The begginig of this video when Eowyn just goes on with her speech completely ignoring that a 15 feet tall fire monster just appeared out of nowhere and obliterated her army is fucking hillarious
Just found this vid after downloading the game and playing through. I have the collectors edition of BFME2 and same thing happened where i had to make the options ini file. Among a ton of other issues getting it to run on win10 i just decided to sail the seas to get the BFME collection. Your note about helms deep being too easy, theres a community patch (2.22) that jacks up the difficulty immensely and reworks the campaign to be more lore friendly among other fixes and additions. Im not sure if its only partially done or not but i couldnt select the mordor missions after helms deep as the evil side so i kinda gave up on it and went back to the vanilla version. Fantastic review mate
I unfortunately haven’t played this game so I can’t really speak on it in terms of gameplay and story. My cousins played it on the 360 and they all said it was super good. Hopefully we either get an official remake (not likely) or that fan remake actually gets finished. Hopefully it includes quality of life improvements while remaining true to the original. It’s interesting how games like these will have to stretch the canon in order to make something fully fleshed out. I don’t really have a problem with that as long as they don’t diverge too far and keep the spirit of the original intact. Plus, I don’t care much about Lord of the ingame lore and just enjoy it as this fun story with lots of cool stuff. The reason I’m not a big fan is because it feels generic to me. I’m well aware the reason for that is because basically everything borrows from it, but I just can’t shake the feeling. My personal favorite fantasy universe is Elder Scrolls because of the truly insane lore and metaphysics. Although, I’m well aware that the continuity is a complete dumpster fire because Bethesda doesn’t care about their own lore and just want to make a fun sandbox. The lore community come up with all these terrible excuses for the bad writing. This great channel called Zaric Zhakaron talks about a lot of that stuff explaining why things in the games (real life and in universe) are the way they are. Apparently the lore community absolutely hate him because he’ll constantly make fun of them and point out flaws in the writing. They think he’s hating on the games, but he’s gone on record numerous times saying he gets far more enjoyment out of critically analyzing/dissecting a work of fiction and has praised various aspects of the games/lore. Definitely one of my favorite channels. The buildings being tied to special nodes makes me think of Halo Wars (not sure about the release date for either of those). I thought that Halo Wars 1/2 were really fun. Too bad the third game was cancelled (Eckartsladder has a video that’s like 9 minutes long talking about the cancelled game going over the different concept art and speculation for how it could have worked), and 343 dropped support for 2. Same goes for Microsoft shutting Ensemble down. What is your opinion on those games if you’ve played them? In terms of rts games they’re really bare bones, but work great as introductory titles. Plus, I’m more casual when it comes to these types of games. This game made me think of this Zelda mod for the game 0ad (open source game so it’s free) called Hyrule Conquest. Originally it started out as a mod for Total War Medieval 2 (haven’t played that game) called Hyrule Total War. Then they guy making it UndyingNephalim (he changed his CZcams name to IceCreamMan for whatever reason. It’s weird because his other stuff still has the same name) jumped ship and moved everything to 0ad because that engine allowed him to do all kinds of stuff that wasn’t possible in the previous one (you can still find the old mod on Moddb, but the guy hasn’t updated it. So it might not work with newer updates to the game. There’s a mod called Hyrule Total War: Classic Ultimate that has been updated the thing and making lots of small tweaks here and there that have built up overtime). Originally the gameplay was similar to Age of Empires with the most factions having variations on that system, but the guys working on it have shifted the Battle For Middle Earth style gameplay because it streamlined development of ai, buildings, and other stuff like that. It’s really cool. You should check it out. Hopefully he updates the thing soon. Great video. Good luck on your other stuff.
