First LOTR game on the PSP...
User Rating: 6.5 | The Lord of the Rings: Tactics PSP
In Tactics you'll replay the biggest and the more interesting battles from the film. The cut scanes are all taken from the film and are most of the times well done and in a good sequence. This is a turn base game that is not as "tactical" as the developer (EA games) intended it to be. Some levels are just too easy, you can also do lots of damage to a specific enemy with a specific power attack that is purcjased with XP at the in game store. You can upgrade your characters: armor, attack, movments speed, and tons of other interesting feautures. Every battle gives you lots of XP and you can spend them in an interesting way. You can also buy health posions or other "magical" things that can change the course of the batte; this is what broke the game for me. When your allies are about to die and you would need to replay the level, all of a sudden you just take a posion that increase your armor by 75% or a health posion that restores all your health... This is a cheep way to win battles that broke the game....
It also gets repetittive after some time in the game. You'll need to learn all the attacks and master the fun spells to make a good progress in the game. The music is the soundtrack from the movies, but many tracks are overused making the sound repettitive. Graphics are good for a psp game and you may experience some lag or bugs like a dissapearing orc before he falls to the ground, but this bugs are overshadowed by the atmosphere and the game itself. The level designs are not good at all, and are linear. Sometimes you feel they have ported the same level, just with refabrished surface...
Overall the game is fun to play and the LOTR theme gives it a good value. It have a low replay value though because of the repettitive level designs.
