The Lord of the Rings is the most popular fantasy story in the world, but unfortunately not every video game about it could also convince. These seven titles, however, definitely emerge as winners from the War of the Rings.
Over 60 years have passed since Tolkien’s series of novels The Lord of the Rings saw the light of day, unceremoniously shaping an entire genre forever. The fantastic journey of the companions, the epochal battles and the unique world – this work offers numerous good templates for video games.
So it’s no surprise that The Lord of the Rings has been around for at least 30 years, even digitally. However, during this time we have not only experienced glory and splendour, but also licensed ghouls like The Lord of the Rings: The Conquest. But that is not the point here. We dedicate this list to the 7 best PC games that exist for Tolkien and his groundbreaking fantasy world.
Why now? With Gollum by Deadelic, a whole new game set in Middle-earth is coming soon. Find out whether the title has the potential to land on this list after release in our big plus preview:
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum – Finally a sign of life! But one that raises questions
Table of Contents
1. The Lord of the Rings Online
Release:24 April 2007 (main game)
Genre:Online role-playing game
Platforms:PC
Where to buyFree via Steam or the official website available for download
This is what makes the game so good
No other Tolkien licensed title has expanded on the settings from the original with such attention to detail and insanely good stories, breathing new life into them time and time again. At the same time, The Lord of the Rings Online, which was released during the online role-playing game boom of the mid-2000s, is not all that extraordinary from a gameplay perspective. Even the Tolkien MMO can’t avoid the sometimes very dull collection quests, the grind for experience points, min-maxing and so on.
But that is not what makes it so special and unique. No other game since then has given us the feeling of being able to travel Middle-earth in its entirety and experience events from the books first-hand as well as write an entire story of our own.
This is how Middle Earth comes to life:
The sprawling, virtual version of Middle-earth offers something new even to film connoisseurs. This is because the developers have acquired the book licence. At the same time, this also gives them more artistic freedom and more scope for their own ideas. The game credibly fits the visually never before explored regions such as Angmar, the Ettenmoors or the Bleak Forest into the already familiar areas that we explore in the course of the epic main quest.
In terms of time, everything revolves around the well-known War of the Ring. However, we are not slavishly bound to the events from the film and novel series, but also experience the effects of Sauron’s campaign against the West in lesser-known regions. In the meantime, the game has long since passed the end of the actual original and continues to write the epic independently – and just taking a look is easier on the wallet than ever:
2 The Battle for Middle Earth 2
Release:2 March 2006
Genre:Real-time strategy
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360
Where to buy:Digital not at all & on Amazon only used
What makes the game so good
The predecessor to The Battle for Middle-earth 2 is already a little tactical gem. However, in its main campaign it stuck a little too closely to the original and hardly included any ideas of its own. Moreover, it only let us go into battle for Middle-earth with humans and orcs. The second part shifts the theatre of war to the little-known north of Middle-earth and puts us in the role of the elvish hero Glorfindel, thanks to whom we can also order around shrews and dwarves in addition to the humans of Middle-earth.
The balancing of the units is much better than in the first part, the locations more interesting and the battles more challenging, in short: the game is simply much more fun and its console implementation is also very successful, which is far from being the case with all strategy games.
This is how Middle Earth comes to life:
The Battle for Middle-earth 2 relies almost exclusively on Peter Jackson’s interpretation of the motion pictures for its depiction of Middle-earth. The designs come directly from the cinema screen and even the legendary heroes of the War of the Ring, from Aragorn to Samwise, have their original voice actors in German. The flair is rounded off by the epoch-making soundtrack, which is organically complemented by no less fantastic musical interludes.
At the same time, The Battle for Middle Earth 2 also manages to adapt those regions to the visual language of the films that we never got to see in them. Everything feels like it has been cast from a single mould and those who mourn the film battles in Helm’s Deep or Minas Tirith in the campaign can at least relive them in free play or multiplayer.
3 The Return of the King
Release:3 November 2003
Genre: Hack&Slash
Platforms: PC, PS2, Xbox
Where to buy? Digitally not at all & on Amazon only used
What makes the game so good
Sending masses of units across sprawling battlefields at the touch of a button is one thing. But throwing yourself into the middle of the fray and neatly slicing orcs in half with well-placed sword strokes has a completely different quality. Especially when a game acknowledges successful combos with “Perfect!” or “Excellent!” as satisfyingly as The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Here it’s really all about slashing your way through masses of enemies in the best Dynasty Warriors style and replaying the most important battles of the last two Lord of the Rings films in third-person view as Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Sam or Frodo. The game mechanics themselves are quite sophisticated for such an action-focused title. Not only do we get to unlock new skills for our heroes after each mission and perform a wide variety of attacks, but we also get to interact with the environment.
This is how Middle Earth comes to life:
The Return of the King is a very classic film adaptation. This means that we really relive, piece by piece, the events from the blockbuster movie. So all we see of Middle Earth are the places we already know from the films. However, these have been recreated with so much love and set in such exciting scenes that we really feel as if we are part of the epic finale of the film trilogy.
As with The Battle for Middle-earth 2, the realisation benefits additionally from the grandiose soundtrack of the Jackson films and can boast the original voice actors. All in all, it’s a lot of fun, but it doesn’t add any new facets to Middle-earth.
4. Middle-earth: Shadow of War
Release: 10 October 2017
Genre: Action-Adventure
Platforms: PC, PS4 & Xbox One
Where to buy (On Steam)
This is what makes the game so good:
In its original incarnation, Shadow of War, the second part of Monolith’s interpretation of the Tolkien saga, should have ceded its place to its excellent predecessor. For its fun and complex nemesis system was a pleasant change from the experience point grind and the eternal Ubisoft formula that too often put its stamp on the game.
