YMMV / The Battle for Middle-earth

• Best Level Ever: Helm's Deep, Minas Tirith, The Black Gate, Edoras, Isengard (Good side)... The list goes on and on. It's more subjective with the Black Gate & Helm's Deep as they are both well known for being very difficult and frustrating. The sequel follows up with Celduin, Erebor (either side) and Rivendell (Evil side).
• Breather Level:
  • Isengard (Good) which essentially tells the player to use Ents and go all Gaia's Vengeance on Saruman - the only difficulty on the map is giving experience to Merry and Pippin.
  • Near Harad (Evil), since the player is not getting attacked much, and if they decide to bribe the opposition, rather than defeating them by force, the player will end the map with a massive Haradrim army. It mostly serves as both a breather after Helm's Deep, but also to lull the player in a sense of security, since Southern Ithilien comes next to promptly relieve the player of said army and make them think twice about ever playing Mordor again.
  • Most missions where the player has to lay siege to a fortress, mostly due to AI being passive and giving the player all the time in the world to prepare. Isengard (Good) is already mentioned, but Helm's Deep (Evil) is not exactly difficult either and neither is Minas Tirith (Evil), with only Edoras (Evil) proving a challenge. In the sequel, Dol Guldur (Good) is an absolute disappointment for being a final Good level, and while Erebor (Evil) is more of a challenge, it's still surprisingly easy. Rivendell (Evil) averts this as it's both fiendishly difficult and made of awesome, as it should as the final Evil level.
  • Grey Havens (Good), mostly due to the fact that it's easy to dominate the sea and then turn the beach where the enemy army is supposed to make landfall into an inescapable deathtrap.
• Broken Base: Merging units from the first game; In theory, merging an archer unit with a close-combat unit creates a durable unit able to take on all enemies. In practice; the unit merely becomes an abnormally-durable ranged unit with the close-combat section content to sit around and get shot at, only getting involved in combat defensively. There are some advantages to the mechanic; Combined units only have to buy one set of banner/armor upgrades, the entire unit will regenerate even if one part of it gets wiped out and the higher level of experience is granted to the weaker part. There are some specific combinations that are at more worthwile; Mordor benefits from merging it's Orc warriors with archers since the warriors are Cannon Fodder anyway and the archers could use the extra hitpoints while a combined Uruk-hai & Pikemen unit is terrifyingly effective in close combat.
• Complete Monster (sequel's Evil Campaign): The Mouth of Sauron is one of the chief commanders of Sauron's army, who aggressively expands the Dark Lord's influence across Middle-earth. Starting off by gathering an army of goblins and Mountain Giants, the Mouth commands them to destroy the Elven city of Lórien, murdering nearly all the Elves there. Later conquering Mirkwood, annihilating the Elven Kingdom in the process and slaughtering countless Elves and their ruler, the Mouth leads Sauron's army in convincing Drogoth the Dragon Lord to join his cause, murdering hundreds of Dwarves to appease him. Afterward, destroying the city of Dale and laying waste to the Dwarven Kingdom, killing thousands of Men and Dwarves, including Dwarven King Dain, the Mouth assists the other generals of Sauron's army in slaughtering the remaining opposition at Rivendell, killing off the Fellowship of heroes and helping to spread Sauron's tyrannical rule across the world.
• Even Better Sequel: While the first game was certainly good and captured the spirit of the films and their iconic events, it suffered from poor balance and could frequently end up rather barren. The second game added effectively three new factions, balanced them much better, fleshed out Mordor and Isengard much more, and added a campaign mode that showed off the full scale of the War of the Ring, with all its strong points being pushed further in the sequel. Though it does have a few controversial changes, such as altering the build plot system or folding Rohan into the Men of the West, it's rare to find people who don't consider it the better game, and it remains the top choice for modders, still being supported decades on.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Admit it. You wanted to play the evil factions. And who could blame you? The bad guys have some of the coolest stuff in the games — Isengard gets vast legions of Uruk-hai (and the chance to control Saruman); the goblins get to spam hundreds and hundreds of expendable troops, paving the way for their dragons; and Mordor...well, they have legions of orcs, trolls, oliphants, and even the Nazgul.
  • In the second game, you can control Sauron.
  • The Rise of the Witch-King takes this even further, with Angmar being the focus of the expansion. Angmar gets...some undeniably awesome stuff.
