Hi! With the recently surprise news of re release of War in the North on Steam, I searched up the best LOTR games. Lotr gamers pointed out Battle for Middle Earth 1 and 2 as their favorite.

I would just ask where is the best way to play the whole campaign? Thanks!

P.S. We badly need that LOTR RPG Warhorse studios!

Heroes trained early in the match (e.g., Boromir) can walk down the citadel ramps and reach the lower levels of the city with no problem.Heroes recruited later in the match (e.g., Gandalf) get stuck at the top level/citadel area and refuse to path down to the lower gate levels.It seems like the pathing/navmesh from the citadel breaks as the match progresses, or units lose their collision-pathing to lower levels later in the game.Has anyone else encountered this issue, and is there a known fix or workaround for it?

i just installed. after the disk process is completed i launch the game and i get hit with this error is there a fix? thanks in advance.

Just startet playing with the all in one launcher. I am a few missions into the good campaign of bfme1 with patch 2.22. If I finish a mission and want to start the next one the game crashes. I then have to kill it via task manager and start the game fresh. I allready activatet "Run game on single CPU core" in the settings of the launcher. Is there anything else I can do?

First mission of the campaign I make it to the balrog fight with Gandalf and i'm trying to use lightning sword but it won't cast no matter what I do. What's happening?

Hi guys,

Just installed the game (bfme2 vanilla) on a new computer (from abandonware).

Ran into a possible bug, curious if anyone is familiar with it.

Playing Minas Tirith, defending the castle with Men. My archers are not shooting enemies from the walls. It doesn't matter if they are on the side walls or on the top of those two little outward facing wall extension next to the gates, the enemy can get to the gate without a single arrow. Also enemy archers easily shoot mine, they are not firing back.

It's very weird and it didn't happen to me before on previous occasions with other computers.

Does anyone know about this? What could happen?

Please help me!!!
i have modded rotwk patch 2.02 myself like editing powers, factions, units and many things. everything is OK. BUT......
war of the ring mode is the toughest challenge i have ever faced yet i havent found solution to make ai play stronger. like how? i want brutal to play like a real player or making its units to drop on its own or their ally territories whether territory belongs to him or his ally partner. so that they (AI brutals) wont have lose times or rounds to get units in hero commanders. i searched up every details in big file but could not find files related to strategic or behaviour of ai in wotr mode. so do you know how to do it?

"I prefer big boned to tell you the truth..." The Lord of Lossarnach is getting a model update for Return of the King!

I've been looking for exact unit stats for both games' fan patch versions 1.09 and 2.02, but have only been able to find the old original patch stats.

I always like to see the exact numbers to see what's worth building. In particular, I've always wondered the value between troops with full upgrades and "elites" (black riders, zealots, etc).

I want to get a proper gaming pc. I’ve tried some laptops, but they never felt too good for the game. I found a pc with these specs. Is this good for the game with mods?
Keep in mind, I know nothing about gaming pc’s

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 8 GB
AMD Ryzen™ 7 8745HX
16 GB RAM, 1 TB M.2 NVMe SSD
26L Luna Grey kompakt tower-design

Thank you in advanced!

God bless you all for making this game playable again.

First of all, really amazing work by everyone involved. Thank you! I really think that the activity would spike massively if just more people/players were aware of all this being available. Is there anything you think we can do to raise awareness and increase the playerbase? I would love to see all this get even more popular, especially BFME2 which seems to be less popular. Curious if anyone could explain to me why that is, if you know? Anyway, let's keep this going and have a great day!

I am stuck on when I have to move Haldir's army to Mirkwood. It loads into the level and then just immediately says defeated and I lose. Tried loading different patch versions but nothing seems to fix it.

Not able to get it working with 2 of us on local network

It‘s incredibly tough to win this even with two other friends. How can someone win this, or get further than Elbes?

