Lord of the Rings-The Two Towers

In order to attract an audience I'm going to talk about games I play. One game that I recently picked up again is Lord of the Pings: The Two Towers for the GBA.

I've owned this game for quite some time, but never really played it. I first played it when I was 10 and I viewed the game as crazy complex and I hated it. I played it a bit more around the age of 12, and my views were the same, just not as liberal. Since then the game has spent a lonely life never leaving it's box until the recent power outage when the only games I could play were portables, yet it seemed I had beaten every one I owned. That is until I saw in that box the dusty cartridge of LotR:tTT.
So that's the introduction. The actual game itself is an action RPG (probably the main reason I didn't like it as a kid). It's pretty straightforward, simple, but with just enough depth for you to pay attention to what's going on. There's 5 playable characters that are played individually: Aragorn, Gandalf, Frodo, Legolas, and Eowun. Aragorn is the swordsman he has abilities that a swordsman would have in most RPG's; high attack, high HP, low defence, low magic. Gandalf is obviously the wizard; low attack, below average HP, average defence, and magics through the roof. Frodo I haven't played much, but he seems to be the character who is just average, everything about him is just average, never the best, or worst. Legolas is the character I've used the most, he is the archer which has obvious advantages; attack is deficient, but you can make him a fairly strong character, decent HP and defence, and despite being an elf he's a bit lacking in the magic department. Eowun is the character made for the players who want more of a challenge, she's not horrible, but she's easily the worst character. However, Eowun has a totally unique storyline that is completely different from the other characters.
in which case you just have to be facing the right direction). You can also press A to unleash various "magic" attacks, which I will talk about later. Your character's attack power is random, but will be in between the minimum and maximum attack power set. This means if your attack power is 5-10 every time you attack the damage you deal will be somewhere in between those numbers. Now a slightly annoying part of the game is that there virtually is no defence, for you or the enemy. Instead there is accuracy and dodge. The way this works is that you will have a set accuracy (e.g. 30%), and set dodge (e.g. 25%). This means that every time you attack there is a 60% chance it will just not work at all, now an the flip side there is a 25% chance that you won't get hit. It just seems like the game is stacked slightly against you (after all 35% is the average accuracy), however if you upgrade your accuracy enough, or use Now the game itself has you play the one character you chose. The main goal is to get to the end of the level, but in between the beginning and the end is lots of monsters and occasional puzzles. The puzzles are however of a very basic type were you just find a switch to open a door and now you can continue. So it would seem that most of the game involves killing the said monsters, which is exactly the case, the only thing you will do in the game is kill the monsters. The way you do that is you press the B button when your next to an enemy (unless your LegolasLegolas it's not too big of a problem.
Now as with most RPG's there's a leveling system. If you kill a monster you will get a set amount of experience points. Get enough exp. and you will level up; not very different. However leveling up will actually do nothing to your character. You must go to the menu screen and do the leveling yourself. What happens is that every time you level up you get 5 attribute points that you use to pick which of your 5 attributes you would like to upgrade. Your attributes are; Strength (raises min. and max. attack power), Accuracy (raises chance of hitting), Defence (raises dodge), Courage (greatly increases spirit points [MP] and slightly increases HP), and Health (greatly increases HP). Now since you get to choose which attributes you upgrade and how much, you can customize your character to your playing style. The customization gets even greater when you look into the "magic" that your character unlocks. On another screen in your menu there's spirit powers. Upon every level up, in addition to the attribute points you also get one spirit point (not to be confused with spirit points which are the MP of the game) which you put into any power that you choose. Now every character has a different set of powers, although some powers are very similar. The powers are separated into to categories, passive and active, as you might guess passive powers are done automatically or all the time, and active powers need to be activated. This adds more customization and re playability to the game since your character might be totally different the next time you play.
Now comes the part about armor and weapons. On a third (and don't worry it's the last one) screen in your menu is the backpack screen. This screen shows the armor and weapons you have equipped as well as the eight other objects you have in your inventory. This is where an important game mechanic comes into play, when you kill a monster there is a chance it will drop an item. While I'm not sure it seems that the level your on and the type of enemy it is determines what it can drop. Sometimes it's gems (currency), sometimes it's nothing, and sometimes it will drop food or herbs(you don't carry those you use them there and then or not at all), and lastly they can drop equipment. This is the main way to upgrade your character and the most effective. When a monster drops something you pick it up by pressing R, gems don't take up space (their use will come later), food and herbs as I said are not carried, so you inventory is solely for equipment. Every character is capable of wearing eight pieces of equipment, but only one in each category. I won't bother going into detail of the categories this time you just have to figure it out yourself, but it is once again something that adds depth.
The last thing I will mention before my summary is the "cities". Instead of cities the game uses, forges, wells, and shrines. This is where the gems become important since this is the only place they are used. to enter these places you merely walk next to them and then press R. Once in you will see what your holding and what is in these "stores". At all of these places you can sell what your holding for a low price and the only other thing is that they all allow you to buy different things. Forges allow you to buy a random piece of equipment (could be good or bad) as well as whetstones. Whetstones are a piece of equipment found only in the forges that give your character an instant upgrade in attack power. Wells allow you to buy Ent water, which will restore all your life if you die with no penalties (except taking up one of your precious slots in the inventory). Shrines, lastly, let you buy points for upgrading attributes and powers, however, they aren't cheap, but they eventually become the only way to upgrade so it's important.
That is basically the game in a very large nutshell. It's what I've been playing recently and my rating would have to be 6.8/10. While the game is excellent I would never be able to recommend it to anyone other than serous RPGers since the game lacks any explanations and expects you to already know everything about the game (except for what the powers do). this is the sole reason I kept it back from the 7's after all the graphics are terrific for the GBA and the sound is fairly nice, but while I hate games that treat you like an idiot and tell you every little thing, this game hardly tells you anything and gets a little confusing for me at times. However if you are a serous RPGer and you really like Lord of the Rings, you will probably love this game.

So this was my first video game review on my blog, I intend to do more reviews like this and not just with video games (although that will be the bulk of it). I might review books I read in school as well as the ones I read for pleasure. Of course I might occasionally throw a movie in there. Now if you read all of this I thank you and feel free to tell me what you think, I'm always open to criticism of the constructive kind.