• Fridge Brilliance: The Mouth of Sauron spouts off about the enemy battalions he's sent to kill being "traitors." Sounds like Meaningless Meaningful Words? Sauron believes he rules Middle-Earth, and therefore anyone opposing him is a traitor or rebel.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The good factions possessed some blatantly unfair advantages over the evil factions in the original game. The game was supposed to be balanced with the Gondor and Rohan having the better base defenses, and their units were stronger but more expensive. Isengard and Mordor's units were weaker, but less expensive and they had a higher limit on the number of units they could field. To compensate for the lack of base defenses they got better siege weapons. Unfortunately, the good factions had the ability to summon free reinforcements, which they could actually use to exceed their population limit, allowing them to negate their intended weakness. Splitting strong base defenses and siege weapons between the good and evil factions, respectively, turned out to be a mistake since the lack of base defenses made the evil factions far too vulnerable to early game rushes.
  • A particularly nasty cheese tactic for Rohan that makes use of all the above: sticking Théoden on a wall alongside a group of archers, at which he then levels off Leaked Experience until he unlocks Glorious Charge. Not only is this remarkably safe and easy to do, but if Théoden can use his charge during an early rush, this will almost certainly decide the game.
  • In the second game, Ring heroes. They are the strongest units in the game. Sauron has more health than a fortress and attacks that while slow, killed even the strongest units in a few hits at most while possessing a giant area of effect. Galadriel lacks his frontal assault power, but attacked much faster. Both of them possess abilities that can wipe out entire armies. Sauron for example can call down Rain of Fire, a high tier support power, as a regular ability.
  • In the first game, once you've unlocked the Gondor rangers and equipped an army of them with fire arrows and banner carriers, you've essentially won the campaign. They have devastating hit points and speed, meaning they'll eliminate the vast majority of enemies before they even get close to you, and they can bring down a Nazgûl within seconds. Just put a load of them on the walls during the battle at Minas Tirith and watch them destroy every enemy that comes with about a mile of the city. Even after the enemy brings the gate down with Grond you still won't be in any real danger because the rangers will just shoot anything that tries to get in. It gets even better when the Rohirrim show up if they have an army of elf archers. Just station them at the gate and relax until Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli arrive with the army of the dead.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Mordor in the first game. The problem with Mordor is that 90% of their army, heroes included, is countered by archers hard, and Mordor lacks cavalry to counter archers. Just about the only way to counter archers as Mordor is catapults, which are expensive, fragile, unwieldy and get stomped into the ground by cavalry without proper escort. As a cherry on top, Mordor is the only faction that cannot get Forged Blades and Heavy Armor upgrades, which hurts their lategame potential. This was likely meant to play into the idea that Mordor has a large variety of units, but they also don't specialize enough to make playing them fun. Thankfully, their abilities were improved considerably in 2, where horse-mounted Ringwraiths give an equivalent to cavalry (moreso when the expansion added Haradrim Lancers), the Witch-King can be dismounted to reduce his arrow vulnerability, and upgraded Easterlings, Corsairs, and Attack Trolls give the faction an actual lategame.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: The games in this series are generally well received, getting decent scores from critics and fans alike.
• Padding: The end of the first game's campaigns can be quite tedious as it's possible to go directly to the final mission at either the Black Gate (Good) or Minas Tirith (Evil) despite a huge chunk of the map still being available to go around conquering new territories. Taking over all the remaining territories requires the player to basically play 20+ back-to-back maps that are nothing more than normal deathmatches. The only benefit to going around conquering more territories is for additional resource production multiplier bonuses, additional power points, and gaining veterancy levels maxed out on heroes and unit batallions. Not to mention that the fights themselves will be relatively easy as you will be going around conquering territories with armies that continue to become more and more powerful the higher their veterancy levels rise.
• The Scrappy: Though fan opinion of the Canon Foreigner cast is somewhat all over the place, the one character whom nobody seems to care for is Morgomir, of the Rise of the Witch-King expansion. This is largely due to him being a very underwhelming attempt to fill out a member of the Nazgûl, with a weak character design that lacks much of the Nazgûl intimidation factor, an unimpressive skillset that leaves him with no abilities on recruitment, and a pretty annoying voice—all the worse when he has to constantly be compared with his boss. He also has to deal with lore discrepancies, which are admittedly common to Angmar but leave him with the question of why a second Nazgûl was never mentioned to be present in Angmar or why he can (or even would) stay visible despite being a wraith. Multiple fanmods that attempt to retool Angmar include efforts to cut or replace him entirely.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • In the first game, designated build sites. Buildings can only be built on a certain location, and that location has a designated building size. An outpost can have only three buildings, and you cannot upgrade an outpost to a fortress. Furthermore, isolated circles in the woods can only hold an indefensible farm. This was scrapped in the second game for a more traditional base-building.
  • In the second game, Resource buildings worked non-traditionally. Except for the Lumber Mill, they have a circle around them that determines the effectiveness of said building, based on the fraction of open land that is in the circle and not being "farmed" by another resource building. This means that your resource production is based on the territory of "arable land" your base covers and how efficiently you place your buildings. This change is not very well liked due to how this makes bases extremely spread out and vulnerable. The only factions this isn't an issue with is for Dwarves and Goblins because they can use their resource generators to travel distances.
