LotR: Return of the King Review (GBA)

The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
Electronic Arts
Game Boy Advance (SP) / GameCube Uplink

With Return of the King, EA's movie-based Lord of the Rings series continues the adventures of the fellowship and their quest to destroy the One Ring and save Middle-Earth. I had nothing but praise for the Two Towers versions of this series, but don't think that's just because I'm a Tolkien fanatic. I'm a gamer too, and a game has to be entertaining on some level, or I'll just put it down and go play something else. With that in mind, hear me now as I say Return of the King is even better than its predecessor.

The hacking, slashing, and gathering of items in this Middle-Earth dungeon crawl are everything you could ask them to be. The game follows the basic plot of the upcoming movie, and I still can't get enough of the film score translated onto a Game Boy. I just get a kick out of it. The game does not follow the movie plot exactly, but that's just as well, since the movie isn't out yet.

In this version you can play as Gandalf, Gimli, Aragorn, Legolas, Eowyn or Frodo. I chose to play Gandalf for my first run through this game, and improvements were obvious the moment I started. The graphics have gotten a facelift, and you'll see that right away in the reflective mud puddles. Characters are more detailed, too, and the attack animations are smoother and flashier. Gandalf, for example will do a wild spinning move in the heat of battle, and his garments will respond accordingly. The flashing blue arrow that let you know which way to go has been replaced by a stylish compass-style elven brooch leaf in the lower right. Even the character screens are more attractive and streamlined. There was one point where I was on a cliff overlooking an Oliphaunt below (like in the TTT movie), and it really looked like a separate visual area, sort of stereoscopic. You'll have to get to that part to see what I mean, but its pretty advanced stuff for GBA visuals.

Game mechanics have been greatly enhanced, starting with the skill system. There is now a "Quick Skill Select", where specific buttons can be assigned to skills. I chose to play without this, because I was used to using the L button to cycle through active spells from playing TTT. It is a really handy option, though, especially for healing in the middle of battle and not having to reassign your special attack. Further additions include Ranger Hollows for storing items, and Rune Forges, a really neat addition where you can buy rune stones, then carve them on your weapons to boost their stats. Items have additional levels of enhancement now, and different grades (cheap, valuable), which makes loot a lot more interesting.

Though EA's The Two Towers is one of my all-time favorite GBA titles, my review of it contained a few minor criticisms. What's so cool about Return of the King is that they have addressed every one of them and then some. My most minor TTT quibble was that I'd wished there were travelling NPC's instead of the vending forges. Now, there are still unmanned Forges and Shrines, but the Rune Forges do actually have a dwarf attendant. I thought this would be cool, and it is. Sweet.

I have to admit that TTT was a tad easy. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it still does a good job of passing the time and will remain a permanent member of my GBA library. Return of the King, however, is more challenging. Instead of every character starting with a heal ability, kingsfoil (fresh and dried) must be collected. These are stored in your pack and are hot-keyed the same as spells. The can be found as random loot drops, or purchased. My advice to you is, stock up, because you don't start off with the ability to just stand around and keep healing yourself as your mana replenishes. This totally alters the game mechanic. Fruit, lembas, and mushrooms haven't changed, they still drop randomly and must be used on the spot, but they are a lot more important now.

I had also felt that there really wasn't enough to buy with your loot in TTT. This time around, there are innumerable ways to spend your gems. Skill points, stat points, ent draughts, runes, sharpening stones, kingsfoil...oh my! A new storage option has been added, too, in the fitting form of Ranger Hollows. These work like the chests in Resident Evil; store an item here, and you can access it from any Ranger Hollow you come across in the future. This is good for backup weapons (they CAN break) and any high-level gear you'll use later.

As I played through the game, one thought did keep returning to me: this game is tough! I got pretty stuck a couple times, and there were a few parts of the game where if you weren't born with a ranged attack (and Gandalf isn't), you better take a ranged skill or die over and over. If I had to come up with a downside to the game, it would have to be the difficulty (which could be regarded as an upside too, it all depends on your gaming style and skill). You could always set it to "Easy" mode, though, and at this point (level 13, about 6 hours of gameplay), I haven't had to resort to that. I personally prefer a game to be difficult enough that I don't walk through every board on the first try.

NPC members of the Fellowship will occasionally be fighting at your side. This creates a bit of an issue, of course, since they can't just up and die. To solve this potential issue, they don't die at all, and while you may hear them grunting from blows, they don't really seem to get hurt. This of course can be exploited if you just stand around and let your companion do the killing, but you won't make any experience points that way, and ultimately it will stunt your development.

There are some mutiplayer connectivity enhancements available if you have the GameCube version of RotK, another GBA and/or a GameCube and the Game Boy Advance Link cable. Since I do have a cube and the link cable, I gave this a try. The deal is that you can transfer experience points from your Game Boy game to your GameCube game, at a rate of 1000 points per GBA character level achieved. In other words, my level 13 Game Boy character had 12,000 experience points ready to give to my GameCube game. Since my GameCube character was only level 2 at the time, he could only receive 1000 points. It's not a huge amount of experience, but if you do happen to have the GameCube, GBA, linkup cable, and both copies of the game, why not? Every little bit helps, though I think that the ability to connect two GBA's and play co-op mode is probably the more interesting of the two link options.

The Return of the King would have been a perfectly good GBA title if they'd just done the same game as before with the new storyline. Instead, EA updated quite a few features, and didn't mess too much with the stuff that worked just fine in TTT. It may not be the most strategically robust game out there, but it keeps me entertained, and I know I'll be playing this title through more than once.