Electronic Arts recently released a downloadable demo of Lord of the Rings: Conquest over Xbox Live, and since it's been awhile since console kingpin Will Tuttle last toyed with it, we figured we'd delve into the demo for some updated impressions. Although there appears to be some performance tuning left to be done to eliminate latency and framerate issues, LotR: Conquest demonstrates solid versus mechanics similar to developer Pandemic's preceding Star Wars: Battlefront games.
Common Conquerors
The only multiplayer mode available in the demo is Conquest, which involves the capture of control points. The forces of good (represented by Dwarves, Elves, Hobbits and Men) fight in almost perfect class parity against Sauron's vile horde of Orcs, Goblins, and Uruk-hai. Control points are scattered around the map and can be captured if a player of one of the two factions enters the control point's radius. Hang out long enough and the control point is yours... of course, if a control point is left undefended, a member of the other faction can always swoop in and snag it back. It's pretty standard stuff, really.
Both factions have four classes of combatant to choose from: Warrior, Mage, Scout and Archer. These classes sport identical abilities on both sides, so the choice between good or evil is mostly cosmetic.
Warriors and Scouts serve as the primary melee classes, slicing and dicing at close range. They differ in that Warriors can use broad, sweeping strikes that can cleave enemies in large swaths, making them effective against multiple foes. Scouts are most effective against single opponents, especially when using their stealth ability, which enables them to sneak behind enemies and stab them in the back (an instant kill), but the Scout satchel charge delivers some splash damage to clumped enemies.
Mages and Archers are your ranged choices and, as such, work best from outside the range of swinging swords. Here too we see these two classes specializing in single and multiple combat. Mages can charge up lightning attacks to arc between closely-grouped enemies and topple nearby foes with a ground-pounding force attack. Archers, by contrast, excel at felling individuals at range with headshots and fire-infused arrows. Many of the Mage's attacks and the Archer's multi-shot attack (which fires a fan of three arrows) come in especially handy when you need to pop a Scout out of his stealth mode, because taking damage will reveal the position of any skulkers. Mages, although fairly easy to kill up-close, make up for their weaknesses by offering an ability which heals nearby cohorts and another that projects a force field impervious to ranged attacks.