While some features, particularly custom hero creation, are unbalanced and create some janky and absurd situations, they’re still notable for the freshness and the ideas that they bring. Not to mention, the excellent license the game is based on, providing grounds for an interesting spin-off story going in parallel with Tolkien’s War of the Ring from the books (though its canonicity is suspect). Though it may be a classic RTS at its core, Battle for Middle-earth shows promise in the ways it deviates and innovates on the genre, specifically with the introduction of hero characters and reliance on troop formations, as well as magic spells and powers. There are a few precious gems out there and just like the franchise’s key MacGuffin, The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-earth 2 may be lost to time forever due to unfortunate circumstances as quite the collector’s item. Puzzlingly, fantasy has been a less common choice for RTSs and finds more of a home in either turn-based strategy or other non-strategy genres. The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-earth 2 Battle for Middle-earth 2 The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-earth 2 However, there are plenty of titles that have experimented with this approach, creating a slew of unique experiences that balk trends and influence the genre in meaningful ways.Īs it’s a broad genre with a venerable history, we’ve put together a list for any strategy beginners and enthusiasts to refer to immerse themselves in real-time strategy gaming, with one entry per RTS franchise. This combination of quick strategic and/or tactical thinking with sleight-of-hand skill, responsiveness, and agility has made this genre especially suited for competitive play. As a result, all game components and systems model the unstoppable march of time and its effect on strategic and tactical decision-making, giving these types of strategy games a sense of dynamism and a greater emphasis on action. There’s an allure and a kind of visceral accuracy to the best real-time strategy games as they capture the unstoppable march of time. The strategy genre has two major sides to its development coin: real-time and turn-based, the former of which is currently the most popular.

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