Video Game / The Battle for Middle-earth

We are following the Will of the One, through the dark age and into the storm, and we are following the Will of the One...

The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth, or BFME, is a series of Real-Time Strategy videogames, developed by EA Los Angeles and published by EA Games, which uses the SAGE engine (the same engine that Command & Conquer: Generals uses). Those games use the The Lord of the Rings license, and are heavily inspired by the movies.

There are two games:

• The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth (2004), which closely follows the movies.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II (2006), which shows battles and fights in other places (namely, the so-called War in the North and what happened to the Dwarves and Elves while the movies' events take place).
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II: The Rise of the Witch-King (2006) — an expansion pack for BFMEII — the campaign of which is a centuries-distant prequel to the event of The Lord of the Rings.

The first game features the following factions:

• Playable:
  • Rohan
  • Gondor
  • Isengard
  • Mordor
• Campaign only:
  • Fellowship of the Ring
  • Lórien
  • Ents
  • Goblins of the Moria
  • Harad

BFMEII features the following factions:

• Men
• Elves
• Dwarves
• Goblins
• Isengard
• Mordor
• Angmar (expansion pack only)

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The game provides examples of:

• Action Girl: Éowyn in both games, Arwen and Galadriel in BFMEII. The Hero Editor of BFMEII allows you to create one (Elvish Archer and Rohan Maid).
• Adaptation Dye-Job: In the books, Glorfindel is stated to have blond hair (his name even means Golden-haired). In the game, his hair is silver-white.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • Of the Peter Jackson films, as BFMEII features many elements of the Legendarium not in the movies, showing the battles of Dale and Mirkwood; and featuring Tom Bombadil, Gloin, Dain, and Glorfindel as heroes. The expansion pack has Barrow-Wights as an Angmar reinforcement summon.
  • The second game's plot is an expansion on Tolkien’s various writings about the northern theater of the War of the Ring, while its expansion covers the wars between Angmar and Arnor.
• Adaptational Badass: In the original, Éowyn was in combat only once (but achieving more than most soldiers in Middle-earth, by killing the Witch-King). Here, once unlocked she can go to all the combats her heart cries for. In fact, the evil campaign has neither Théoden nor Éomer surviving the siege of Helm's Deep - only for Éowyn to lead the remaining Rohirrim into the Battle of Pelennor Fields by herself, complete with reciting Théoden's legendary Rousing Speech word for word.
• Adaptational Villainy: Most versions of the Mouth of Sauron do not really accomplish a whole lot in terms of villainy. Here he has attained a larger body count than other versions hope to attain.
• Adaptational Wimp: Lorien and kingdom of Mirkwood, story-wise. In the original Dol-Guldur was taken by just them; in this game it's them plus Rivendell, Lindon, Erebor and Dale. And in Evil campaign taking over Lorien is the very first mission - and it's literally just "horde of goblins rush Lothlorien, easily conquer it and kill Celeborn". There is no logical explanation how is this even possible (in the original Lorien was thrice stormed by Dol-Guldur to absolutely no avail). Gameplay-wise - Elves in general (who are portrayed more like modern generic fantasy stereotype) and specifically Glorfindel. In the original he killed a freaking Balrog with just a sword, returned back from the other side and later made Nazgul themselves scared with just his presence. Here he is just a mid-tier melee hero.
• A.I. Breaker: The first game runs into this problem during story mode. One particular instance is during the Evil Campaign's Battle of Helm's Deep. The computer is fully prepared to fight your army if you attack the Deeping Wall, mimicking the films. Their defense is complete with fully upgraded, high level archers and infantry ready to repel you or inflict maximum casualties. But the Keep is very lightly defended and the AI won't even respond properly if you throw Isengard's full power at it.
• All There in the Manual: Plot and subtext info of both games are rare enough to cause the story to make very little sense if the player didn't read the books or at least watch the Peter Jackson movies.
• Annoying Arrows: Mostly averted. Elven archers with upgraded arrows can kill an enemy with one shot but may take two or three with normal arrows. Even enemies with upgraded armour can withstand, at most, two upgraded Elven arrows. Factions with weaker archer units deal less damage but still kill with no more than maybe five arrows. "Monster" units such as trolls, Mûmakil, Ents, etc. need many shots to kill due to their size and durability.
  • Played straight with Hero units, due to the Heroes' high hitpoints and fast out-of-combat regeneration. Even in the Fellowship of the Ring Boromir was mortally wounded by one arrow, though he took three to the chest before he stopped fighting.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit:
  • In BFME, skirmish and multiplayer modes have an imposed limit for the Good and Evil sides, the Evil one being twice the Good one.
  • During the campaigns of BFME, this limit is gradually increased when controlling specific territories. The maximum is the same as the multiplayer / skirmish one.
