LEGO The Lord of the Rings

aka: LEGO Der Herr der Ringe, LEGO Il Signore degli Anelli, LEGO In de Ban van de Ring, LEGO Le Seigneur des Anneaux
Moby ID: 59853
Wii Specs
Note: We may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made via eBay or Amazon links (prices updated 3/17 10:19 PM )

Description official descriptions

Over two thousand years ago, the Dark Lord Sauron forged the One Ring to control the other rings of power given to the races of Middle Earth. Sauron was defeated in battle by the human king Isildur, who refused to destroy the ring and took it for himself. Eventually the ring ended up in the hands of Frodo Baggins, a young hobbit from the Shire. Frodo eventually learns that the only way to destroy the ring is to throw it into the lava river of Mount Doom, where it was forged. Thus begins a long and perilous journey, during which the fate of Middle Earth will be decided.

LEGO The Lord of the Rings follows the quest of Frodo Baggins and the Fellowship of the Ring from Hobbiton to Mount Doom. It is based on The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, but is largely influenced by the movies directed by Peter Jackson. The looks of the character and the presentation of the story are directly taken from the three movies: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. This instalment in the Lego universe games includes spoken dialogues within its humorous narrative.

Instead of a hub like in many Lego games, the core of the game is the actual map of Middle Earth, where the player's party, varying through the game, travels from town to town and region to region to explore, fight enemies, solve puzzles and find treasures. Through the main story, the player will have to play through story levels, in which each character's specific abilities and equipment are used to reach the end of the level. Once completed, each level can be replayed in Free Mode to find more treasures and find objects necessary to complete some quests (given by NPC's in the World Map) by using unlocked characters. A lot of treasures are Mythril blocks, which are used to craft tools that can be used by any character on the world map. This prevents the need for constantly switching between characters. Solving some puzzles will also unlock characters to acquire, quest-giving NPCs, and red blocks that will make some "extras" available.

Spellings

  • LEGO Властелин колец - Russian spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Videos

See any errors or missing info for this game?

You can submit a correction, contribute trivia, add to a game group, add a related site or alternate title.

Credits (Windows version)

581 People (397 developers, 184 thanks) · View all

Company Director
Design Director
Studio Manager
LEGO Integration Director
Head of Animation
Head of Art
Head of Production
Head of Programming
Game Directors
Senior Project Manager
Assistant Game Director
Project Manager
Head of Game Programming
Head of Game Mechanics
Head of Technology
Head of Audio
Head of In-game Animation
Lead Environment Artist
Lead Technical Artist
Lead Construction Artist
Lead In-game Animator
Cinematics Animation Director
2nd Unit Director
Cinematics Production
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 79% (based on 81 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 21 ratings with 1 reviews)

Lego meets GTA

The Good
Unlike previous movie-based Lego games I've played (which includes Lego Star Wars, Lego Indiana Jones and Lego Pirates of the Caribbean), this is the first Lego game that has actual voice-acting for the characters. While occasional exhaling of vowels like in previous games is still present, all of the cutscenes feature voice-acting and all the major characters such as Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli and the Hobbits sounds just as they do in the movie. I didn't think movie-based Lego games are such major projects that they would use the actual actors from The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, but until I checked the actual credits I was certain they did. However they managed to pick the right actors to make them sound as original, it's really an impressive thing.

For the first time, this game features a rather open world for exploring, and while you can follow the transparent blue lego markers to progress the main story, the game features a rather huge map which can be explored at random with lots of side-quests, unlockables and treasures to be found. That alone has so much content it can extend the main storyline by a few times in length.

The battles, although lego-style, look pretty huge with lots of units on the screen and dynamic battlefields, and boss battles are inventive but easy to win nonetheless. The free camera now lets you rotate around the larger areas which was not available in past movie-based Lego games as far as I can recall, so you can see some nice landscapes in the distance, even though they are rather blurred due to PS3's limitations and not wanting to risk of losing the fluid gameplay or adequate framerate. The music too is very down to original and one can immediately notice the Hobbit village theme or some other memorable tracks from the game.

The Bad
The game can be buggy which prevents you to proceed. For example, you have to push the lego block down the ledge but it ends up floating on the way down and you cannot do anything but quit the current gameplay and try again. Unlike Lego Pirates of the Caribbean where a graphical bug during final boss battle always froze the game which stopped me from ever finishing it, at least this bug fixes itself after several tries, but still, such things during the main story should have been vetted better. Seems like the more complex Lego games become, the more bugs they feature.

While basic gameplay is pretty much unchanged, the character switching process really requires some tweaking. Just pressing the triangle switches to a character you are pointing toward, or at least tries, it may take several attempts to switch to a wanted characters, and sometimes it is not even doable so you have to do it manually. Manual switch, on the other hand, doesn't pause the game, so you often die in the process. While dying has never been a big deal in these Lego games as you respawn seconds later, it's still not something the player wants to encounter every now and then.

The Bottom Line
I am not a fan of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and unlike other movie-based Lego games I got, this was kind of an out of a blue decision. It is fun to see how the Lego version of the movies you've seen is following the story. If, however, I were a fan of Tolkien's world, then this would definitely be a worth title to play, even though it is not as serious as the story tries to be. Gags, puns and occasional jests are still there, and while they're nothing new in comparison to previous Lego games, they tend to remind you that you're playing Lego version of the story and not some hack-and-slash mature rated game as it would most likely otherwise be rated.

Playing with a friend, this may probably seem more fun and all those bonus levels and missions might give you many additional hours of gameplay. If you're only in for the main story as I was, it will still give you a lot of eye-candy exotic locations which you most probably remember from the movie, all the characters and key moments from the trilogy where you can play them yourself, if only in a comedic sort of way.

PlayStation 3 · by MAT (240569) · 2015

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

LEGO The Hobbit
Released 2014 on Windows, Xbox 360, Macintosh...
The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest
Released 2010 on PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS, PSP
The Lord of the Rings: Conquest
Released 2009 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Windows
The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest
Released 2010 on Wii, PlayStation 3
The Lord of the Rings: Tactics
Released 2005 on PSP
LEGO The Incredibles
Released 2018 on Windows, PlayStation 4, Macintosh...
LEGO Batman: The Videogame
Released 2008 on Windows, PlayStation 2, PSP...

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 59853
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Fred VT.

Macintosh added by Kabushi.

Additional contributors: jaXen, elfbs, TerrorBou, Tythesly.

Game added March 4, 2013. Last modified February 24, 2024.