The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age

The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age took a completely different approach from the action-based adaptations of the film trilogy, offering a turn-based RPG built on the story's motifs but featuring its own party of original heroes who walk in the footsteps of Frodo's quest without directly replacing or rewriting it. EA's game follows a parallel group of warriors whose fates repeatedly intersect with the events of the films, without directly substituting for Frodo, Sam, or Aragorn as playable members of the player's combat party.

The combat system drew clear inspiration from Japanese RPGs, specifically the then-recently released Final Fantasy X — battles run on a gradually filling timeline that determines the order of actions for individual characters and enemies, allowing the player to plan ahead and react to opponents' behavior and the timing of their attacks. Party members gradually specialize into the roles of warrior, ranger, or mage and unlock branching skill trees inspired by the races and cultures of Middle-earth, from Gondor through Rohan to elven and dwarven fighting traditions, which lends the battles pleasant variety.

Thanks to the license, the game could draw on the film's production design, music, and actors' likenesses, giving it an unusually lavish audiovisual atmosphere for a licensed title of its time, at a period when such quality was rather the exception than the rule for movie-derived games. Progress through the game also unlocks access to new locations and gear, so the player's party gradually transforms from a handful of inexperienced adventurers into hardened veterans capable of facing even the strongest enemies of Middle-earth. While the action-based LOTR games of the same era relied on immediate fun and carnage, The Third Age targeted players who wanted to savor the story of Middle-earth more slowly and thoughtfully through turn-based strategy, and it is still praised today as one of the few truly successful attempts to translate a fantasy film license into turn-based RPG form without losing the source material's atmosphere.