  • In BFMEII, the limit is increased with specific buildings. Both sides have the same maximum limit. In the campaigns the maximum limit automatically increases from mission to mission.
• Armored Dragons: Drogoth the Dragon Lord is clad in steel plates, in addition to his already humongous power.
• Arrows on Fire: Upgrade for most of the archers in BFME. In BFMEII, it is still the case for Human and Orc archers, but Elven ones upgrade their arrows with a kind of silver alloy and a magic spell.
  • Also applies to siege units, with most factions lighting their projectiles on fire, goblins and elves (who use creatures to throw them) not having an upgrade at all and Angmar freezing theirs instead.
• Ascended Extra:
  • The Angmar hero Hwaldar was mentioned in passing in the appendices. In the third game, he is a full-fledged hero with his own set of unique abilities and even a backstory.
  • Also applies to his boss Morgomir, who is one of the Nazgul. In the books, the only Nazgul to receive a name was Khamul.
  • In the first game, Goblins units are a minor non-playable faction appearing as enemies in early missions in the Good campaign (in the Moria and Lorien missions), as well as weak non-faction enemies serving as creeps in various maps. In the second game, Goblins are a proper, fully playable faction.
  • In the first game, Elves are a minor non-playable faction appearing in a couple of campaign missions, and Elven archer are a unit of the Rohan faction. In the second game, Elves are a proper, fully playable faction.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Grond, the huge battering ram used by Mordor during the Minas Tirith siege (BFME). It is huge, slow, very resistant, and very powerful. Problem is, when the gate of the city is destroyed, Grond will stay there and block most of the path in and out of the city, providing a kind of unintentional useful device to the defenders. Grond can destroy only the door, it can not destroy the inner buildings, the walls, or even the annoying towers.
  • Heroes in skirmish mode can be this, it takes time to level them up and the cap they consume could have been used to build more units.
  • The Oliphants in the second game. They look big and intimidating, but their actual performance in game does not begin to justify their cost of 1600 resources and 100 population, until a Balance Buff improved them.
  • Prior to getting a Balance Buff, many of the higher end heroes like Gandalf and the Witch-King weren't worth using. They were powerful to be sure, but were so expensive they could only be gained late game, and the threat they posed means that any smart player would focus on the so they don't level up all the way. The Witch King in particular had suffered from a bug where the AOE for his attacks on foot would hit friendly units and enemy units, making it very hard to take advantage of his power as a melee fighter.
• The Berserker: It is one of the Isengard units. One of Gimli's skills is also described like this.
• Big Bad: Sauron for both games, naturally, as he is the Dark Lord whom the free peoples of Middle-earth oppose. He can also be a Villain Protagonist if you play the Evil campaigns.
  • The Rise of the Witch King grants this status to Sauron's lieutenant, the Witch-king of Angmar, as the expansion details his campaign against Arnor.
• Bag of Spilling: Zig-zagged.
  • In both games, hero units keep their experience from mission to mission, as the player retains his general powers. Upgrades have to be researched in each mission.
  • In the BFME campaigns, the player keeps his units with their level, and their upgrades, but must research those upgrade first to apply them to units he just created.
  • In the BFMEII campaigns, the player keeps his heroes but not his army.
  • In the BFMEII "War of the Ring" mode, the player keeps the army he created during the turned-based mode, but not the troops created during the real-time battles.
    • Averted in the expansion, your armies that you build in real-time mode are now persistent.
• Black Knight: Both games features Nazgûl on Fell Beasts (including the Witch-King of Angmar as a more powerful Nazgûl). BFME has Nazgûl on horses, the Mouth of Sauron, and Sauron himself (on foot).
• Black Magic: The Angmar Sorcerer unit is based on this; he's surrounded by a contingent of acolytes which he sacrifices to do things like make rotting corpses fall from the sky and suchlike.
• Blown Across the Room: The Elves enchanted Silverthorn arrows strike like hammer-blows and can send an orc flying hilariously across the battlefield.
• Bow and Sword in Accord: Some heroes (Legolas, Lurtz, Faramir, etc) can switch between sword (or knives for Legolas) and bow. There are also the Gondor rangers, who use daggers when having to defend in melee fighting.
• The Cameo: Why hello, Berethor, Idrial, Morwen and Hadhod! We did not expect to see you here.
• Cannon Fodder: The standard strategy for the Bad factions, especially Mordor.
  • A valid strategy for Goblins in BFMEII is to mass produce cheap, basic Goblin warriors and attack by the hundreds.
• Canon Foreigner:
  • The Goblins in the second game had to do a lot of this, being that the Goblins didn't have a lot of viable options (they're loosely based on the various goblin tribes in the franchise, most of whom are dead by the time of Lord of the Rings). Because of this, you have Gorkil and Drogoth, who are essentially the Great Goblin and Smaug if they didn't die in The Hobbit.
