I love the role-playing genre, you could almost say I am a Final Fantasy fanatic. While there are true fan boys out there that have literally entrenched their lives with things such as chocobos, white mages, and summons I take a more conservative route, as such I do not own a Squall Cosplay outfit. I do however own all the recent Final Fantasy games, the remakes, the Anthologies and some old 8 bit classics. Over the years I have taken my hand at some Suikoden, and of course I fell in love with the Nippon Ichi games.

This brings me to the Lord of the Rings: The Third Age game by the good people at EA. I can see the need to use the license of one of the greatest stories ever told and arguably the best movie trilogy ever created. The movie lends itself perfectly to video games, as such, Third Age is on the shelves.

The game itself is modeled after the popular Final Fantasy X battle system. A player can see the queue of characters and actions, this of course was a welcome addition when first implemented, so Square Enix fans may scream rip off, but it would be nice to see that in some more RPGs. The problem is the flow of the game, it is a very watered down role-playing game, often times you run into more chests then you should, making your inventory at about thirty minutes into the game seem like you have logged hours of game time. You will partake on quests you had no idea you started, and the graphics again look like Vaseline on my television. I could be giving this game a hard time due to the similarities with Final Fantasy X. Though I do enjoy the parallel storylines with that of the movie. The new characters are a welcome addition too.

This are only my fist impressions, I have yet to hit our review mark of about 10 hours invested. I do want to like the game as I love the LOTR story and the fantastic job New Line Cinema did bringing it to life. Be warned though it seems to have gotten the Rainbow Six treatment, a watered down for the masses make over if you will.