Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest Review

The last Lord of the Rings movie came out seven years ago. In that time, we’ve seen games capitalize on the film license in all sorts of genres, from RPGs to real-time strategy. The tale of the One Ring has been told and retold from so many angles, even diehard fans of the franchise must ask: How much more mining can this content take? As the dwarves of Moria learned, digging too deep only results in tragedy, and Aragorn’s Quest is one of the consequences.

Unless you want a dull recounting of every wandering bandit, ruffian, and goblin that Aragorn cut down while cooler stuff was happening, this story doesn’t contribute much to Middle-earth. Despite decent presentation, including good-looking environments and voices from the films, the grandeur of the setting is greatly diminished. The new encounters feel tacked-on and unnecessary, serving mainly to eat up time between more iconic Lord of the Rings moments. 

If you don’t want to plow through the linear story, you can prolong your time with Aragorn’s Quest by hunting down the many sidequests, which usually grant money and artifacts to make your fellowship better in combat. While these bonuses improve Aragorn and his companions, the sense of advancement is empty because combat is ridiculously easy; the power-ups upgrade you from overpowered to slightly more overpowered. Any thrill you may have gotten from bringing down a rampaging troll is thoroughly extinguished by the 50th one you kill, and fending off multiple Ringwraiths is a piece of cake.

Since all of your foes are pushovers, wrestling with the uncooperative controls presents the greatest challenge in Aragorn’s Quest. While swinging the remote in different ways is supposed to produce different sword strikes, the lack of precision means that you may as well just flail the remote instead. The whole affair is more boring than frustrating, since it doesn’t really matter what move you use. A few enemies require specific prompts to stun, but even if you screw that up, you’ll still emerge victorious through relentless slashing.

For all of my complaints, I have to give credit to developer Headstrong Games for one thing: the inclusion of Gandalf as a drop-in co-op partner. Thanks to his healing magic, he works great as a second player for adults who want to play alongside their kids. Not that I would recommend that, however; encouraging family togetherness is fine goal, but wouldn’t it be better do so with a game that isn’t a total waste of time?

Condemning Aragorn’s Quest for its attempts to accommodate a less experienced audience isn’t fair, but shallow and repetitive combat combined with stilted storytelling results in a bad game no matter how you slice it.