1) I hope we do get the fan remake but I wouldn't be surprised if the Tolkien estate catches wind of it and C&D the project. EA won't remake it because WB games owns the video games rights and I doubt either will make a deal with each other for a remake. 2) I do enjoy games that follow the story but put a twist like the boromir thing (what if he actually survived) totally cool with that if the devs adjust the gameplay with that and still feels possible in the grand story of things. 3)I also laugh at the lore of elder scrolls, i enjoy the random stuff that doesn't make much sense or sudden changes in the lore because they are making stuff up as they make each game. 4) I only played the first halo wars and thought it was alright, at the time I bought the halo wars limited edition because you got to play the mythic map pack a month early on halo 3. I agree it's great to introduce players into that style of RTS. However I think it was for limitations, the maps are small and I think computers and even consoles at the time couldn't handle large armies. So they had to limit bases and where you could build, I'm sure balance was also a problem, so limiting where you could build made it easier. It explains why BFME 2 lets you build anywhere and I think the maps were bigger. 5) I love the total war games, i'll definitely check it out. I've been meaning to do a retrospective on at least 1 total war game. 6) thanks for the discussion :)
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. It would be a tragedy if they took it down. It’s always so weird when a company takes legal action against ROMs for abandonware or a fan project for something they’re no longer supporting. Nintendo is definitely the worst offender of this (copyright law seriously NEEDS a major reworking). I know that THQ Nordic recently got the rites to make LOTR games and there’s speculation about them remaking those games because they’ve been remaking a bunch of other properties they own. But we have no idea if they’re actually planning on doing that, and we won’t know for a couple of years. Yeah. Elder Scrolls lore is a complete dumpster fire when you critically analyze it. It’s really sad because it’s such an amazing setting with so much room for storytelling potential. But it’s completely bogged down by the fact that Bethesda is terrible at writing, don’t care about their own lore, and just use it as a backdrop for you to explore these amazing sandboxes with all kinds of fun things to do (they’ve done a phenomenal job with that last one). It’s so funny watching the lore community twist themselves into knots with stuff like C0DA/open lore interpretations where there’s no true canon, just different levels of good ideas (even though most ideas are absolutely atrocious😂). They’ll use the unreliable narrator to explain why all this awesome stuff in the various lore books doesn’t match up with what we actually see in the games. And how it’s one of those worlds where thought can shape reality(with stuff like how the magic works, different interpretations of the gods shaping how they act in different regions it would be fine but it NEEDS to have some clear rules that can’t change. I remember Zaric was talking about the Warp in the West that made all of Daggerfall’s endings canon saying it’s a literary device called the grand reset that’s fine if it’s only ever used like once or twice). I had this really long winded rant prepared but I decided against it because this is a rabbit hole that never ends so I’m just going to leave it there. The two main guys who made Daggerfall back in the day made a company called Once Lost Games and started working on this game called Wayward Realms. It’s going to be like a modernized Daggerfall where they’re taking advantage of new technology to do all kinds of stuff that wasn’t possible before. It’s lore is like early Elder Scrolls lore where it was community driven (hopefully they actually have someone to gatekeep it so it doesn’t derail into the train wreck that is Elder Scrolls lore. When I say gatekeep I’m not talking about harassing someone out of the community or anything dumb/cancerous like that. What I mean is have a group of competent people who determine what is and isn’t valid to be part of the lore/story). So far they haven’t really showed anything in terms of gameplay and it seems like they’re just setting the stage for the game. Hopefully it turns out good, but this guy who worked with them called Indigo Gaming left because he said they’re stuck in the past and don’t seem to be open to features/mechanics that are mandatory now. Personally think it’s a coin toss as to whether or not this will be good. A lot of Halo Wars 1’s problems can be chocked up to it’s rocky development that resulted in Ensemble being shut down. One of the big problems comes from the fact that half of the team was working on a Halo MMO that got shut down (personally happy that never saw the light of day). Theres conflicting information as to whether or not Microsoft wanted it and later changed their minds, or if Ensemble was wasting resources on something they didn’t even have permission to make. Since we’re not entirely sure it’s probably somewhere in the middle. One thing we can be 100% sure about is the fact that Bungie HATED everything to do the the expanded universe and tried to get it shut down several times. It’s truly hilarious how the reason they didn’t like the expanded universe was because “that wasn’t their Halo, it was Microsoft’s Halo” because years later they’d jump ship to sign on with Activision so they could make Destiny (if Micrososft have purchased Activision sooner Bungie would have returned to their stranglehold). I unfortunately haven’t played the Total War games. I have a cousin who’s really big into them and he says they’re great. I really should play them. Thanks. I enjoyed this as well.
Awesome review!
This is my favorite LOTR game.
Thanks for all of your hard work.
Greetings from Chile!
