Well, it is the only LOTR game on PSP.
Lord of the Rings Tactics is a PSP Exclusive Tactics game released on late 2005 and acted as something close to a launch title for the PSP as well as a movie licensed game of the Peter Jackson LOTR Movies.
When you boot up a new game, you're offered the choice of 2 campaigns, The Fellowship, which plays from the perspective of the titular Fellowship through major battles/sequences from the movies, and The Host of Mordor which has you controlling the forces of Mordor. While each campaign shares the same levels in the same order, the configuration of units on both sides varies. For example, in the Mines of Moria level, the Fellowship campaign has you controlling Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Frodo and Gandalf and taking on the Balrog, A cave troll and 2 goblins. Whereas on the Mordor Campaign, you get to use the Witch King, Lurtz, 2 Goblins and the Balrog to take on Aragorn, Gandalf, Boromir and 2 Rangers. Each Campaign also has different cutscenes (which are just clips from the movies).
The Gameplay:
LOTR Tactics plays like a typical tactics game. You have 2 sides, Fellowship and Mordor, on a grid based map with specific objectives that may be asymmetrical. For example, for one side to win, they may have to kill all enemy units while the other has to kill certain units. Other objectives may include capturing or reaching certain points. Each turn has 2 phases, movement and combat. In the movement phase, you issue orders where a unit may move on a grid and once both sides have issued orders, all units will move simultaneously. Different units will move and take up a different amount of squares on the grid. Elevation and terrain will hinder or help movement or later combat such as ranged units benefiting from high ground. One interesting mechanic is that if 2 enemy units move onto adjacent squares, they will cancel the rest of their orders and be locked into facing their enemy. This means any unit can block any other unit regardless of if they are passing through or trying to flee. The game refers to this as "the Zone of Control (ZoC) which sounds cool. Once the movement phase has been completed, the game moves onto combat phase. Here, a unit may attack another unit in range or use an item/skill. Note that adjacent opposing units can only melee each other (unless they have a separate ranged skill). In addition to attacks, some units can inflict status conditions like Stun (makes you skip a turn), Fear (you lose control of a unit for a turn and they try to move away), Rooted (cannot move but can attack), Bleed and Poison (take damage over multiple turns), Stealth (become invisible to the enemy).
You also have 2 kinds of Units, regular units and Hero Units. Regular units are like generic soldiers or goblins. They cannot use skills or be upgraded. Hero Units are major characters from the movies and can use skills at the cost of AP (basically Magic Points that recharge a little every turn) and be upgraded. For example, of the heroes on the Fellowship side is Legolas. He has access to skills like "Fire a more powerful arrow against a single target", "make 2 powerful melee attacks against a target" and "buff the dexterity of nearby allies". Heroes and Skills are very important. To the point where it's a huge blow to whichever side loses a hero. Different Heroes have different kits. Frodo and Sam have access to stealth based skills, Aragorn has melee and heals. Sauron and Witch King can inflict opponents with Fear and drain their health and AP etc which are all quite fun to play around with. It is odd why Regular Units have like, 5 AP max when they can't use skills anyway. Perhaps since Sauron can drain AP as a skill it lets it work there? Though it is hilarious when Regular Units controlled by the AI occasionally use AP restoring items in battle.
On the Fellowship side, you have the following heroes: Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Gandalf, Frodo and Sam. And on the Mordor side, you have Sauron, the Witch King, Lurtz, Gothmog, Sauraman and Grima Wormtongue. Heroes automatically level up and earn more powerful weapons after completing missions. In between missions, you can buy specific skills and items in the menu.
This set up works pretty well and allows for long and intense tactical matches and can be especially challenging on the harder difficulties. The maps and scenarios can be quite different and add to a playthrough feeling engaging. It will take around 6-10 hours per campaign. There are some issues though. For one, movement can be a little inconsistent. Sometimes, when pursuing an enemy, your unit will just stand there and not complete his movement. Allowing the enemy unit to flee. Some larger 3 square units like Mumakil will not move at all unless their destination is sufficiently far away from their current position. In both cases, the game's UI tells you can move but the character will not so you have to learn when the UI will not be accurate. You also earn very little money per battle which can make the game much grindier on the harder difficulties as you have to buy a lot more items and skills to stand a chance.
The game also cheats a little with certain objectives and units. For example, the following units: Spearmen, Wildmen, Cave Trolls, Eomer don't have ranged attacks when you control them. But in opposing campaigns, they have ranged attacks even when they don't have any animations for it. So Wildmen and Cave Trolls will telekinetically damage your units from afar. Another example, in the Amon Hen level, the objectives were "kill all enemies" for the Fellowship to Win and "Kill Frodo" for Mordor to win. On the last turn, I killed every Uruk enemy but Frodo went down as well. The game gave the victory to Mordor even if there was nobody around from Mordor to celebrate.
