faction known as Angmar and new units.
The story of BFMEII is divided into Good and Evil Campaigns. The Good Campaign focuses on Glorfindel, an Elf who is alerted to a planned attack on the Elven sanctuary of Rivendell. With help from the Dwarves and other Good forces, the Elves attempt to eliminate Sauron and his army to restore peace in Middle-earth. In the Evil Campaign, Sauron sends the Mouth of Sauron and the Nazgûl to muster wild Goblins. With his army, Sauron moves forward with his plan to destroy the remaining Good forces in the North.
The most important building of this game is the fort. You need a fort to train builders and revive or summon heroes. You're able to upgrade your fort and build defensive structures attached to it, like catapult towers and walls.
Besides the campaign, there is also a war of the ring mode. In this tactical mode, Middle-earth is divided into territories; players can construct buildings to produce troops only in a claimed territory. During each turn, the player can move their armies into neutral and enemy territories to take control of them. While neutral territories are conquered by simply entering them, enemy territories must be wrested from the other player by defeating them in a real time battle. Troops can be garrisoned in conquered territories to defend against enemy attacks. When the player chooses to attack another territory, or one of their territories is being invaded by an enemy, they can either simulate the match and let the computer determine the outcome (sometimes it's better to do that, because you will lose anyway, and when skipping it you won't lose much of your precious time), or play the match by commanding the units in real time. The winner of the skirmish gains the territory, and all surviving units gain experience points. To win the game, you must either control the enemy's capital territory, or take over a given number of territories in Middle-earth. The only problem is that these battles take way to much time. Most of the time the enemy has more units when starting a battle, so it's guaranteed that it'll take longer to defeat your enemy and also much harder.
Just like in all RTS's you'll need resources to create buildings and training units. Each faction has their own unique building that provides resources. For example, the Elves need some sort of a tree (which can be build) to gather resources, while the Humans gather resources from farms. There is only one resource type, which is a bit strange, since you make buildings and units out of it. How is it possible to harvest building material out of a farm? I don't know, but in this game it is possible.
When playing this game for the first time, the graphics of the game are on a very low setting. At first, I didn't know that so I almost had to puke. Luckily, the graphics can be adjusted, and when playing it on the highest graphics possible it is bearable to sit through. The only problem is that the battles itself aren't that entertaining. With most RTS's, like Age of Empires, I get a wonderful feeling when starting a match, and I don't mind that it will take several hours to complete the level. But with this game I just want to complete the game as fast as possible and never look back again.
In conclusion: I don't like this game, it's fun to play for a couple of hours, but then it gets annoying. But I can understand why some LOTR fans like this game. The game is bearable when you play it on very high graphics.
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