Lord of the Rings: The Third Age Preview

Electronic Gaming Monthly has put together an extensive preview of Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, after seeing the RPG firsthand at Electronic Arts’ northern California studio. Check it out:

The beating, bloody heart of any RPG is its combat system, and the Third Age team is so stoked with the one they’ve created that they might release a card game based on its rules. Still, the game’s turn-based battles — which pop up at scripted spots but default to random encounters after you’ve cleared an area — will look familiar to fans of traditional console RPGs. Your party of four sits on one side of the arena, unleashing whatever melee, ranged, or magic attacks you choose, from quick sword hits to screen-filling summons of talking-tree ents, fireworks dragons, fire demons, and more.

But the team tweaked the standard battle formula by adding two special combat formations: tank and protect. Call on a character — usually a hearty fighter such as the dwarf — to tank an enemy, and he’ll get right up in the bad guy’s grill, preventing the enemy from attacking anyone else. The protect command takes a member of your party and puts him behind another ally, thus shielding him from attacks. These moves are costly in terms of turnwasting ability points, and they wear off after a few rounds, but you can imagine the strategic possibilities. “Say you have an enemy that’s a really strong magic user and you’re worried about getting blasted with area-effect spells,” says Gray, “and you have your elf who’s really good at healing. So you have the dwarf tank the enemy magic user and put the elf behind your ranger. The elf takes turns healing the dwarf, who’s getting smacked all the time, while the ranger uses his bow to take out the magic user.” Nifty, huh? But don’t get too cocky: Enemies can use tank and protect tactics, too.