  • Angmar is another major abuser of this, as the wars of Angmar are somewhat vaguely defined in canon, meaning the only named characters they had were the Witch-King and Hwaldar. The game characterizes one of the unnamed Ringwraiths as Morgomir, and also adds in Rogash and Karsh to represent the trolls and corrupted men. Most of Angmar's units also had to be made up wholecloth.
• The Cavalry: Several missions of the Good campaign of BFME consist of surviving until the reinforcements come. Most of them are literal examples, as The Cavalry is the Rohan army.
• Cavalry of the Dead: Summoning them is the ultimate power of the Good general powers, and a level 10 skill of Aragorn. They also intervene during scripted events, led by Aragorn in both cases: the siege of Minas Tirith in BFME (both campaigns), and the siege of Rivendell in BFMEII (end of the Evil campaign). The dead are immune to most weapons or powers. The only ones who can really do damage to them are units with strong area-of-effect attacks such as Sauron, the Witch-king, the Balrog, and flying units like the Eagles and Fell Beasts.
• Character Narrator: Gandalf and Saruman are both playable heroes and the narrators for the good and evil campaign respectively. For the The Rise of the Witch-King, it is Glorfindel, who is playable in the final chapter.
• Combat Aestheticist: The Elves.
• Command & Conquer Economy: You only need one type of resource to pay for anything.
• Competitive Balance: The factions in the second game are more or less well balanced, but it is averted in the first game, imbalanced towards the good side without shame.
  • The good side has multiple options to heal: a ring power, heroes standing idle, Aragorn's first power, fountains in the bases, etc. Healing does not exist in the evil side, except for heroes and trolls that did not grab a tree.
  • Medium-sized good bases have a light wall that forced the evil to bottleneck at the entry. Big bases are full fortifications with huge walls, giant towers and doors that get closed, which can't be accessed without siege weapons. All evil bases have just minor towers and no walls, and it is possible for the good side to beat the whole game without making a single siege weapon.
  • The ring power allows the player to be at one point of the map, and deploy temporary forces somewhere else: elves, Rohirrim, eagles, ents, ghosts, etc. The evil side only has the balrog, which is the most expensive power and can only be used late in the game. Keep in mind that the good factions' are supposed to balanced by their units being stronger and more expensive than the evil factions, these powers counter what is supposed to be the good factions' main weakness.
  • Good side: loads and loads of heroes. Including Gandalf and Legolas, who can take whole armies on their own. Evil side: Saruman or Lurtz for Isengard, none for Mordor (the Nazgul only shows up from time to time). Things are a little better in Skirmish, where Mordor can at least recruit the Nazgul permanently, but they're cripplingly weak to arrows and have limited abilities compared to the Good heroes.
• Composite Character: The Goblins are essentially a mashup of every malicious element in Tolkien that couldn't be easily sequestered under the other two evil factions. There's the expected ones (goblins based on the ones in Moria), followed by fairly reasonable extrapolations (cave trolls, half-trolls, a leader based on the Great Goblin), then things from The Hobbit that could be feasibly sided with goblins (giants, spiders), then things that could plausibly exist in Middle-Earth but have no signs of existing in canon (spider-riding goblin cavalry, an extant race of fire-drakes, one of whom rivals Smaug) and finally Shelob, who definitely canonically existed but had no connection to goblins besides eating them. This is largely an artifact of them being originally designated as "Wild", to the point of being labeled as such in the game's code.
• Cool vs. Awesome: The map editor allows players to come up with all sorts of crazy battle scenarios (Gandalf vs a fifty foot tall Sauron, for example), but there are a few to be found within the games themselves. The second game's final good mission, if you play it carefully, can feature Treebeard vs the Balrog (it is possible to have Treebeard win, but it requires very careful use of healing powers).
• Cool, but Inefficient: Naval combat in the sequel falls into this quite a bit. While it's certainly a change of pace, it's not often that it's actually helpful, due to few maps being designed to make ship combat an important part of fighting. You're almost invariably better off just spending the resources on more soldiers or siege engines.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Rohan had this issue in the first game. Most of their heroes and units were focused on calvary units, making them good at running down enemies and charging the enemy, but really bad at anything else such as defense, and were highly suspicble to lance units. The only other units they had were weak peasants, archers, and the very strong, but expensive elf units. Between that and the lack of any siege equipment, Rohan largely had to rely on calvary charges to win, or else they'd likely die quickly. This likely was why the second game folded them in with Gondor, giving Gondor more powerful calvary in doing so.
