LEGO® The Lord of the Rings™

goodd

Tl;dr: Classic, good ol' fun LEGO game, highly recommend it. There are some flaws in the old engine and polish, but it's often in discount, and worth the original pricing. Both for LOTR and LEGO-games fans, this is an excellent title. It is a first attempt at an open world game, and it does an amazing job. You can explore the entirety of Middle Earth, and solve puzzles to collect bricks around every corner of the map. The story is done nicely and still has that sweet and sometimes laugh-out-loud LEGO humor, but also knows when to take the story seriously in moments where it matters. It can be quite emotional where it needs to be, and I'd argue some levels can even be a little scary for kids (e.g. the Shelob level) while always having fun puzzles in the levels themselves. The inventory-mechanic and each character having their own abilities makes every character feel unique and useful. It was also the first LEGO-game that used real voice lines, granted they're from the movies themselves, but it does help to give the story more weight. Now, despite all the praise, this game is also not without its flaws. Mostly within the open world, I discovered many bugs within the game-engine that make some puzzles outright undoable (like platforming), and I've suffered 5 or 6 crashes in my playthrough, despite my pc specs and this being an old game that should run on a modern-day potato (or maybe, because of it). I've spent more time fighting the engine than solving puzzles. Still, taking into account this game is often in discount and not even that expensive in its original pricing, it's worth buying. It was way ahead of its time in understanding what consists of the 'fun' parts of open-world, and despite being dated in engine, it still holds up today. The story itself will give you a good 7~8 hours of fun, and the open world will give you a good 10~20 hours with good reasons to replay the story. Finally, less important, but still; the textures and lighting in this game are excellent, you can tell they really made an effort to make it pretty while keeping a LEGO-charm. 4/5 for me. This is a must-have if you're a fan of LEGO-games or the LOTR-franchise.