So, when they first came out this sort of strategy mobile game flooded the market. Most of them are just blatant rip offs of each other and have the exact same pattern on overcrowded menus and way too much stuff to pay attention to and it was all hidden behind a pay wall anyway so no one wanted to play them. This game however, is so nice and neatly packaged and it’s so user-friendly and even though it has a lot of the same overcrowded menus it’s all packaged much more neatly in that your castle only has really five buttons that you need to focus on and then you need to worry about your commanders and units. This as opposed to the other games that make you focus on 1 million different things all at once. Not to mention that it’s packaged in a lord of the rings skin which is absolutely fantastic. And also, at least for now, the game is not paid to win. I’ve seen just as many people playing for free doing really well as I have people who spent $100 on it already and have roughly the same stuff as those who work hard for it. My only criticism is that I wish there were more tips and, honestly, more commanders. But other than that this is a great game and I highly recommend it!

This game is visually stunning. Collecting the different characters from the books and movies is also a lot of fun, especially with their cinematics. The game changes as the season goes on, morphing from a strictly PVE game to a mix of PVE and PVP. Late game requires a lot of coordination and strategy to get the rewards they have set out to motivate massive battles. My complaints: there’s no way to completely defeat someone. You can uproot their city which sends the. Somewhere else, they have the option to come back time and again. Some of the battle mechanics don’t make sense like if you March on a tile but it changes hands while you’re marching you’ll just uturn instead of attacking the enemy army waiting there. There should also be an easier way to time when attacks hit so it is easier to coordinate your commanders. The max size of the barracks is not enough for late game use especially after you have collected a lot of commanders. Love the game and you can play on the cheap and still succeed! I have literally only spent $1 to get Aragorn II and I am currently 11th on my server for total ring power! Very addictive and very fun!

The game is great so far since I played the only thing I hope is that the development team does not make it focus around alliance for example as a single player I can conquer anything I want by myself I don’t need to have my allies if that is the case then I’m gonna be happy but if I need to have our lives and will be very upset because that ruins the game for me I don’t like playing with people because people all the time. I just saw an advertisement saying that you’re not a paid to win game when you arePay to win any games that you have to pay to get benefits it’s considered pay to win I may not have true benefits are marching benefits but I have construction benefits people can pay for construction reduce timers for you are a Play to win game I could have a level three army but everyone else is only having a level one or two because again I pay for a construction speed came reducers any the increase the chances of you no matter being a building or Army benefit is consider a pay to win.

This game is fantastic. I have never had a mobile game that sucked me in and kept me playing as much as this one did. Everyone who is saying you need to spend money is simply just an idiot. This game is designed for the free to play players like myself. Here is NO way to speed up conscripting units with real money. NO way to speed up grain and material income with real money. And you are only allowed to buy 1 commander when you first start up the game. You can not buy commanders with real money. You cannot buy land with real money. These people complaining simply had no idea what they were doing and got rekt. Try the game out. You’ll love the attention to detail in Tolkien’s works. Every castle, keep, building, troop, and creature has a clickable tab that gives you information and quotes taken directly from Tolkien’s works. This is a game that the developers put a lot of thought and care into. Give it a try and see for yourself.

***Dec 29:*** UPDATE: After week off I retried downloading and something was patched that allowed me to log in again. Apparently many players had been booted off as well. The irony was that the update which caused all this was the “yule” holiday expansion. The changes to gameplay that are made in these frequent updates don’t seem to outweigh what is lost by the headache they’ve cost. Much rather would have not lost days worth of progress, but oh well. Time to play catch up with the other teams. ***Dec 22nd:*** “I was one of the most active and powerful players in my faction, logged on with an update and now I can’t even open the game. Played for weeks, but apparently for no reason because none of it matters now. What a load of garbage. If this changes I guess I’ll edit my review, but I’m still missing out right now on critical siege plans we had. I’ve even tried un-installing the app and re-downloading. Good thing I never paid for anything yet, there will be lots of tempting chances to pay in the game, but DONT GIVE THEM ANY MONEY! Turns out you could just lose the ability to even open the app like me.”

So far the experience on this app has proven "spot on" neat, to say the best. But repeatedly I get kicked off the app, and it's not for banishment. Often times, ranging from 5 to 30 min into a app session, via recruting generals, engaging in the red book quests, some cases building structures, there's also some times where the screen turned pink over the button icons, this I believed however was because of too much user interaction as I go about. It's somewhat troubleless after the fact.