• Cutscene:
  • In both games, most of them use the game engine. Some of the BFMEII ones include unmoving pictures from the game converted in a style reminiscent of the John Howe drawings
  • BFME includes a few size-shrinked cutscenes extracted from the movies, displayed in the mini-map window without interrupting the actual gameplay. Some of these require you to recreate moments from the movie to be seen- for example, during the evil campaign, while besieging Helm’s Deep, you must place a bomb on the outside wall and detonate it to trigger a cutscene of an Uruk doing the same.
• Cutscene Power to the Max:
  • During the BFME Amon Hen mission of the Good campaign, there is a cutscene where Legolas is shown using a high level skill that will only be unlocked several missions later.
  • The Good campaign of BFMEII ends with Galadriel destroying Dol Guldur after summoning a storm
• Damage Is Fire: Played straight in BFME (except for the Ents, which really suffer from constant damages when burning), partly averted in BFMEII (where fire attacks cause special damages to buildings).
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: The first game uses a right-click to activate powers; the second game uses a left-click. Why EA thought this change was necessary is anyone's guess.
• David Versus Goliath: A player controlled example in the original game where you control Gandalf in his fight the Balrog. The Balrog is far too powerful for Gandalf to take on in melee, so the best option is to use one of Gandalf's spells to damage the Balrog, then run around until it recharges and use it again.
• Death from Above: Eagles and Nazgûl mounting Fell Beasts in both games. BFMEII adds the dragon Drogoth for Goblins, the ability for the Mordor fortress to hurl a giant volcanic rock, and several general powers (burning sun rays, rain of arrows or burning rocks).
• Defeat Means Playable: In the Evil campaign of BFME, the first imposed Mordor mission requires to conquest several Haradrim settlements, to hire them for the conquest of Middle-Earth, either by buying (with an expensive present) or destroying each of them.
  • In The Rise of the Witch-King, after you've defeated the black Númenoreans with your Troll army, they'll become your elite infantry units.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • In the first game, Rohan is a proper, fully playable faction. In the second game, they no longer exist as one, though some of their units can be found among the roster of other factions (the heroes and the Rohan rider are Human units, the Elven archers and the Ents are Elven units, the peasant archer's asset has been reused as a Dwarve unit).
  • While Isengard remain a proper, fully playable faction in the second game, the faction only appears in a single mission in the Evil campaign (as an enemy).
  • Gondor suffers from this too. While their units are still in the second game (the Human faction mostly consists of them, plus Rohan riders and Rohan heroes), the game is mostly focused on Elves and Dwarves (both in Good and Evil campaigns), and Humans are only playable in the tutorial and multiplayer modes.
• Doomed by Canon: Strangely averted in the Good campaign of BFME. First, the Moria mission ends with Gandalf slaying the Balrog without being separated from the Fellowship. A bonus objective of the Amon Hen mission requires to save Boromir's life. Later, Faramir is not gravely wounded in Osgiliath, Théoden does not die in front of Minas Tirith, and Éowyn is not gravely wounded near of him. This leads to the Battle at the Black Gate having so many heroes present that their selection symbols actually wrap around the screen.
  • In the Appendicies of the Book King Dáin is noted as being killed during the siege of Erebor though in the game he can be revived easily.
  • In a strange case of both sides being Doomed by Canon both Angmar and Arnor are plainly not going to survive the events of the expansion, seeing as neither were around to help or hinder the forces of good in the books.
• The Dreaded:
  • Any hero with the Terrible Fury skill qualifies, but special mention goes to the Fell Beasts. Expect terrified cries of "IT'S A NAZGUL!!!" from your troops whenever one shows up. And with good reason. Heck, this is even one of their passive Special Abilities: an aura of terror that freaks enemies out so bad they fight at half-strength.
  • The orc mines and ladders in Helm's deep also cause scared screams when first deployed.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Hwaldar stops appearing after the sixth mission of the Angmar campaign without any explanation. Granted that the next mission takes place decades later, it is likely that he died from old age.
• Dungeon Crawling: The Moria and Shelob's lair mission of the BFME Good campaign, which both have a secondary objective consisting in finding all the treasures. Especially the Moria's one, which features only hero units.

• Easy Logistics:
  • There is only one resource (money), which generates automatically when the player owns specific buildings. Units don't require food, buildings don't need wood, stone or steel to be built/repaired).
  • Ranged units, defensive towers, and siege units have unlimited ammunition.
  • Buildings are automatically repaired after a while when damaged
• Everybody Lives: In the good campaign of the first game, one of the last missions is the Battle of Minas Tirith. While the battle is a bloodbath in the films and the games, it's actually possible (though difficult) to play through the mission without loosing a single man. How? Have all your units retreat to the upper levels of the city and position them at the very top of both staircases, and build fountains and armories to fully arm and upgrade your soldiers. Build a hidden gate on the upper right part of the lower level, and then build nothing but towers on the remaining lower slots. Thus, whenever Mordor units break in, they'll be peppered with arrows non-stop, including the Nazgûl, and any who break through will be killed by your soldiers as they try to go up the stairs. When Rohan arrives, have them go through the hidden gate to the upper levels. When the army of the dead shows up, use them to kill all the Mordor units to win the mission.
