For a movie tie-in game based on a movie franchise of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Aragorn's Quest does play like a Legend of Zelda style game if you are consider picking it up on either the Wii or PS3 and the option of using the PlayStation Move controller as a controller. However the PSP version does play pretty well for a handheld game and quite possibly one of the most decent Lord of the Rings game we'll probably see on a handheld console.
Taking place 15 years after the War of the Ring Sam is now the mayor of Hobbiton, is preparing a grand party for King Aragorn, who is on his way to Hobbiton along with Arwen. While awaiting the King's arrival Sam re-tells the story of Aragorn's journey during the War of the Ring to his four children instead of telling them their story about Sam and Frodo's adventure on destroying the Ring. I do like how they've managed to get Sean Astin who did play Sam in the movies and tells the story about Aragorn's adventure.
Gameplay consists mostly of sword fighting and archery using the square button for quick attacks and the triangle button for a powerful strike against enemies but if you keep button mashing combo moves with square and triangle you can pull of some attacks and easier to taking out enemies; you can use the X button to block attack from enemies and as for ranged combat on archery you can press circle for a quick shot or if you hold down the circle for a charged shot and use the L trigger to target-lock on enemy you want to aim at a distance. The number of enemies you defeat you'll notice at the bottom of the screen a level and progress bar, the bar will fill up on your progress on missions and side-quests once its filled up you'll level up. So it plays like an RPG hack and slash game but this feels more like a game for beginners who aren't into theses sort of games.
You can use special abilities by holding down the R trigger and using either circle, X, square or triangle to pull a special ability attack or spell. You can unlock more abilities later on as your progress through various missions or side-quests; you can change your abilities including weapons and armour as well. Most of the missions can feel quite repetitive at times but in total there is a good 17 levels to play through from all three movies but completing each level can take you at 20 minutes or more depending on what difficulty you are playing it on. It also includes arena mode where you'll fight wave upon wave of enemies through each round in arena mode.
The visuals look colourful enough trying to get you into the world of Middle-Earth still looks decent enough when it comes to gameplay but you wish that they could have done more of an effort in the PSP version plus hearing some of the music from the movies repeating over and over again after 60 seconds every time. I wouldn't say it’s worth getting at full price either on UMD or on the PSN store would have suggest that its possibly worth renting from someone you now that may have this game on them or at least see it a very cheap price £3/$3, don't get me wrong it’s still a good movie title game but you do feel that you wish they did a bit of a better job on it and not leaving it very short.