And with this game, I've completed all of my PS2 games. It's bittersweet. I don't think I've played any console more than I played PS2. Smackdown and Timesplitters were two of my best friends. Anyway, this has been a long time in the making as I initially purchased this back in 2003. It looks its age. I forget how bad PS2 games looked, even when "upscaled" on the PS3. The good thing is that after an hour or so I didn't really notice.
Though this is called Return of the King, it really starts at the tail end of The Two Towers. There are three paths you can play: The Gandalf path, the Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli path, and the Samwise path. You fight in all the battles from the movie with a few twists and turns. It all leads to the final boss, Gollum. You fight him as Frodo. It's cool in a way because like the movie, everyone is just working so Frodo can finally rid himself of the ring. However, it's a little weird in the fact that you have been leveling up your characters the whole time only to have to use a level 1 Frodo against the final boss. Still, it's a very fitting end to a game that does its source material justice. On a side note, they do a good job of between-level story updates. Gandalf narrates. The footage itself is pretty terrible though due to compression. This game is on a standard dvd after all.
Anyway, my memory of this game was that you just mashed x. I guess that lets me know how bad I was at games back then. There are actually a ton of combos. You purchase them as you earn more XP and you characters become more powerful. In turn, as you do more combos, you earn XP more easily and your character levels up faster. It's a cool system that's actually pretty rewarding considering this is a game based on a movie. The biggest issue with that is that you can't replay missions after beating them until you go through every level once and beat the game. So, in essence, you can't grind in order to level up your player. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that and ignored upgrading my arrows. This bit me in the ass later on making some levels super difficult. In this day and age, they definitely would have allowed replaying the levels. Another weird thing is that co-op and one player games are completely separate. You cannot advance in one player and then move back to co-op. I beat the entire game on one player and would have to start over to do co-op. This, again, isn't something you see today. These are minor complaints in what is otherwise a great game. It's much better than I expected. If you are ever feeling nostalgic for LOTR, this isn't a terrible way to spend 6-10 hours. It's hard, but worth it.
I've beaten a game for five straight weeks. Let's see if I can make it six next week.
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