To their credit, when Monolith was tasked with making a Lord of the Rings MOBA they didn’t just re-skin League of Legends and call it a day. Though in hindsight, perhaps that would have been the better choice. For the uninitiated, a MOBA (generally) involves two teams of five players trying to take an opposing base. Minions flow along “lanes”, used as meatshields against enemy defensive towers. You control a powerful hero with potent abilities that level up during the course of the match.

There are a lot of elements that separates GOME from its genre-brothers. Instead of having an in-match store, you purchase all your items, abilities and potions between matches using currency earned during a match. Potions are consumable buffs that need to be restocked. Abilities are utility spells, you can take four into a match. Guardian Belts hold purchasable Relics and Gems (which act like the weapon/armour items from other MOBA games). As your Guardian gains levels during a match, the belt slots unlock from left to right, unlocking the stats of the gems/relics as you go. You can upgrade the Towers that defend your lanes, and the Barracks that spew out minions. Both have four levels of upgrades that drastically improve their defensive/offensive power, giving that lane a huge advantage of a non-upgraded lane. Guardian abilities all work off cooldown counters, there are no mana or resource systems of any kind.

The 36 Guardians are grouped into distinct roles: Tacticians (tanky pushers), Enchanters (high-damage nukers), Defenders (tanky supports), Strikers (glass-cannon nukers) and Warriors (middle-of-the-road). There’s cooperative play against bots, the standard five vs five online play (which puts you in a hard botmatch if it can’t find opponents), survival (five players vs waves of creatures), and a practice mode where you’re forced to play a certain character. There’s only one map, with either three or one lanes, but the map has multiple skins that change the aesthetic trimmings, chosen at random when starting.

You have to pay for the game upfront, but unless you shell out for the expensive edition you only have a handful of Guardians at your disposal. The rest you buy using in-game currency, but the amount you have to play to unlock even one is ridiculous. Online, the game uses a peer-to-peer system for multiplayer instead of a server-based system, so expect a lot of lag all the time. That’s if you can even find a match: steamcharts.com which tracks players on Steam games reports GOME has at most, 20-30 people online at any time. Range indicators on abilities are unreliable, controls can be unresponsive, and you can’t even adjust the graphics settings in-game.

Proving that the power of a franchise name alone isn’t enough to save a bad game, Guardians of Middle-earth is a derelict wreck. Its online community is dead, and even if you’re okay with just playing offline against bots, the core game experience is a let down.

To their credit, when Monolith was tasked with making a Lord of the Rings MOBA they didn’t just re-skin League of Legends and call it a day. Though in hindsight, perhaps that would have been the better choice. For the uninitiated, a MOBA (generally) involves two teams of five players trying to take an opposing base. Minions flow along “lanes”, used as meatshields against enemy defensive towers. You control a powerful hero with potent abilities that level up during the course of the match. There are a lot of elements that separates GOME from its genre-brothers. Instead of having an in-match store, you purchase all your items, abilities and potions between matches using currency earned during a match. Potions are consumable buffs that need to be restocked. Abilities are utility spells, you can take four into a match. Guardian Belts hold purchasable Relics and Gems (which act like the weapon/armour items from other MOBA games). As your Guardian gains levels during a match, the belt slots unlock from left to right, unlocking the stats of the gems/relics as you go. You can upgrade the Towers that defend your lanes, and the Barracks that spew out minions. Both have four levels of upgrades that drastically improve their defensive/offensive power, giving that lane a huge advantage of a non-upgraded lane. Guardian abilities all work off cooldown counters, there are no mana or resource systems of any kind. The 36 Guardians are grouped into distinct roles: Tacticians (tanky pushers), Enchanters (high-damage nukers), Defenders (tanky supports), Strikers (glass-cannon nukers) and Warriors (middle-of-the-road). There’s cooperative play against bots, the standard five vs five online play (which puts you in a hard botmatch if it can’t find opponents), survival (five players vs waves of creatures), and a practice mode where you’re forced to play a certain character. There’s only one map, with either three or one lanes, but the map has multiple skins that change the aesthetic trimmings, chosen at random when starting. You have to pay for the game upfront, but unless you shell out for the expensive edition you only have a handful of Guardians at your disposal. The rest you buy using in-game currency, but the amount you have to play to unlock even one is ridiculous. Online, the game uses a peer-to-peer system for multiplayer instead of a server-based system, so expect a lot of lag all the time. That’s if you can even find a match: steamcharts.com which tracks players on Steam games reports GOME has at most, 20-30 people online at any time. Range indicators on abilities are unreliable, controls can be unresponsive, and you can’t even adjust the graphics settings in-game. Proving that the power of a franchise name alone isn’t enough to save a bad game, Guardians of Middle-earth is a derelict wreck. Its online community is dead, and even if you’re okay with just playing offline against bots, the core game experience is a let down.