The begginig of this video when Eowyn just goes on with her speech completely ignoring that a 15 feet tall fire monster just appeared out of nowhere and obliterated her army is fucking hillarious
um Eowyn you rohan horse army has be a destroyed by balrog.😀
Just found this vid after downloading the game and playing through. I have the collectors edition of BFME2 and same thing happened where i had to make the options ini file. Among a ton of other issues getting it to run on win10 i just decided to sail the seas to get the BFME collection.
Your note about helms deep being too easy, theres a community patch (2.22) that jacks up the difficulty immensely and reworks the campaign to be more lore friendly among other fixes and additions. Im not sure if its only partially done or not but i couldnt select the mordor missions after helms deep as the evil side so i kinda gave up on it and went back to the vanilla version.
Fantastic review mate
I unfortunately haven’t played this game so I can’t really speak on it in terms of gameplay and story. My cousins played it on the 360 and they all said it was super good. Hopefully we either get an official remake (not likely) or that fan remake actually gets finished. Hopefully it includes quality of life improvements while remaining true to the original.
It’s interesting how games like these will have to stretch the canon in order to make something fully fleshed out. I don’t really have a problem with that as long as they don’t diverge too far and keep the spirit of the original intact. Plus, I don’t care much about Lord of the ingame lore and just enjoy it as this fun story with lots of cool stuff. The reason I’m not a big fan is because it feels generic to me. I’m well aware the reason for that is because basically everything borrows from it, but I just can’t shake the feeling. My personal favorite fantasy universe is Elder Scrolls because of the truly insane lore and metaphysics. Although, I’m well aware that the continuity is a complete dumpster fire because Bethesda doesn’t care about their own lore and just want to make a fun sandbox. The lore community come up with all these terrible excuses for the bad writing. This great channel called Zaric Zhakaron talks about a lot of that stuff explaining why things in the games (real life and in universe) are the way they are. Apparently the lore community absolutely hate him because he’ll constantly make fun of them and point out flaws in the writing. They think he’s hating on the games, but he’s gone on record numerous times saying he gets far more enjoyment out of critically analyzing/dissecting a work of fiction and has praised various aspects of the games/lore. Definitely one of my favorite channels.
The buildings being tied to special nodes makes me think of Halo Wars (not sure about the release date for either of those). I thought that Halo Wars 1/2 were really fun. Too bad the third game was cancelled (Eckartsladder has a video that’s like 9 minutes long talking about the cancelled game going over the different concept art and speculation for how it could have worked), and 343 dropped support for 2. Same goes for Microsoft shutting Ensemble down. What is your opinion on those games if you’ve played them? In terms of rts games they’re really bare bones, but work great as introductory titles. Plus, I’m more casual when it comes to these types of games.
This game made me think of this Zelda mod for the game 0ad (open source game so it’s free) called Hyrule Conquest. Originally it started out as a mod for Total War Medieval 2 (haven’t played that game) called Hyrule Total War. Then they guy making it UndyingNephalim (he changed his CZcams name to IceCreamMan for whatever reason. It’s weird because his other stuff still has the same name) jumped ship and moved everything to 0ad because that engine allowed him to do all kinds of stuff that wasn’t possible in the previous one (you can still find the old mod on Moddb, but the guy hasn’t updated it. So it might not work with newer updates to the game. There’s a mod called Hyrule Total War: Classic Ultimate that has been updated the thing and making lots of small tweaks here and there that have built up overtime). Originally the gameplay was similar to Age of Empires with the most factions having variations on that system, but the guys working on it have shifted the Battle For Middle Earth style gameplay because it streamlined development of ai, buildings, and other stuff like that. It’s really cool. You should check it out. Hopefully he updates the thing soon.
Great video. Good luck on your other stuff.
1) I hope we do get the fan remake but I wouldn't be surprised if the Tolkien estate catches wind of it and C&D the project. EA won't remake it because WB games owns the video games rights and I doubt either will make a deal with each other for a remake.
2) I do enjoy games that follow the story but put a twist like the boromir thing (what if he actually survived) totally cool with that if the devs adjust the gameplay with that and still feels possible in the grand story of things.
3)I also laugh at the lore of elder scrolls, i enjoy the random stuff that doesn't make much sense or sudden changes in the lore because they are making stuff up as they make each game.
