Status scoopings Jul 30, 2024
Preliminary: Ehhhh this looks kinda neat, and has a cool Look for 1990, but it's one of those adventure RPGs that seems to expect you to flip through its manual for texts/paragraphs instead of just including that info in the game... and yet they didn't remember to include info on how to save in the manual lol smh. Plus, the …
Preliminary: Ehhhh this looks kinda neat, and has a cool Look for 1990, but it's one of those adventure RPGs that seems to expect you to flip through its manual for texts/paragraphs instead of just including that info in the game... and yet they didn't remember to include info on how to save in the manual lol smh. Plus, the controls seem convoluted, as CRPGs like to do imo.I've also read it's very difficult with petty things like not keeping an empty bottle and the original version is "very buggy." I suppose I will get the 1.1 version, tho that's not really staying true to this project, and I will give it a somewhat earnest playtest because I ironically happen to be listening through the LOTR audiobooks right now (on RoTK rn).
Smh this better be worth this 30 min installation process. Many people praise the game but others say it's very unfun and too hard. And all the playthroughs I see, they die pretty early. It is very open world, full of sidequests, doesn't seem to follow the plotline much, is beautiful, but has that CRPG control factor that I have a bad feeling will bog it down--it's full of positives and negatives! Ah!
Lol! This movie it's starting with! Interesting. It's like an art movie unless I did something wrong with the settings lol 
Wow beautiful time lapse for the 17 years the ring hung out in the Shire. Ok I will stop screenshotting and just watch. Too bad there don't seem to be uploads of these movies online, probly cuz that's the difference between a few minutes install and a 30 min install haha. 
I love the automap but yea the controls will be the biggest issue. Just let me walk up to Sam and Recruit him, too many steps heh.
Day 1
Welp, I brought Anson's dog and brought it back to him and now I got a Shovel. Cool. Not sure how any of this has to do with the LotR plotline lol. The collision masks of walls are quite terrible, so I'm worried about the combat which I saw every playthrough ppl die early in. But so far I'm liking the absurd number of meaningless sidequests and adventure elements. The controls and Look and Sound are very advanced compared to the 80s DOS games I played, but still tedious going through menus just to do something simple like give the Baggins lady the Bagend Key. (I recently listened to the audiobook for Fellowship so it's funny noticing the parts that actually are from the book :-p). I really like that you can use the mouse to guide your characters, tho again it's quite clunky and faulty, but it makes me excited for the advancements of the 90s. We shall see if I finish this one, gonna take a break and have grad class tonight, but it at least deserves recognition for its huge advancements compared to 80s DOS games. That being said, I believe this is an enhanced CD version, and can't find any info on when that was released, but whatevs. the original versions were bugged to being unbeatable so.
Argh I lost my file. DOS games sure are difficult to emulate. But it's fine I think it's worth pushing through, I wasn't far in and I like the game, ... but we shall see... The collision masks and movement/"action" elements so far are quite atrocious.
Welp nevermind nope. It is just too clunky and the menus are just so additional and sluggish for no reason. Just let me buy from the shop... There's no reason to convolute things with more commands and menus. Perhaps part of this is that I am super tired because my husband got in a car accident (everyone is physically okay) during my usual gaming time so I'm squeezing a bit in now. Butttt also nope. It's time to not suck too much time into games like this anymore, and about an hour just to do some basic stuff and run into a bunch of walls despite not being next to them, is enough for me. Moving on.
Neat ideas and overall quite good, just a bit too dated and CRPG-y for my taste.
