Lord of the Rings, The - The Return of the King (Asia)
PlayStation 2
Reviewed in 2003
82
✪ Reviewed on July 19, 2025
76
One of the best action games based on the LoTR licence. Playing as Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli and Gandalf in the third film's battles is memorable. Faithfulness to Jackson's films and the epic violence of mass battles make it an excellent film tie-in.
Your verdict
Category
Action1 player12+
Description
An action game by Stormfront Studios and EA released in 2003, based on Peter Jackson's third film. Players string together the climactic battles of The Return of the King (Pelennor, Sauron's fall, Mount Doom) with four playable characters. Distributed in the US, Europe, Asia, Sweden and Korea, the peak of EA's Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Lord of the Rings, The - The Return of the King review
4/5
Art direction
★★★★★
"Striking"
4/5
Music
★★★★★
"Excellent"
4/5
Story
★★★★★
"Captivating"
This third entry opens the adventure to two-player play. Two heroes can now fight side by side on the same screen, covering each other, chaining combined attacks and picking one another up on the brink of defeat. This cooperative staging, absent from the previous game, turns the battles into a shared effort and makes solidarity a gameplay spring as much as a visual motif.
The music stands out for its moments of a single voice. After great orchestral blasts come solitary songs, a bare voice carrying a lament above the silence, as at farewells or vigils. These stretches of contemplation, rare in an action game, open poignant breathers between the fights and recall that the epic is also paid for in grief.
The scenario embraces the trilogy's end, from the battle of Helm's Deep to the fall of Sauron. The missions cover the final war for Middle-earth, alliances sealed, fortresses defended, the march toward the land of Shadow, along the thread of the last two films. The adventure closes on the resolution of the conflict, letting the player live the saga's culmination with controller in hand.
An Asian or Korean run of this Electronic Arts Lord of the Rings adaptation, from markets with narrow physical distribution, which makes it markedly rarer than the Western editions. This thinly documented regional release appeals to collectors attentive to the least common variants of the blockbuster. Its desirability rests mainly on this geographic scarcity.
Is Lord of the Rings, The - The Return of the King still worth playing in 2026?
Released in 2003 on PS2, Electronic Arts' project extends the formula of the previous brawler by covering the final battles of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The levels grow in scale, from the epic Deep to the Pelennor Fields, and the playable cast widens with paths dedicated to Gandalf, Aragorn or Sam. Local two player co-op deepens the pleasure of the mass clashes. The repetitive structure and the uneven difficulty persist. A polished adaptation, recommended for fans of cathartic action and for Tolkien devotees nostalgic about that great era of licensed games when blockbuster tie-ins were a craft of their own.
