Here's my BFME review in my LJ since I can't be bothered to write it all again: Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth

Even though the storyline isn't really good, you'll stop thinking about that by the time you've beat both single-player campaigns and start to play Skirmish and online maps. I realised during the Evil campaign that it doesn't matter if the game conflicts with the movie's story because the bad guys (SPOILER)can kill heroes that aren't supposed to die there, though they'll get revived. I killed Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli at both Amon Hen and Helm's Deep. However, I killed Boromir during Amon Hen and Theoden during Helm's Deep, and they didn't come back after that. It also gives you more of a feeling that you can reshape the world yourself by having different characters die when they didn't die in the movie, or by having them survive when they did die in the movie.

Oh, and Elves are wonderful. Especially with Fire Arrows and Heavy Armor. ^^ About the AI summoning Balrog and killing 200 Command Points worth of Elves that way on a Skirmish map... Psychotic: :twak:

As for some special maps:

Helm's Deep was easy on Easy difficulty. I was totally clueless there on my first time, and I still won. (SPOILER)Isengard destroyed the Deeping Wall, and that created me a choke point for ambushing Isen forces, making the map a lot easier for me, as a matter of fact. I never had problems there. On my 2nd time, I just put Elves on the walls and played that map a lot better. On that game, I didn't repeat the same horrible mistake I did during my first game: built Postern Gates. Your forces with low AI really mess themselves up that way. When you tell them to attack the ladders, they charge out through the Postern Gates and try to attack the root of the ladder rather than slashing them down from the top of the wall, and that way they get massacred by the time they get out of the fortress. On the 2nd time, I managed to save both the Deeping Wall and the Front Gate. I was like "Kill it, Legolas! Kill it!" when Isen came with mines. Helm's Deep was a fun mission, though it wasn't as fun for me as many had told me. Probably because of how the mission went during my first time through it. It was a really fun mission with Isengard on Evil Campaign, though.

Minas Tirith was my favorite level in LotR: The Third Age, and it was very nice in BFME too. (SPOILER)My forces were at their max command limit, and I had very few archers with fire arrows, so I couldn't build more Archers to get my Archery Range upgraded so that I could get fire arrows. That was bad, especially when Grond came. It attacked my Front Gate until it was on red, then I made a pure desperation move. I opened the gate and went out with my Gondor Knights. They got pretty much slaughtered, but at least I saved the gate and bought some time to destroy Grond, and I also finally got to build more Archers and get fire arrows that way. Unlike in the movie, my Rohan army was able to halt the entire Mordor invasion, including Orcs, Easterlings/Southrons, Trolls and Mumakils. When Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli and AotD arrived, they only had about 10 Orcs left to kill. And 9 of them were crushed by Rohan's forces. I think Aragorn managed to slash the final Orc and end the mission.

A cool thing with Minas Tirith map is how (SPOILER)in the Evil Campaign, the good guys use Cloud Break at the moment the Rohan reinforcements arrive. I would have wanted to use that effect. Well, I eventually got to use it, though not in that map. (SPOILER)It was in the Black Gate, during the final struggle. Mordor has covered the entire region with Darkness, and when there's about 15 seconds left to survive until Frodo destroys the Ring, I used Cloud Break to bring Eternal Sunshine on the darkened lands of Mordor, totally paralyzing Mordor's forces.

Okay, now that I think I've caught up with this thread, anyone wanting to play online? Psy?