  • There is another route to achieve it. Turns out that an entire army of Gondor Rangers, all upgraded with fire arrows and banners so that battalions automatically replenish lost soldiers, will carve through the forces of Darkness like a hot knife through butter. Even a Nazgul stops being a concern, since they're very weak against fire attacks. By the time the Rohirrim and the Army of the Dead show up, there's not much for them to do except clean-up, which rarely results in a single loss.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: The Rise of the Witch-King expansion's Angmar faction has several ice-based Support Powers (ex "Frozen Ground," their version of beneficial Geo Effects), frost-enchanted arrows, and their superweapon launches a huge iceball at the enemy.
• Evil Overlord: Sauron, and Saruman to a lesser extent. They appear in some specific missions of the campaign. Saruman is a normal hero unit for the Isengard faction, and Sauron can be built in BFMEII multiplayer / skirmish mode if certain condition is meet.
  • The Mouth of Sauron in BFMEII is a possible candidate as well, as he seems to be the master of Dol Guldur and is the main coordinator of Mordor's attacks in the North.
  • The Witch-King in the expansion to BFMEII, he can be used in all missions of the Rise of Angmar campaign and the ultimate goal of the Epilogue is to not quite kill him.
• Evil vs. Evil: The campaign of II features a battle between Isengard and the Goblins, and it's implied that Isengard may have been conquered by Sauron (they aren't present in any capacity in the final battle). One can also replicate these scenarios in the skirmish mode.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: The opening movie of BFME ends with the Eye of Sauron glowing in the middle of the screen, watching the player.
• Game Mod: The game has had a massive resurgence in the modding community in the last few years, spawning several high quality mods, ranging from HD texture changers, to full on fanmade Expansion Pack, such as the famous "Edain" mod, and Age of the Ring, which add dozens of new units, new factions, gameplay mechanics and advance graphical changes.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • Remember that part in Return of the King where the orcs launch severed heads at Minas Tirith as a psychological warfare tactic? This is the Mordor Catapult's special ability in BfME2.
  • Heroes have special modifiers that are designed to replicate events from the films, at least gameplay wise. For example, The Witch King does significantly reduced damage to Eowyn, who in turn gains massive modifiers against him, since she canonically is the one who slays him. Similarly, the Balrog and Gandalf deal significantly more damage to each other compared to any other units since both canonically fight and slew each other.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Some cutscenes mirrors the feel of the story by showing a lot more units on the ground that the player and the artificial intelligence could have trained.
  • In some missions, objectives include a Hero Must Survive one, even if the player base has the building which can resurrect heroes
  • BFMEII multiplayer / skirmish / "War of the Ring" modes have a special gameplay features involving a wandering Gollum carrying the One Ring. He drops it when dying; any unit which steps on the Ring gains it, and if it reach the player's fortress it allows him to train the ultimate hero of the Good / Evil side (Galadriel for the Good, Sauron for the Evil). However, this is the case for all Good and Evil factions, which can lead to some rather incongrous elements—most evidently with Isengard, where Saruman's entire motivation in-story is to not give the ring to Sauron, but rather claim it for himself.
• Giant Flyer: Both games have the Eagles for the Good side, Nazgûl riding Fell Beasts (the Witch-King is a special Nazgûl) for the Evil side. BFMEII features a dragon lord as a hero of the Goblin faction.
• Giant Spider: Shelob in the Cirith Ungol mission of BFME. Goblins in BFMEII have spider-riders. They also can hire Shelob as a hero unit.
• Giant Squid: In BFMEII, one of the Evil general powers is the summoning of the Watcher in the Water.
• Glass Cannon: The Nazgûls on their Fell Beasts and Drogoth in the sequel. They can dish out a lot of damage, especially the latter thanks to his powerful abilities, but to compensate being a immune to melee attacks are very vulnerable to archers.
• Hero Must Survive: Used in a few of levels, though others you could just summon your heroes back at your base if you had enough money.
• Hero of Another Story: The Good campaign of second game actually is the other story to the main plot line of The Lord of the Rings, as it focuses on battles fought in the northern regions of Middle Earth just after the Fellowship left Rivendell.
• Human Resources: One of the Evil factions resource producing buildings is the slaughterhouse, which produce much when fed by your own troops. More, Mordor basic infantry is literally free: one practical way to gain easy money is to build Orc infantry, just to send them to the slaughterhouse. This only applies to the first game as in BFMEII, resource production buildings with the exception of the Evil lumber mill are split by faction, with Isengard getting the furnace, Mordor retaining the slaughterhouse, Goblins getting tunnels, the expansion-exclusive Angmar faction getting mills and are not able to build lumber mills, and the Mordor basic infantry cost money to build.