• That One Level:
  • Helm's Deep in the first game's Good campaign. Isengard forces are legion, your leadership effects don't work because the enemy uses Freezing Rain power to disable them, and it is very easy to overlook a ladder somewhere on the wall which can cascade into a complete collapse of your defense. And if the enemy actually manages to blow up the wall you might as well restart right then and there.
  • Fangorn Forrest, the second level of the first game's Evil Campaign. At first, it seems fairly simple: Destroy the Ents, their Entmoot and whatever Elves you find along the way. The issue is that amount of elves is much, much higher than you would expect and it's same with the number of Ents. Every Ent is a walking tank and, even with their weakness to fire, takes way too much time to take down. The actual Entmoot has an absurd amount of health and your almost guaranteed to lose your army the first time you try to take it down. All this wouldn't be nearly as difficult if it weren't for the fact that Isengard's many powerful upgrades, units and siege weapons are denied to the player because this is still very early on in the campaign.
  • Later on in the same campaign is Southern Ithilien. The level is pretty much the Ithilien ambush from the movies, from the point of view of the Haradrim, as the moment the player's army (which usually consists of bribed Haradrim Spearmen and Mumakil from previous level) leaves their base they are ambushed by Faramir and his massive force of Gondor Rangers (who hard counter both Haradrim Spearmen and Mumakil). It is very hard not to lose the entire army at this point and while it's possible to recover from the losses, unless the player takes out the majority of the rangers, their base will soon follow.
  • Cirith Ungol from the same campaign. On paper you'd think it'd be easy as the objective is to kill Frodo and Sam, and when you've recruited Shelob, you imagine that you've got this in the bag. The problem is, Frodo and Sam are being guarded by a seemingly endless wave of Gondorian soldiers, your only heroes are Shelob and Gollum and because you can't make slaughterhouses for resources, all you have to rely on as income for making troops are the various chests located around Shelob's lair. Once they've run out, you've used up all your resources, and your army gets its ass handed to it, you're pretty much screwed. Shelob's also pretty much useless in a fight because while she has extremely high endurance, her attack power is virtually non-existent, and she has no abilities whatsoever, so she's really only good for distracting the enemy while your troops hit them with arrows, and this tactic obviously fails once they're all dead, at which point you can either watch Shelob be killed or just start the level again.
  • Many, many territory battles in both campaigns can become this due to Fake Difficulty from the pre-loaded armies that the AI just has that you may not be ready to match. In relation to the above, in addition to the player being denied the ability to make certain units, you also may not be able to upgrade your existing army at that time.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Removing Rohan as a faction quickly became this to many, since Rohan was a well-liked faction thanks to their focus on strong heroes and cavalry units. With their removal in the sequel many were annoyed that they just had their Cavalry and some of their heroes added to the Gondor faction, turning it into the "Men of the West" faction. Quite a few mods break them back up again.
  • Likewise, the removal of the "build plot" functionality was met with a degree of criticism as it changed how the game was played, but did so in a way that didn't alter the game to accommodate. Now the player has to expand heavily to maintain a base, which creates problems when your resources depend on location.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • The lack of hero units to level-up and play around with for the Evil side is pretty blatant in the first game's campaigns and skirmishes. The Good side gets to play with all 9 heroes of the Fellowship, along with Théoden, Éomer, Éowyn, and Faramir. Meanwhile, the Evil side gets...Saruman and Lurtz, and Mordor doesn't get any heroes in skirmishes at all (except for a single skirmish where you get a single Nazgul, but Isengard gets a Nazgul there too). In normal games, Mordor does get the Witch King and another Nazgul but they are extremely fragile and can get killed by a group of archers in almost no time. In addition they start at level 10 automatically and can't dismount so you don't really get to enjoy using them.
  • Multiple armies in Evil campaign. Since the only time a reinforcements mechanic is used in Evil campaign is in Helm's Deep, the game provides no incentive to use any army other than the one that serves as the player's favorite. Particularly egregious are the two Mordor armies, as they have nothing to differentiate them from one another.
    • Trying to personalize your Mordor armies in the Evil campaign is equally pointless as the way the game is designed, Orcs are both extremely weak and extremely cheap. You're basically expected to throw your troops at the enemy to wear them down and let them slaughtered while you build more.
  • In the sequel, naval combat. The only time ships are needed in the campaign is during Grey Havens mission on either side. Aside from that, ships in campaign are the definition of Cool, but Inefficient, and they are no better in skirmishes (not to mention they only appear on a handful of maps).

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