One of the best action games based on Peter Jackson's films. Playing as Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli in The Two Towers battles is gripping. Hero progression and orc enemy waves create an epic and visually impressive experience for the era.
Your verdict
Category
Action1 player12+
Description
An action game by Stormfront Studios and EA released in 2002, based on Peter Jackson's second film. Players control Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli through the Emyn Muil, Fangorn Forest and the siege of Helm's Deep. A spectacular hack-and-slash with the full film license, the first major LotR game on PS2.
Lord of the Rings, The - The Two Towers review
4/5
Art direction
★★★★★
"Striking"
4/5
Music
★★★★★
"Excellent"
4/5
Story
★★★★★
"Captivating"
This adaptation of The Two Towers sets out to reconstruct the sets of Peter Jackson's films. Helm's Deep and its ramparts, the mines of Moria, the plains of Rohan are rebuilt from the screen, with the same care for architectural detail and materials. The player thus finds immediately recognizable places, as if stepping into the shots of the feature film.
Rather than re-recording, the game uses Howard Shore's score directly, exactly as it sounds in the films. You recognize the very takes of the soundtrack, with their breath and the scale of a cinema recording, laid over the action, controller in hand. This authenticity, rare for an adaptation, gives the battles the precise sonic texture of the big screen, with no arrangement.
The scenario condenses the trilogy's first two films into a succession of missions. From the underground prologue to the crossing of the lands of Rohan, each level replays a striking scene of the filmed story, the Uruk-hai ambush, the skirmishes along the way, in the very order the films present them. The adventure reads as a playable retelling of the plot, tightened onto its great action sequences.
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 Two Towers still worth playing in 2026?
Released in 2002 on PS2, Electronic Arts' project adapts the first two films of the Lord of the Rings trilogy into a third person brawler of formidable efficiency. The combat rests on combos, parries and gratifying finishing blows, illustrated by film footage drawn from the movies. Playing Aragorn, Legolas or Gimli at Helm's Deep delivers a genuine epic sweep. The repetition of the fights and the linearity make themselves felt. Recommended for fans of nervous action and for Tolkien devotees nostalgic about the golden age of film tie-ins, when licensed games could match their source with real craft.