• Hero Unit: Lots, almost any character from the movies is one, and some from the books.
• Killed Off for Real: Boromir, in the BFME Evil campaign. Amusingly, the other heroes keep coming back in later Evil missions even though you killed them too.
• Last Stand:
  • The Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith missions in the BFME Good campaign are a nearly hopeless siege where the player, as the defender, must resist until The Cavalry (literally: both missions involves reinforcements from Rohan) comes. There is also the last mission of the campaign, where the player must survive against endless waves of Mordor units, until Frodo reaches Mount Doom and tosses the One Ring in it.
  • Rivendell in the sequel's Evil campaign is explicitly the final stand of forces of good in Middle-earth - and said forces throw all but the kitchen sink at the player in order to win.
• Lethal Joke Character: Tom Bombadil, a summonable unit when the player a Good general skill of BFMEII.
• Magic Knight: Gandalf looks like a Squishy Wizard (he only wears a grey/white robe, wields a sword and a staff) but he is an incredibly tough melee fighter with destructive magic spells, being one of the Good heroes with the most hitpoints.
  • Saruman is the evil counterpart.
  • Elrond in the second game, through unlike Gandalf his magic side is about support. That it, until he reach level 7 and get tornado spell.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": Whenever a particularly scary unit like a Giant Flyer shows up, all nearby non-hero enemies freak out, visibly cowering and wailing in terror. This even extends to some hero abilities, which outright paralyzes them with fear. The Cloudbreak ability has this effect on evil forces as well.
• Meaningless Meaningful Words: the heroes have standard slogans they will say when they are selected. Particularly Arwen's: "Their treachery betrays them" makes no sense, but to a lesser extent also Glorfindel's "Something is a-foul" and others.
• The Medic:
  • The Good factions have specific buildings which have this role (like the fountains in BFME)
  • Aragorn, Elrond, and Arwen have a level-1 skill ("athelas") which heals the allied heroes nearby
  • One of the magical powers granted to a Good general allows to heal allied units in a small area.
• Mighty Glacier: Many units fit the "strong but slow" mold—in particular, the most powerful units tend to move like snails.
  • Gimli and the dwarf faction in the sequel as a whole.
  • Ents, especially Treebeard who functions like a stronger Ent. Unsurprisingly, one of his lines is "Don't be hasty!"
  • Trolls, particularly dangerous are Mordor's attack trolls in the sequel.
  • Mumakils, who are by far the strongest non-special unit.
  • The Balrog when not using his brief flight.
  • Sauron is the top of the food chain in this.
• Million Mook March: When the Orcs march toward Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith.
• Narrator All Along: The final chapter of the The Rise of the Witch-King expansion reveals that the narrator for the campaign is Glorfindel.
• No Campaign for the Wicked: Totally averted. BFME and BFMEII both have an "Evil" campaign, and the only campaign of The Rise of the Witch-King is centered on an Evil faction.
• No Canon for the Wicked:
  • Played straight with BFME and BFMEII, averted with The Rise of the Witch-King, being a prequel telling the story of the Witch-King of Angmar.
  • BFMEII and its expansion being Very Loosely Based On A Famous Story, the canon-status of The Rise of the Witch-King is questionable, though.^note Though Angmar's conquest of Arnor is canon in and of itself, several liberties are taken with exactly how the conflict played out.
• No Cure for Evil: The healing spells and buildings are specific to the Good factions, the only healing feature allowed to the Evil factions is the automatic health regeneration shared by heroes. The sole exception is Angmar, who have healing abilities used by their sorcerers.
• Not the Intended Use: Evil factions have an ability on their basic infantry called "Bloodthirsty" which allows them to attack friendly units to gain combat experience. The thing is, the first reward for leveling up a unit is a standard bearer, who allows a unit to regenerate lost members. And killing experienced units gives more combat experience. Meaning that a viable way to powerlevel your basic troops is to get (or buy) a standard bearer then have other units take turns attacking it until they're all max-level. Fridge Brilliance kicks in when you remember that this is exactly how Uruk/Orc society functions in-universe, and that Orc medicine is very effective, which explains why your units keep coming back.
• Plunder: Éomer has a skill which make the player controlling him gain money when he or allied units near him destroy enemy units and buildings. The Isengard Hero Lurtz unlocks the same power at level 6. Evil factions have a general skill which has the same effect, but for every unit of the player.
  • In BFMEII the Wild Men of Dunland have this ability in effect whenever attacking buildings.