It's a good game overall but It has issues. It's not nearly as pay to win as most games of it's type but this game does require a lot of your attention. I'm in the military and do not have a lot of time to play games so I usually end up getting steamrolled pretty early in the season. If you have enough time to burn to make it fun you will enjoy it if you are a lotr fan.

It is a TEAM gang. If you don’t want to be active everyday, actually listen to your fellowship leaders, you won’t get far. You can play alone but those players never really last long because you are missing about 85% of the game. The servers are neat, the season starts off everyone is nice and having fun and laughing, but as the season progresses the game chat definitely gets interesting. Graphics are epic. Please stop holding mobile games at the critique level of console games, if you want 4k go play on a console or pc. On the money side of things, they have a season pass, it’s affordable, I would suggest it. If you don’t want that, they also have a 30 day token pass. They also have keep your money and still progress. You CAN NOT buy ability points, so everyone is waiting for a 20-30 hour refill just like you. Fellowships have to move as a collective, so it doesn’t matter if Timmy, Wanda, and Cosmo spent their tax money, if the rest of their 97 members didn’t. To The Developers, We appreciate you. I’m only writing a 4 because on my 30 day token pass, I went to collect twice and it said I collected but my tokens never appeared.

Great game bad execution I started this game mid season and joined a faction with limited players already. We are at the biggest disadvantage possible. No way to actually keep from losing. The enemies have all higher level commanders because they started at the beginning of the season. The developers need to figure out how to keep the game fair for newer players who join mid season maybe when a new player joins start them off where they should be at that point in the season with a couple high level commanders some land surrounding them and some buffs to help them build an army. The tutorial needs to be more focused on how to help a player build themselves up to be able to withstand high level enemies. Also one or two factions can’t have all the power there needs to be more balance between factions. Maybe have a limit on the number of people who can join a faction and if a player becomes inactive let someone join the faction who is new. If inactive players can be kicked that should be done as well. It is worth playing but new players should be aware when you start pick a faction with a larger crowd of people that way you have time to learn the game and don’t have to worry about battling anybody until you are ready.

Great Game / Poor customer care I purchased additional in game material and only received a portion of what was bought. Submitted a ticket to correct the issue and have gotten the run around from care. There's no way to continue the dispute in the same thread, only submit another ticket.. which sucks. Ultimately Im giving up trying to collect what I bought after they asked for a screenshot of what I purchased, which immediately is unaccessible (even to reference) after you purchase.

This game is headed in the right direction, in the current state it is I still enjoy it a decent amount as the fighting, expanding, and characters make it interesting enough. However there are a few things that need to be changed to really get this game going. 1) the screen needs to have less buttons. It took me a while to figure out where everything is because there are so many different buttons to press, this needs some streamlining in the sense of certain things being combined based on commonalities, or certain aspects just need to be gotten rid of. 2) the fighting. I want to watch the battle ‘live’, like while it is happening but I can only watch the replay in the inbox so I already know what’s about to happen so it takes away from the suspense and interest. Not only this but the characters that are fighting need to be refined; the animations done make it feel too rigid and unnatural. The fighting is definitely something that will make or break for many players so future updates really need to make it more interesting and really feel like a battle otherwise this game will most likely nose dive. Overall though it is a pretty solid game that I enjoy and recommend for some, but not all.

I preregistered for this game and absolutely loved it at the beginning. But have enjoyed it less and less as it goes on. The game is played in “seasons” which is good because of you loose one season you can still make friends and try again in the next season. However seasons are all but decided on day 1. The factions that start strong attract more players and then run away with it. The gap between the strongest faction on a server and the second strongest is usually huge. They need to make some kind of cap to keep factions closers in size to keep it competitive and fun. It’s all about teamwork and I love that aspect of this game. Having to work together to take big objectives and wage a war on multiple fronts is awesome. Again though a big BUT you’re not really incentivized to keep playing once it’s obvious who is going to win if your not on the strongest faction before Team switching closes. All you can do is annoy the winning faction and maybe slow them down but winning from behind is next to impossible with the current set up. Graphics are great user interface is good the devs seem to listen to the community and make good changes… Over all I really like the game which is why it’s more disappointing that I doubt I’ll keep playing after season 2 ends.