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03/01 - The Last Campfire
05/01 - Splatoon 3
17/01 - Wolfenstein (2009)
22/01 - Fragments of Euclid
02/02 - Postmouse
08/02 - Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks (Kung Lao)
26/02 - F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch
06/03 - Omensight: The Definitive Edition
09/03 - X-Men Origins: Wolverine
21/03 - Forza Horizon 2 (first finale)
25/03 - Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom
31/03 - Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (World Tour)
01/04 - The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog
16/04 - Knights Contract
20/04 - Strider (2014)
12/05 - The Sword of Etheria
22/05 - Lost Planet 3
26/05 - Disco Elysium
12/06 - Zeno Clash: Ultimate Edition
14/06 - [PROTOTYPE]
18/06 - Zeno Clash II
29/06 - The Wonderful One: After School Hero
07/07 - Dante's Inferno
12/07 - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Shivering Isles
19/07 - Van Helsing
27/07 - Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days
28/08 - Shadow Warrior (2013)
15/09 - Kurohyou: Like a Dragon - New Chapter
24/09 - The Forest Quartet
27/09 - The Last Story
09/10 - Driver: San Francisco
12/10 - Soulstice
20/10 - The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
27/10 - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
31/10 -
Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone
This is actually the third game in my Lord of the Rings marathon, and was even the reason I decided to start it in the first place. This game was developed by Stormfront Studios, who co-developed The Two Towers, and it follows a pretty similar design template to both those EA movie games. This was the first game this team released after putting out Two Towers, but it came out a year after Return of the King, so it’s interesting to see how this game turned out with a longer development time, and with the ability to learn from both EA games in the process.
I also have something of a connection to this game as it was one of the first PS2 games I ever owned. I picked it up having no idea of the LotR connection, or that it was based on D&D in any way. I never got far in to it at the time, but it always stuck in my mind over the years. It only recently became playable on the emulator without major graphical glitches, so I figured it was time to finally play it properly, but I felt like I shouldn’t do just this one game considering its legacy that I had learned about in the years since.
Mechanically this is an improvement over those LotR games in a few key ways. Combos aren’t as numerous, but what you do have are more usable than the majority of what those games offered. Each of them feel like they actually have a purpose and that you can reasonably pull them off in combat. It also replaces the parry with a simple block, which again makes it far more effective. There is also a riposte move you can do after blocking an incoming blow, so there is still some level of timing and skill involved. But it’s far easier than the parry of the previous games, as you can do it on reaction and based on audio cues, rather than trying to predict attacks that happen too quickly and erratically to see.
There’s only three playable characters in this game, but you have access to them at almost any time during play, allowing you to switch to them instantly with the D-pad. Each character has different strengths in different situations, so frequent swapping is rewarded as well. It gives the game a bit more mechanical variety in the moment than the LotR games, which felt like they somewhat forced you to commit to a single character, and left you at a disadvantage in certain levels that you couldn’t do much about. The characters in this game each fall in to one of the usual RPG holy trinity. A tough fighter, a stealthy rouge, and a mage. The fighter is obviously the tanky one, and has the ability to smash objects in the environment; the rouge can jump and use shadows to turn invisible to get one-hit kills on enemies; and the mage has powerful ranged magic attacks and can place down explosive runes as well. So there’s some abilities there that go beyond what the previous games had. The mage especially feels distinct when compared to Gandalf in RotK, who despite ostensibly being a magic user, mostly used melee attacks like everyone else.
You also have something of a gear system as well. You collect gold during levels that you can use to buy better equipment for each character. Beyond better stats some of it gives you specific attributes like elemental damage or enchantment effects. It gives the game a bit more of an RPG feel, and pretentions of being able to build your character in a way you want, but it’s a pretty minor feature. For all the stuff you have access to, most of it doesn’t result in much noticeable effect beyond the higher stats.
The animation quality this time around is still not amazing though. It is perhaps a minor step up from RotK, but still not great. Player attack animations look nice enough, and enemies do occasionally have some good looking moves as well, but they still suffers from the problem of not being particularly clear or well telegraphed. You can still get stun-locked in some situations, although it’s rarer than it used to be. Enemies can tend to swarm the screen and obscure your view sometimes as well. The block being more effective does a lot to paper over the flaws of the animation system though. It still feels a bit stiff to control, but it’s not as bad as what came before. There’s also a few “get off me” super moves that can help out in a pinch as well to give you some breathing room.
In terms of presentation I think RotK has this game beat. This game does use fixed camera angles and tries to present a cinematic and epic adventure, but it doesn’t manage to capture that feeling as well as that game did. There are some moments in the early levels that do impress, but after that it rarely manages to frame the action in a way that feels impressive or stylistically interesting. It doesn’t have many level set piece gimmicks either like RotK had. There’s a few every once in a while, but they tend to be pretty basic. Most of the time you are simply hacking your way through enemies to get to the boss at the end of each level. It might be somewhat unfair to make that comparison though, as RotK obviously had such a rich source material to draw from. They had to create a story mostly from scratch here.
Said story is pretty unimpressive however. It boasts quite a lot of big names both in acting and writing roles, but it didn’t come together to make anything compelling. It was even apparently nominated for several awards, although it won none. The plot has little to it, being basically the old tired standard of stopping the evil forces from taking over the world. There are two main antagonists attempting to do this who are in conflict with one another, but that never ends up resulting in anything interesting at all. There is nothing to them. I know next to nothing about D&D lore, so I don’t know if these two are supposed to be important established characters, but if they were I would imagine anyone hoping they would get to see them deliver on any level here would be very disappointed. The party of playable characters are also pretty dull and shallow. Their entire personalities boil down to their race and character class, in a kind of weirdly deterministic way. As if their vocation is just as much of their inherited identity as their race. Not that it spends even a second interrogating that in any way. But again I have to reluctantly give this game some level of credit for even having an original story and characters, if we’re comparing it directly to the LotR games. Characters do technically talk to each other, and even this plot is admittedly more than just “here’s that bit from the movie”. But that’s an extremely low bar. By any other it doesn’t hold up.
But overall I’d say I had an okay time with this. I enjoyed it maybe about as much as RotK, but with the high and low points in different places. It’s an entertaining thought exercise to place it in this context and compare it as a sort of unofficial third game in this line. And somewhat satisfying to finally tie up a thread I’d left hanging for so many years. This isn’t quite the end of my LotR marathon though. There’s one more game I want to get to. I don’t think I’ll be playing it right away though. It does share some similarities with this trio of games, but it’s nowhere near as closely related, so it doesn’t really fit as neatly together. Plus I just want a bit of a break from this kind of thing for a bit too.