• One-Man Army: The Balrog, which easily wipe out whole armies or bases. Sauron is even more extreme: while he has an attack rate and movement rate so slow that he's practically taking his time with each swing, one hit from him will destroy anything a few swings at best, and he takes an absurd amount of damage before dying, and that's without using his abilities. Justified, as they are fallen Maiar.
• Plot Armor: You might think Faramir would be weaker than Boromir, being the younger brother. And Gimli weaker than his father, Glóin. But Faramir and Gimli are more important to the plot of Lord of the Rings, therefore they are higher-level heroes. Averted with Legolas and his father Thranduil; Thranduil is worth more, though Legolas is arguably more useful.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Every Dwarf.
• Rank Scales To Ass Kicking: All across the board, so much so that it's easier to list the exceptions. With the dwarves, Gimli is a stronger fighter than their highest rank hero King Dain, who is more of a support unit. In the Men of the West faction, Aragorn is the strongest melee fighter and has no official rank, his design being based on before he became king of Gondor.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: How most Evil campaign missions end.
• Recycled IN SPACE!: The series is Command & Conquer: Generals in Middle-Earth.
• The Remnant: Near the end of the Good campaign of BFME, some optional missions set is the territory of Rohan have Isengard survivors as enemies. There is also Rohirrim enforcements to the enemy during some missions of the end of the Evil campaign.
• Robo Teching: Zig-Zagged in BFMEII. Your ranged troops originally don't have Homing Boulders, but once you upgrade to Flaming Arrows (or Silverthorn arrows for the Elves), they never miss and shots can be seen to bend to strike targets. Totally explainable with the Elves-Silverthorn arrows are clearly enchanted-but for everyone else, it's clearly for balance reasons.
• RPG Elements:
  • Hero units, their level cap is 10, and they gain skills at specific levels.
  • In BFMEII, players can create custom heroes (specific to each race), and choose to use one of them during multiplayer / skirmish game, and with the "War of the Ring" mode.
  • Most units gain experience and regiments gain the ability to replace fallen comrades, their level cap is 10 in BFME, and 5 in BFMEII. Most units can be upgraded with gear better than their starting weapons / armors.
  • Some buildings can level-up and gain defensive towers.
  • Killing enemies and fulfilling some secondary objectives (in campaigns) grant experience to the general, which buys powers usable on the battlefield.
• "Risk"-Style Map:
  • Campaign map of BFME is like this. Apart from some imposed missions relating key events of the films (Helm's Deep, Isengard siege, Cirith Ungol, etc), the player can choose to conquest the region he wants. This choice influences the reward gained at the ending of the mission (general power point, increasing the Arbitrary Headcount Limit, or increasing the rate of generation of money)
  • The "War of the Ring" mode of BFMEII have two parts: a turn-based mode on a "Risk"-Style Map, and a real time battle when the player have to fight.
• Saved by Canon: The Evil campaign of BFME. Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli are met during the Amon Hen, Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith missions, where they have to be killed each time. Same thing with Faramir in the Southern Ithilien, Osgiliath, and Minas Tirith missions.
  • Then they show up again in the evil campaign in BFMEII in the final mission to once again throw everything they have at you. Literally: Aragorn comes with an army of the dead, Arwen tries that water summoning trick, Legolas has an Entish army, and Gandalf goes on a one-man rampage inside your base.
• Shout-Out: Rogash is a gigantic green monster (well, troll, but you get the idea) that omits words from his sentences and just generally sows chaos whenever he goes into battle. One of his lines makes the reference even more blatant (ROGASH SMAAAAASSSHHH!!!)
• Sickly Green Glow: Silverthorn arrows glow electric blue.
• The Siege: Unsurprisingly, there's a lot of battles with this kind of setup, with the player having to either manage and defend a gigantic fortress or burn it to the ground. The big canon ones get shown off in the first game (Minas Tirith and Helm's Deep), while the sequel shows off the battles of Erebor and Dol Guldur. They can also be set up in Skirmish Mode, by picking certain maps that have a notable fortress and designating a player to control it.
• Siege Engines: In BFMEII, the Elves amusingly have Ents as their siege units.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Boromir and Théoden can be saved, Gandalf doesn't fall in his fight against the Balrog (and becomes Gandalf the White nevertheless) and Frodo doesn't lose his finger.
• Strategic Asset Capture Mechanic: The game inns and Shipwrights that act as mercenary HQ's, outposts that generate passive income, and a Signal Fire that reduces the cooldowns of all your Support Powers. The Mordor, Goblins, and (in the expansion pack) Angmar Evil factions have a Support Power that allows them to convert Creep dens into Mercenary structures.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The Goblin faction's two original heroes stand ins for characters dead by the time the game's events are set. Gorkil is obvious stand in for the Great Goblin and Bolg from the The Hobbit, and Drogoth is an obvious stand in for Smaug.
