Lord of the Rings: Conquest (DS) Review
The beauty of the Nintendo DS is that the development costs are particularly low for the console and the games produced usually sell quite well, regardless of the content. However, for most gamers who have a general idea of what games are about, it means we often get very disappointed when a game developed primarily for consoles is released for the Nintendo DS, sporting less features or even feeling less “complete” than the console versions. Lord of the Rings: Conquest on the Nintendo DS introduces some interesting ideas to the Lord of the Rings mythos, but its terribly simplified and doesnt quite hold a candle to any of the other incarnations available on other platforms. Lord of the Rings: Conquest is split into two story lines. The first many should be familiar with, and follows the storyline of the movies (that is, Frodo Baggins must destroy the “One Ring” in order to save his world from the evil Sauron).
Whats perhaps the biggest selling point of Lord of the Rings: Conquest to fans is that it offers a second storyline, which takes place in an alternate universe in which Frodo failed to destroy the ring and Sauron decided to fight back. Sure, its nothing amazing, but the storyline was basically written back when the first novel was written so you cant really complain. For the most part, EA did a good job at maintaining the story from the novels but there are a few minor nit picks that fans will be able to point out as they play (such as the usage of magic and so forth) but on a whole the game is very competent in its deliverance of the story.
The graphics in Lord of the Rings: Conquest are really disappointing. Usually, when playing, youll have a hard time creating a distinction between the characters who are on your team and the ones who are the enemies. This creates some pretty awkward and embarassing moments when you start slashing vigorously at a friendly unit. In addition, the environments, although (somewhat) accurate to their source material, use different shades of grey and brown and it really makes the world feel dull. Some may argue that this is the look the creators were going for, but I was pretty sure I saw at least SOME green when watching the movies. Its a shame the developers didnt put a little bit more effort into the environments because they really are just bland. As previously said, character models are decent but there is hardly anything to distinguish their classes.
Familiar characters are recognisable though, as the developers have done a good job in recreating their look for the DS too. Finally, the game does run at an alarmingly slow frame rate, despite hardly anything going on during battle, which is really jarring when playing the game. The gameplay in Lord of the Rings: Conquest is bearable but does need a lot of work. Essentially, if youve played Star Wars: Battlefront you may have an idea of what this game is about. Players choose a character class (three in total to choose from, a significantly smaller number than console versions) and battle their way through a map from the franchise in an effort to capture “command points”, which, when captured, act as spawn points. The game is over when you either wipe out the opposing “army” or capture all the command points. Between capturing points, you will do combat with opponent units, and sometimes even larger monsters like trolls, orcs and ogres. Gameplay is from a Gauntlet Legends-style isometric viewpoint, and is largely flexible in what you can do. For example, if you choose a class and you arent quite a fan of that class after some gameplay, you can switch out as soon as you reach a command point.
The game offers both stylus and button control schemes, and also accommodates for left handed players, which is a nice touch. Also, during certain periods, players can assume the roles of the more trademark characters in the series like Aragorn, Sarumen, Gimli, Sauron and a few others too. It mixes things up a bit and gives you a huge advantage in battle, but to be quite honest they dont turn up nearly as often as youd like them to and it kind of feels like a generic action game with Lord of the Rings characters guest starring in that respect, but still its a nice feature. Whats perhaps the biggest disappointment is the amount of characters on screen and the lack of what should be a “battle atmosphere”.
This could probably be attributed to the fact that there are obvious limitations on the DS hardware, but usually a good developer would attempt to balance this fact with some more compelling or at least more suitable gameplay. Unfortunately, that was not done with Lord of the Rings conquest and as such, the games enjoyability really suffers. The soundtrack in Conquest is actually pretty decent, a lot of the pieces sound like pieces youd hear played during the films. In fact, thats probably because Howard Shores score from the film is used in Conquest, and as you could imagine, it sounds great and really helps in boosting your motivation to win battle (no matter how small in scale they may feel).
Those who want to get a little bit of extra mileage out of the game may find themselves disappointed. Besides the two campaigns modes (Good and Evil) there is a versus and co-op mode, as well as a Quick Play mode. None of these modes are particularly different to the main game, and although they DO provide a multiplayer experience (multi card, by the way) you will most probably experience some lag like we did (and we tested the game with three rounds too). There is no WiFi Online Play either, which is disappointing. Still, youll get some good mileage out of the campaign but theres not a whole lot more besides that.
All in all Lord of the Rings Conquest had a lot of potential but never really lived up to it. Although its console cousin boasts a lot of features and some more exciting gameplay, the DS version does not feature nearly as much features and as such suffers because of it. Conquest is a shining example of when something is “better on paper” but totally falls down on execution. Probably best to avoid this one unless youre a huge fan and cant access it on a console.
