The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2002)

This game is... just bad. There are glimmers of cool ideas, weighed down by lackluster gameplay, pretty bad graphics, and terrible enemy design.

This is the epitome of what I thought games based on a pre-existing IP would be like, but every other Lord of the Rings game I have played has been amazing...

Game play is pretty much walking around, you have a block and you can mash square. Each character has a ranged attack, but other then Gandalf's they don't seem to do any damage.

You play starting out as Frodo. Exploring Bag End and parts of the Shire is sort of fun, but his section is filled with frustrating sections including hiding from Black Riders or instant dying.

Later you play as Aragorn, who is a bit better at fighting, but fights in pretty boring settings. His maps are also rather bland, with a number of oddly frustrating fights versus random NPCs.

Finally, Gandalf pops up in Moria, and has a wider selection of spells and abilities, but you still tend to default to mashing Square.

Attacks and hit boxes are super unclear, with your character facing the wrong way constantly, or missing attacks after bouncing off surrounding stuff.

After playing up through the majority of Moria (about 3/4ths of the game) I just cant be bothered to play more. I kept chipping away, hoping it would suddenly get better, but it just doesn't.

When the following games on console, The Two Towers and Return of the King are SO much better, and the GBA games are also excellent, there is literally no reason to play this game.

I’m new to this ring-lording business. I read The Hobbit growing up and loved it, but bounced off LoTR after Fellowship left me cold. Earlier this year I picked it up again, and it was like a switch had been flipped: I loved it. I devoured it, appendices and all. I reread The Hobbit, picked up Fonstad’s Atlas of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth to pore over, and have started chipping away at The Silmarillion.

I decided to supplement my reading with my old friend video games, who I've been neglecting of late. I love mediocre video game adaptations of pre-existing material, and here we’re off to a good start.

Developed by WXP (Greg Hastings’ Tournament Paintball Max’d, Xotic, The Daring Game for Girls), Fellowship of the Ring is not an adaptation of Jackson’s film, but is instead based purely on Tolkien’s novel. This is due to the video game rights for the novels and films being split between Vivendi and EA respectively. EA’s first take on Tolkien, their The Two Towers tie-in, would be released one month later.

Fellowship starts well with the player being plopped into Bag End as Frodo. It’s not book accurate, but it still presents a warm, cozy Hobbit hole (not a nasty, dirty, wet hole), complete with Bilbo’s portrait on the wall and plenty of cakes in the kitchen. Upon exiting Bag End you are greeted with Hobbiton, immediately recognizable. It is autumn. The colours are muted, with golden-brown leaves drifting lazily to the ground. The path from Bag End winds down past the party field to the rest of Bagshot Row, taking you over the bridge near the Old Mill towards Bywater. Here you can go to the Green Dragon and chat to the Gaffer, or get chewed out by Lotho. There’s a palpable joy to exploring a world you already love. This joy lasts right up until the moment you have to really start playing it.

The combat is clunky. You lock onto your enemy, but then it’s the familiar rhythm of block-attack-block, making dealing with multiple enemies a nuisance. It’s simple, boring and annoying. There are plenty of projectile-slinging baddies with impeccable aim to further complicate matters. I found myself running past engagements for the first half of the game. You have two inventory slots (weapons and consumables) that you scroll through with the triggers. The consumable slot changes to your most recent pickup, so you’ll be constantly scrolling back to what you want or otherwise using the wrong item.

It also has a protagonist problem. You'll be playing as Frodo up until Bree, switching over to Aragorn until Rivendell, and then playing as Gandalf through most of Moria. This would be fine except it introduces character-specific mechanics for Frodo that have no purpose for the rest of the game. There’s a poorly explained morality system that boils down to “don’t wear the ring!” and “don’t steal from people’s houses!”. This is represented by a black-and-white ‘Purity Meter’. You can increase your purity by completing sidequests and helping others, but these are only in the first level. It feels like it was left over from a previous build where you only played as Frodo. There is also a rudimentary stealth system that you’ll learn by stealing mushrooms from Maggot’s farm (losing purity in the process). This isn’t required after leaving Bree.

Between leaving The Shire and entering Moria the game is bad. Really bad. The Old Forest is a maze of spiders, poisonous mushrooms and fog. The Barrow Downs is an uphill path of relentless, aggressive wolves. In Bree, as Aragorn, you’ll wander down near-identical streets in the dark. The path to Weathertop is a gauntlet of boulder-tossing rock trolls and poisonous bees, culminating in an escort mission. It’s bad, but it’s not all bad. There are moments in between that work. The boss fight against Old Man Willow sucks, and having to collect 12 lilies for Goldberry afterwards is worse, but getting to listen to her and Bombadil sing while Frodo does a poorly animated jig is great. The levels are broken up with camping scenes, during which you’ll regenerate health and can talk to your companions. It’s a great way of conveying the passage of time on your journey.

The game picks up with Moria. Moria feels huge and cavernous with stone elevators, winding stairs and narrow bridges over deep blackness. At this point you’ll be playing as Gandalf, equipped with Glamdring and his staff. He has a magic meter and an assortment of spells. It resembles a simplified linear Zelda dungeon. There are puzzles and some light backtracking. Still, frustrations are present. The 7 spells are individual inventory items that you’ll have to scroll through to equip your sword. There are annoying ranged enemies and spawn points that need to be broken to quell the flood of orcs. Still, there’s a glimmer of the fun, exciting LotR game that could have been with more time and effort.

After Moria there is not much to report. Lothlorien isn’t anything. Just a cutscene, then a room to walk around, and then another cutscene. After that it’s onto the last level along the Anduin River, switching between Frodo and Aragorn to walk down some paths and kill some orcs. The final boss takes place atop Amon Hen where, as Aragorn, you’ll fight a Nazgul riding a Fellbeast. It’s not in the book, but it’s a fun idea. Unfortunately, the fight isn’t fun and then the game is over.

Some other quick positives: you can save anywhere (except boss fights), which is generous and allows you to scum past frustrating sections. A lot of the dialogue is taken verbatim from the novel, which is a nice touch. Also, there are exactly 200 steps at the entrance of Moria, which is unnecessary. I wish they had spent less time drawing lines on a slope to delineate steps and more time on polishing the game. But hey, we’ll always have that time Bombadil busted through some boulders to save me from the Barrow Wight. That was neat.