2/5 ★ – TheRealness408's review of The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age.

I was originally interested in this game because I heard it was Final Fantasy X with Lord of the Rings skin. In my opinion, this game was more like the weird missing link between Final Fantasy X and XIII. In combat you can see the enemies order and you can swap characters at will. That's where the FFX similarities end and the FFXIII similarities begin. While LotR Third Age's level design isn't totally linear, the majority of quests boil down to follow the path and kill the thing. Occasionally you'll get a quest to open all of the chests in the area, but that's about it. There aren't any towns or shops, and very few NPCs to interact with. That's fine though, Lord of the Rings doesn't stop to explore towns and go shopping. However... The game's story kind of feels like the main character overslept the day Lord of the Rings started and is trying to catch up to Aragorn and co (Frodo is nowhere to be seen). You go through all of the major areas and battles from the 3 movies, but you do it as some random B team who I assume was created foe the game. This is the game's real problem. The gameplay, story, and level design are servicable, but you really want to be playing as the characters you know as you play through the movie instead of some randos with similar characteristics. I would have given this game a 3, but I got a game breaking bug near the end and had to download someone else's save to make progress. Overall, its a fine game, but I dont understand why it is the way it is.