Shadow of War then made the adventures of the unequal duo of Talion the Ranger and Celebrimbor the Ringwright’s Ghost bigger, more complex and more varied. At the same time, however, it also introduced, as was quite common for a while, an unspeakable and inappropriate lootbox system. However, this was discarded less than a year after its release due to increasing pressure from the player community.
This is how Middle-earth comes to life:
The first title in this list, Shadow of War is not set during the actual War of the Ring. Although we experience the beginnings, i.e. how Sauron slowly starts to get his machinery rolling, we are still tens of years away from Frodo’s departure from the Shire. This leaves room for creative freedom. The developers take this freedom and occasionally even overshoot the mark a little.
Even as a Tolkien purist, however, one cannot always completely escape the fascination of waging one’s own war in Mordor. We besiege castles, cross swords with the Witch-King of Angmar and experience first-hand how the Ring sucks the life out of us. Visually, Shadow of War sticks as closely as possible to the vision of the feature films, but draws much more on Tolkien’s continuing texts for its background.
5. Third Age: Total War
Release: December 6, 2013.
Genre: Strategy
Platforms: PC
Where to buy? Free on Mod DB & (The main game is on Steam)
This is what makes the game so good:
Yes, we cheated a little here. Third Age: Total War isn’t actually a standalone game, but a huge Total Conversion for Medieval 2. But as a Lord of the Rings fan, you just shouldn’t close your mind to this project. After all, anyone who has ever played an epic battle in any Total War longs to see that concept applied to Middle-earth.
This is exactly what Third Age wants you to do. You can choose from numerous nations that you may have never even heard of. Even elves and dwarves are not simply fobbed off as a single faction here, but are divided into different groups. You control the fate of your faction, build cities and, above all, fight real-time battles that have not yet been topped in scale by any full-fledged Lord of the Rings game.
This is how Middle Earth comes to life:
Theoretically, the entire continent is open to you in Third Age. If you want, you can even lead your army to the farthest corners of Mordor, leaving Mount Doom far behind. Or you can take on the vast lands of the Mumakil-riding Haradrim. Third Age’s strategy map really does cover it all.
For the designs of the individual units, the modders are primarily guided by the films, but for lesser-known troops, cities and castles they also draw on all kinds of descriptions and drawings that have ever sprung from Tolkien’s mind or otherwise.
6. The Hobbit
Release: 1982.
Genre: Textadventure
Platforms: ZX Spectrum, Commdore 64 and other retro computers
Where to buy? Hard to get by now, if at all
What makes the game so good
This game is so old we don’t even have a lead image ready. The Hobbit is a game from 1982 and unsurprisingly it shows – yet it belongs in this list. On the one hand, this is because for once it does not follow the story of The Lord of the Rings, but makes the events from The Hobbit playable. And on the other hand, the title was absolutely revolutionary and groundbreaking, especially for its time.
At the same time, The Hobbit is, on the surface, just another illustrated text adventure game of the kind that existed in heaps in the 80s. How players could interact with their environment, however, was completely new and in some ways unpredictable. Instead of just entering simple sentence constructions consisting of verb, subject and object, the game also understood complex sentence construction. Players could easily turn “Take the lamp” into “Take Gandalf’s lamp, then talk to Thorin and finally kill the orc with the sword”, and the game understood directly what was meant by this.
This is how Middle Earth comes to life:
In 1982, of course, nothing was known about Jackson’s film trilogy. But the game is based on The Hobbit anyway, whose film adaptation was even further away. The sparse graphics were rather based on the original illustrations in the novel, some of which even came from Tolkien himself. The feeling of a living Middle-earth was also created by a special game mechanic:
While the players accompanied Bilbo Baggins on his adventures, time ran on constantly in the background. This also meant that all NPCs pursued their own goals according to their characteristics, visited different places, completed battles, were captured or even died. This actually prevented the game from being completed in some cases.
7. Lego The Lord of the Rings
Release: 23 November 2012.
Genre: Action-Adventure
Platforms: PC, PS3 & Xbox 360
Where to buy? (On Steam)
This is what makes the game so good:
Lego The Lord of the Rings is, quite logically, not only visually distinct from all the other titles on the list, but also in its gameplay approach. The game makes up for the lack of seriousness with a wide variety of gameplay elements that lighten up the combat sequences typical of action adventures. Each of the 80 unlockable game characters has different, partly unique skills that we have to use to successfully complete the 20 levels – from destroying Mordor building blocks to firing arrows or peaceful fishing.
Those who want to spend more time in Middle-earth after completing the main quest are free to explore the huge open world and discover, for example, a character editor in Bag End. As with all Lego licensed games, the wit and visuals are of course a matter of taste. But instead, the title definitely scores with original ideas, motivating gameplay and a junior-friendly version of the most important and greatest fantasy epic of our time.
How Middle-earth comes to life:
As is typical for Lego games, Lego The Lord of the Rings also takes the film series as its model. However, the game is not quite as serious as the film. Many of the overly brutal scenes from the films have been toned down for the game, the depiction of violence has been greatly reduced, and humour plays an even greater role.
Nevertheless, Lego The Lord of the Rings manages to give you goose bumps in all the right places. The battle for Helm’s Deep is still something special, even in the brick look. Especially as Lego Lord of the Rings is surprisingly the only game in Middle-earth in which we ourselves, as King Theoden on horseback, are allowed to lead the charge out of the Hornburg. A unique moment that every Tolkien fan should have experienced.
That’s it for our personal best list – now we want to know your preferences around The Lord of the Rings! Which video games have given you the most fun, made the biggest impact or stuck in your head for other reasons? Feel free to tell us in the comments!
