the game will be a must-have for this alone. As the story is completely fresh and sits alongside the timeline of the films, playing The Third Age engenders the genuine excitement of playing pen and paper RPGs like Middle Earth"). He concluded "The Third Age is a highly enjoyable, if throwaway foray into the world of the Lord of the Rings films, and has much to recommend it for a casual purchase, especially for Tolkien completists. But RPG mentalists will be bitter from the outset and will care little for the unparalleled presentation [...] This is a good game, it's just too shallow; an entry-level RPG at heart." GameSpy's Raymond Padilla the game 3.5 out of 5, calling it "a very solid RPG that dazzles in some places and disappoints in others." His biggest criticism was the plot and the characters; "I don't care about the characters. I never really gave a damn if they lived or died as I was playing the game. I felt like I was given the minor league version of The Fellowship, with archetypes of characters I knew [...] Their names and stories seemed so irrelevant and uninteresting compared to the real thing." However, he praised the graphics, calling the game "a treat for the eyes and ears. The visuals are fantastic, much like the other The Lord of the Rings games. It's a phenomenal re-creation of Middle-earth that fans will totally drool over." He concluded "there are better RPGs on the market. There are better TLotR games on the market too. If you've exhausted all those possibilities, then give The Third Age a shot." GameSpot's Bethany Massimilla scored the game 7.7 out of 10. She was critical of the amount of Epic Scenes (which show clips from the films) in proportion to actual cutscenes; "there's so much exposition being done by Gandalf that it seems to come at the expense of your characters [...] you are explicitly told what has happened and what will happen instead of actually seeing it happen, and it serves to somewhat distance the player from the whole experience." However, she praised the graphics and sound, concluding "The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age molds Middle-earth into a traditional turn-based frame, and while the results aren't all that great, the game carries some pretty good features and should appeal to fans of the source material." IGN's Juan Castro scored