4) I only played the first halo wars and thought it was alright, at the time I bought the halo wars limited edition because you got to play the mythic map pack a month early on halo 3. I agree it's great to introduce players into that style of RTS. However I think it was for limitations, the maps are small and I think computers and even consoles at the time couldn't handle large armies. So they had to limit bases and where you could build, I'm sure balance was also a problem, so limiting where you could build made it easier. It explains why BFME 2 lets you build anywhere and I think the maps were bigger.
5) I love the total war games, i'll definitely check it out. I've been meaning to do a retrospective on at least 1 total war game.
6) thanks for the discussion :)
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. It would be a tragedy if they took it down. It’s always so weird when a company takes legal action against ROMs for abandonware or a fan project for something they’re no longer supporting. Nintendo is definitely the worst offender of this (copyright law seriously NEEDS a major reworking).
I know that THQ Nordic recently got the rites to make LOTR games and there’s speculation about them remaking those games because they’ve been remaking a bunch of other properties they own. But we have no idea if they’re actually planning on doing that, and we won’t know for a couple of years.
Yeah. Elder Scrolls lore is a complete dumpster fire when you critically analyze it. It’s really sad because it’s such an amazing setting with so much room for storytelling potential. But it’s completely bogged down by the fact that Bethesda is terrible at writing, don’t care about their own lore, and just use it as a backdrop for you to explore these amazing sandboxes with all kinds of fun things to do (they’ve done a phenomenal job with that last one). It’s so funny watching the lore community twist themselves into knots with stuff like C0DA/open lore interpretations where there’s no true canon, just different levels of good ideas (even though most ideas are absolutely atrocious😂). They’ll use the unreliable narrator to explain why all this awesome stuff in the various lore books doesn’t match up with what we actually see in the games. And how it’s one of those worlds where thought can shape reality(with stuff like how the magic works, different interpretations of the gods shaping how they act in different regions it would be fine but it NEEDS to have some clear rules that can’t change. I remember Zaric was talking about the Warp in the West that made all of Daggerfall’s endings canon saying it’s a literary device called the grand reset that’s fine if it’s only ever used like once or twice). I had this really long winded rant prepared but I decided against it because this is a rabbit hole that never ends so I’m just going to leave it there.
The two main guys who made Daggerfall back in the day made a company called Once Lost Games and started working on this game called Wayward Realms. It’s going to be like a modernized Daggerfall where they’re taking advantage of new technology to do all kinds of stuff that wasn’t possible before. It’s lore is like early Elder Scrolls lore where it was community driven (hopefully they actually have someone to gatekeep it so it doesn’t derail into the train wreck that is Elder Scrolls lore. When I say gatekeep I’m not talking about harassing someone out of the community or anything dumb/cancerous like that. What I mean is have a group of competent people who determine what is and isn’t valid to be part of the lore/story). So far they haven’t really showed anything in terms of gameplay and it seems like they’re just setting the stage for the game. Hopefully it turns out good, but this guy who worked with them called Indigo Gaming left because he said they’re stuck in the past and don’t seem to be open to features/mechanics that are mandatory now. Personally think it’s a coin toss as to whether or not this will be good.
A lot of Halo Wars 1’s problems can be chocked up to it’s rocky development that resulted in Ensemble being shut down. One of the big problems comes from the fact that half of the team was working on a Halo MMO that got shut down (personally happy that never saw the light of day). Theres conflicting information as to whether or not Microsoft wanted it and later changed their minds, or if Ensemble was wasting resources on something they didn’t even have permission to make. Since we’re not entirely sure it’s probably somewhere in the middle. One thing we can be 100% sure about is the fact that Bungie HATED everything to do the the expanded universe and tried to get it shut down several times. It’s truly hilarious how the reason they didn’t like the expanded universe was because “that wasn’t their Halo, it was Microsoft’s Halo” because years later they’d jump ship to sign on with Activision so they could make Destiny (if Micrososft have purchased Activision sooner Bungie would have returned to their stranglehold).
I unfortunately haven’t played the Total War games. I have a cousin who’s really big into them and he says they’re great. I really should play them.
Thanks. I enjoyed this as well.
Pure nostalgia ✅