The Battle for Middle-Earth II is not only a significantly better game than the 2004 original, but it's also one of the best classic real-time strategy games released since Relic's Dawn of War and is easily the best use of the Lord of the Rings license of any game to date.

The nuts and bolts of the game aren't too suspiring or all that inventive. A lot of what's there is standard real-time strategy 101: base building, automatic (no peasants required) resource gathering, lots of units, upgrades, and so on. It's not that there is a lack of innovation, but the core game itself is very familiar to experienced real time strategy fans. What makes the game so special is that there is a lot of content, and that content is crafted with expert care along with top shelf production values.

Battle for Middle-Earth II is jam packed with "stuff" from additional playable races and heroes (Tom Bombadil!) to more basic game options. The armies have shifted around a bit compared to the original: Rohan and Gondor now make up simply "The Men of the West" and while Isengard and Mordor are still their own factions, three new ones are on the scene in the Goblins, Elves and Dwarves, each with their own unique retinue and hero units. This is where the fantastic license use shines through. You get most of the classic heroes from both the books and films from Treebeard, Gandalf and Boromir to Sauruman, The Mouth of Sauron, and Wormtongue – the gang is literally all here. The Goblins even get the giant spider Shelob.

The units are ripped right out of the canon as well -- Trolls, Wraiths, the Rohirrim, right down the line. The brilliance of the game is that all six factions feel unique in both their army make up and how they function, which leads to the possibility of various tactics not only depending on who you are playing with but also whom you are facing in battle. The Goblins, who prefer mass wave assaults with litters of cheap units fight a very different battle than the swift yet expensive elves or the plodding yet stone tough dwarves. With so many battle combinations possible, replay value is through the roof and it's just loads of fun to experiment with each of the races to see what makes each tick. There are some balance issues, even with the latest 1.03 patch, but nothing that makes one faction ultra-dominant over the others. It's a huge achievement in real-time strategy design.

In addition to both "good" and "evil" campaigns, each lasting eight missions each, there is a new Risk-like War of the Ring campaign game that allows you to blend global turn-based strategy with real-time battles. It's fairly basic compared to other grand strategy games such as the Total War series but it definitely supplies the game with a grand strategy layer that is lost at times in simple skirmish mode and even in the main campaigns. This mode doesn't feel quite as fleshed out as it should (the interface is clunky and not very attractive) but it does provide additional options after you've exhausted the campaigns and if you want to take part in a meaningful battle rather than just a one-off skirmish.

There are a few hiccups along the way. The enemy AI is underdeveloped, particularly during sea battles. Even on land, you never get the feeling that you're playing against a tough or unpredictable opponent unless you crank up the difficulty which allows the AI to cheat. This is a big reason why the solo campaigns, while fun, aren't nearly as challenging as they should be. It also would be nice to be able to pause and issue orders for those gamers that simply cannot keep up with the game's admittedly quick pace.

This is a game that is best played with friends either on a LAN or via the Internet. Due to the sheer number of options available from the races and units to the heroes and multiple spells and upgrades, each multiplayer game has a personality of its own. Very few real-time games can offer so many different races that play so wildly different and yet keep a uniform game balance pretty much in tact, which makes for wonderful online match ups.

Finally, rarely is it necessary to heap too much praise regarding a game's production values but Battle for Middle-Earth II is the exception. This is a stunningly beautiful game--hands down the best looking mass unit real-time strategy game ever made. On top of the detailed animations, the picturesque setting, and the brilliant artwork, the game also has top of the line voice acting, and the musical score is ripped right out of the Peter Jackson films. The game looks so good that it was a smart move by the designers to minimize the game's interface. It doesn't get in the way of the auditory and visual thrill of battle.

To put it bluntly, rarely does a game based on a movie end up being all that good. Usually they're quick knock-offs looking to cash in on a popular name. This doesn't feel like a knock-off Lord of the Rings game, rather it comes off as a true labor of love from designers that have a very good understanding of the material from which they are working and the finished product is much better because of it. Electronic Arts has crafted one of the best real-time strategy games around and the fact that it has paid so much attention to detail of the Tolkien Lore just adds delicious icing to what is already a finely made piece of cake. - William Abner