Honestly, my biggest issue with the game is the lack of any NG+ or challenge mode upon beating the game. Some Heroes like Grima, Lurtz and Gimli barely get screentime. And many maps are pretty fun but if you replay them in the same save file, they lack the challenge since you carry over your levelled up and improved Heroes while the enemy side doesn't and are at the same level they were when you completed the level the first time. Meaning if you want a challenge again, you have to start a new game or play very specific later levels. I feel the game would have been even better if when you beat the game, you get access to a challenge mode where you can replay the campaign but now enemy units are max level. Hell, you could even have a wildcard option where you can use Units from both campaigns like in the Multiplayer Mode.
The Multiplayer:
Up to 4 players can play short battles against each other and can use Units from both sides. There's also a points system where you can either buy a few high powered heroes or more low powered minions or any combination of the prior. I haven't played the multiplayer but it sounds quite neat and I'd love to see a singleplayer version of this.
The Presentation:
The game pulls many assets like models and animations from the Return of the King video game that releases a few years prior. As well as sound and music from the movies. So it looks and sounds quite good. Environments and models are quite detailed and even atmospheric at times despite being on the PSP. Though, there are some oddities. For one, Sam and Aragorn have an overly detailed blocking and Special Attack animation that no other character has and it looks out of place....until you recognize them from the Return of the King video game as special takedown animations that required 2 people. I'm not complaining. It adds to the charm of the game.
I also love that the mission select screen is a Map of Middle Earth and shows where the battles are happening, though the map does feel a bit inaccurate.
Other:
With the Fellowship Campaign, each mission is a major sequence from the movies and you get a small cutscene in the form of clips from the films to provide context. They function as something akin to a cliffnotes version of the story. So if you're like me and played this game for the first time as a kid and as your first introduction to Tolkien's works, it is somewhat functional if confusing since specific details are not really present. For example, the game's story shows how Sauron made the One Ring, how Isildur took and then lost it and how it was later found by Smeagol but not how it ended up with Frodo or why it took Smeagol so long to find it again. Of course, I now know the full context but as a kid, it was confusing.
I can't fault the game too much for this. I imagine everyone buying this game at the time was already familiar with LOTR and I was the odd one out being introduced to it through licensed games. Still, I'm glad these games did exist in introducing me to LOTR even if what they portrayed was pretty different. The movies and books are much less action packed and much more sombre and quiet than the games had me believe.
I will criticize the Mordor Campaign's version of the story a little bit. Its cutscenes don't really show the enemy's side of the story often, especially after the Two Towers portion of the story. Mostly it's just voiceovers from Saraman talking about something tangentially related to the mission or present a more ominous tone compared to the Fellowship's version. I wish it did do at least the more ominous tone more often instead. Though, in the game's defence, LOTR is mostly told from the Fellowship's POV and there aren't a lot of consistent antagonists we spend much time with. Like, Saraman dies in Return of the King so there goes a lot of the material for a Mordor Campaign. The Mordor Campaign is also odd if you take it face value. In the Fellowship campaigns, the events make more sense. You defeat the forces of Mordor and progress through the events of the movie. But in the Mordor versions, you will complete missions by killing Aragorn, Frodo and Gandalf early and the story would proceed as normal. I am not complaining. Obviously if the Mordor Campaign did account for that, it would be only 1 mission long. I do wonder if a better approach would have been to try making an original story or presenting a "What if" story by showing how the heroes would have lost at specific battles? The game does do that last one in the final mission on Mt Doom by showing how the heroes get overwhelmed by Mordor's forces, Frodo was unable to get up after getting his finger bitten off by Gollum and that Sauron gets the Ring and takes over Middle Earth. I recall the Transformers Movie Licenced game had the entire Decepticon campaign based on that approach.
Also, the choice of heroes on the Mordor side is certainly odd. You have Sauron, in his physical form as he was at the start of LOTR's prologue, ready and rocking despite only being a flaming eye and trapped fighting Celebrimbor at this point (wink wink). You have the Witch King and Gothmog who only really shows up in Return of The King and dies. You have Lurtz, who dies in Fellowship of the Ring. Sarauman, who is mostly a "behind the scenes" guy and dies in Return of the King. And Grima, who as far as I recall, was barely even in the movies. I understand why this is the case, it provides a symmetry to the Fellowship and are pretty fun to play as. And it probably helps in the Multiplayer and I imagine the game's development likely had tight deadlines. But I feel a better approach in making the Mordor campaign more distinct from the Fellowship would have been to not have dedicated and consistent Heroes. Instead, each level has its own generic units and a couple captains that have unique skills you could use as is or provide a bit extra money to make more effective. I feel this would be more fitting. In the movies, Mordor doesn't have a consistent cast of antagonists as an analogue to the Fellowship. It just has whatever specific antagonist happens to be present at that particular battle like Shelob, The Balrog, The Witch King, Lurtz etc. Maybe if this game gets a remake or someone makes another LOTR tactics game, this idea could show up there.
In conclusion, LOTR Tactics is a decent tactics game. It doesn't do anything too novel that would make it a must play. I imagine Tactics fans have their hands full with options. Even the PSP has the highly regarded Final Fantasy Tactics. Plus, this game is likely very hard to find now given that EA no longer has the LOTR licence so you can't officially get the game anymore. But I still enjoyed my time with this game and would recommend it.
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