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It was certainly better than The War of the Ring, a non-starter 2003 effort from Vivendi based on the books rather than Peter Jackson's movies.
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With good and evil campaign paths, a gorgeous (for the time) version of Middle-Earth with extravagantly realised locations and well-animated units, this is probably as good as a LOTR RTS will ever get. A familiar-feeling but well-produced RTS that improved on the first game, particularly with the CPU AI, this was a decent large-scale translation of The Lord of the Rings.
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