Over the past two years, Electronic Arts has managed to do something quite unheard of with their “The Lord of the Rings” film license. They’ve actually managed to make great games with it, breaking the usual stigma that befalls most film-based games.

In 2002, they brought us “The Two Towers,” followed by “The Return of the King” the next year. While these games weren’t anything more than glorified hack-and-slash action games, they captured the mood of Peter Jackson’s adaptation through use of the film’s art direction and, most importantly, score to aid the effect. It also helped that the cast did the voices of the characters, including Ian McKellen and Christopher Lee.

So the question came up this year if EA could hit again for the third year in a row. Instead of giving us another hack and slash title, they decided to encompass the whole trilogy in a Japanese style RPG. Unfortunately, the third time wasn’t the charm here.

It’s not that “The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age” is a bad game, but it often feels like it could have used another year or two of development. They may be trying to ride the remainder of the film fad, but considering it’s not going to go away anytime soon, they should have given it more time.

What works about this game is one thing: the game play. The only reason this works is because the battle system is a spot-on copy of the one used in “Final Fantasy X.” Considering no American company has ever been able to truly reproduce a Japanese RPG correctly, copying the best was a good way to start. In copying this game, however, they copied the one major flaw as well, a game that is too linear.

Part of the fun of an RPG is exploration, and there is not much in the form of that. Final Fantasy can get away with it due to a usually better-than-average story to tell. Unfortunately, this is the one trait the EA team seems to have forgotten to rip off. Instead of getting to play as the Fellowship, we are introduced to new characters that Gandalf has asked to follow the real Fellowship in order to aid them.

This is fine and good, but the advantage of using a new group would be to open up more freedom in the story. They don’t do that though. The cast is a much more boring rip-off of the real Fellowship. There is no character interaction beyond the lame and obvious. In fact, we learn most about the characters through Gandalf-narrated video sequences. Someone needs to tell the writers at EA to show, not tell. These sequences only make you want to watch the movie instead of playing the boring game.

Because of these flaws, the game is little more than endless fighting of the same orcs over and over. There are no towns or other characters to talk to. Although fighting the Balrog is wicked cool, major fights like that are very few and far between. In fact, the Balrog is the only fun battle for the first half of the game.

Considering the choice of such a linear game structure, it probably would have been easier to just follow the real Fellowship on their quest and at least the repetitiveness of the game play would be balanced by characters and a story we actually care about.

While this game isn’t terrible, it could easily have used a lot more work. The foundation is solid, so if EA can find a way to build on this with their next game, they might be able to truly rival Final Fantasy. They definitely have the advantage of better source material. If only they would use it, because they sure as hell didn’t do it here.

Grade: C