When was the last time you played an excellent Lord of the Rings game?
The landmark fantasy series is known for its epic scale, rich lore, cinematic battles, and classic good-versus-evil storyline. The same elements that define Lord of the Rings as a series, incidentally, are broadly the same things fans expect from a good RPG or action game. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single modern fantasy story that hasn’t been influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien somewhere down the line. You might even have a hard time finding many games at all, in any genre, that can’t be traced back to Middle-earth.
So if The Lord of the Rings series is a fundamental part of the medium’s DNA, why are decent Lord of the Rings games such a rarity?
It’s not for a lack of trying. Last year, cozy game Tales of the Shire and its surface-level homesteading landed with a thud. Survival game The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria reportedly sold at least 1 million copies — but like most trend-chasing games, there was little longevity. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum has gone down as one of the worst video game adaptation disasters of all time.
Each of these games faltered for slightly different reasons, like troubled development cycles or a lack of understanding of its own source material. But aside from the sickos and streamers, I’d expect most people to say the last good game in the series happened a decade ago, with Middle-earth: Shadow of War. And even there, it’s arguable. I reviewed the game back in 2017 and liked it, but I also distinctly recall that the game was lambasted for its grindiness, microtransactions, and sponsored content. What people remember now, a decade later, is just that the series’ Nemesis System is awesome. (To its credit, Shadow of War did produce a strong expansion and was eventually updated to remove its controversial monetization. But depending on when you played Monolith’s RPG, your wait time for a strong Lord of the Rings game might be more than a decade by now.)