• Suspiciously Small Army: This is an RTS after all, the games can't handle the number of units that would comprise a real army.
  • Double subverted in the BMFE II. In skirmish mode, you can allow all players to have up to 100,000 command points. But good luck getting that many units without having your computer explode. The game engine isn't designed to have that many units on the map at once. If you're lucky, you might have a few thousand — any more and you'll experience severe lag, regardless of how powerful your rig is.
• Tactical Superweapon Unit: II has the "Ring Heroes," a cross between this and a Hero Unit. They require that the player have The One Ring, about 10,000 Supplies, and a good five minutes. Evil factions get Dark Lord Sauron (a fallen angel) in all his two-ton-mace-swinging, lava-bomb-summoning glory, while Good factions get Storm Queen Galadriel (an elven queen and powerful enchantress), who can conjure tornadoes. It also allows certain Evil races to summon a demon (the Balrog, a Big Red Devil who is constantly on fire and wields a whip and a gigantic sword) or a dragon (a wyrm) through Support Powers. The Rise of the Witch-King expansion pack allows players to field a single squad of Elite Mooks.
• Too Dumb to Live: The two horsemen who foolishly gallop into Isengard yelling at Saruman in the first evil campaign quest.
• Trade Snark: For some unfathomable reason, the default names for the games' installation folders all have trademark signs in them. Even the Start menu and desktop shortcuts have trademark signs in their names.
• Training the Peaceful Villagers: The "Draft" Good general power in BFME gives weapons and light armor to Rohan peasants, turning them from Cannon Fodder to a cheap and relatively effective infantry.
• Tunnel Network: In BFMEII, both the Dwarven faction, and the Goblin faction have resource-mining structures that doubled as entrances to their respective Tunnel Networks.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: The games are RTS with RPG Elements, but there are a few missions of BFME which looks a lot like a kind of cheap Dungeon Crawling game (underground dungeon, only hero units, looking for gold). The Shelob's lair mission is one of them, but features later an other Unexpected Gameplay Change: it begins like a Dungeon Crawling and ends like a standard BFME mission.
• Veteran Unit: See RPG Elements above.
• Victory Pose: The troops troops cheer after every successful minor skirmish. That is to say, if you send one squad of cavalry to run down one squad of orcs, they will stop and cheer once the orcs are dead. Every. Time. Well, at least morale is good. They will also cheer if a hero runs near them. Which makes sense for, say, Aragorn or Théoden, but not quite as much for the hobbits. Cheer Before Frodo?
• Video Game Caring Potential: In the campaign of BFME, and in the "War of the Ring" mode of BFMEII, heroes and units are kept during the whole campaign. They gain experience and some of them can be upgraded.
  • The first half of BFME's good campaign has Eomer ride around Rohan saving peasants from Uruk-hai.^note This has an actual in-game benefit: if you save the peasants from death, they will join your forces. Admittedly, they're some of the weakest units in the army, but also some of the most upgradeable.
• What If?: The Evil campaign in both games can be considered this. The first game shows what would happen if the bad guys won the battles featured in the movie trilogy, while the second game tells the story of the villains slowly taking over the northern regions, ending with the remnants of the free races of Middle Earth making a last stand at Rivendell. During that final mission, Sauron even managed to retrieve the ring from Frodo.
• World of Ham: You could rename this game "Middle-earth: Scenery-chewing Edition" and be completely accurate. Everyone, and we mean EVERYONE, hams it up as if it's going out of style.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The Evil campaign of BFMEII has a mission when the player (commanding a Goblin army) has to conquest the Shire. When it is done, an Isengard army led by Grí­ma Wormtongue build a base there, thank the player for doing the dirty job, and turn against the player. The end of the mission consists in destroying it and killing Grima.
• You Shall Not Pass!: The Black Gate mission, ending of the Good campaign of BFME (see Last Stand above)
• When Trees Attack: The Fangorn, and Isengard missions of BFME (both campaign). Ents (including the Treebeard hero unit) can also be trained as Rohan units in BFME, and as Elven units in BFMEII.
• Zerg Rush: Mostly used by Mordor as they can produce orcs for free and evil factions in general tend to use this tactic since their units are much cheaper. Isengard averts this in the second game, actually relying on powerful and expensive units.
  • Later on in the first game, the enemy faction will do at the beginning of each battle. Since your units will still have their upgrades from previous battles, this tends to be just sad.
  • The sieges of Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith also begin like this, as the enemy attempts to overwhelm you through sheer numbers (you'll have around several hundred units at most when the battles start, while the enemy will likely have over ten thousand).
  • The final mission in the Good campaign of BFME has the player facing an absolutely enormous one. And later on, newly arriving enemies will be automatically level 10.