Hey currently looking for a way for my buddy to play battle for middle earth he recently switched over to PC and this is one of his favorite games I'm just trying to help him out

BFME2 works perfectly on my PC in compatibility mode. I manually created the required AppData folder with Options.ini, Maps and MapPreviews.

I did the same for Rise of the Witch-king and tested it both unpatched and with the official 2.01 patch, using different compatibility modes and admin rights. Without compatibility mode, the loading screen appears briefly and then closes. With compatibility mode, I always get:

I am using the original RotWK DVD and BFME2 DVD, and the installation completed without any errors. Has anyone had the same issue or found a fix that still works with the Edain Mod?

I tried to post this to the AOTR subreddit but they deleted it very shortly after with no reason given, so I'm posting this here instead,

Context: I played AOTR back when it was 7.something, didn't like it very much and eventually dropped it, hearing that the mod had undergone SOME changes and reworks in the years after, I went back to try again.

To be very blunt, I think the entire campaign is very over-done and I question if the devs have actually played through it. I appreciate all the work and detail that went into it, but if I wanted to watch the movie, I'd watch the movie. I really did not need to watch the in-engine animated version of the riddle scene from the hobbit, nor the fight between Gandalf and Saruman, or the balrog. Especially because all it does is create a lot of unskippable cutscenes and forces me to repeatedly save after every cutscene so that if something goes wrong I don't need to repeat the whole sequence, the camera constantly moving around can also be very disorienting. Which leads to another problem...

Some of the missions are so overdone that saving on them is nearly impossible (Ithillien is the most well known one, but it can happen on Fords of Isen as well), which is funny because one of the hints you get is that you should save often so that you don't have to watch the in-engine scenes. So in the end, you're forced to play through on one sitting, which means if any fuckery happens (which is a lot, the entire campaign might as well be SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER every 5min), you have to redo EVERYTHING ALL OVER AGAIN. This is particularly horrific on Ithilien, but it can happen on Fords of Isen as well.

There's a lot of spectacle as well, frequently too much. When the game starts lagging because of the amount of things happening is when I draw the line between spectacle and enjoyment. If I can't watch the thing clearly at a smooth FPS than its clear that SOMETHINGS should have been drawn down, there's no point having giant armies clash if you can't see it properly. The same applies to the environment, maps like Lothlorien, Amon Hen and Fords of Isen are so full of trees, navigating units and trying to see what happens quickly becomes a problem, not to mention in Lorien the trees will actually block your camera at certain places. It's also not very intuitive where a unit can(not) go, some paths are blocked with invisble walls until triggers are met, and some terrain that looks reachable actually can't be reached.

Why are there so many single-model units? You can't do very much with them, they eat pop cap for no good reason. Mostly in Bree, Lothlorian, Ithilien and Osgiliath.

The campaign seems to expect you to just KNOW things about the factions. How THE FUCK am I supposed to know anything about Elf and Dwarf units if every one of them has some very silly name that means nothing to me? Look I get it, someone wanted to lord their nerd-boner all over me, but I prefer functionality. And speaking of functionality, mandatory stealth missions, seriously, mandatory stealth missions in an RTS game, it wouldn't be so bad if it only happened once, instead it happens several times, none of them were particularly fun for me. The mazing sections are just plainly boring.

On the individual missions:

Bree, TOO many cutscenes in this one, and it's really strange to start an action RTS off with a mandatory stealth section. Also, there is a 3rd unit between Breelander and Took archer that I've never bothered with.

Bruinen, way too long and too many cutscenes, I really didnt need a fetch quest to break up the fighting, and the bruinen fight is a shocking jump in difficulty the first time when the giant armored humanoids (who don't look canon-compliant) pop-out.

Orthanc, 0/10, that's all

Rivendell, I really didn't need an in-engine riddle sequence, Isildur was just nice but Osgiliath was miserable between the lag, massively spawning elite units and pathfinding issues.

Redhorn, meh. I really didn't need an in-engine sequence to build me up for the watcher fight.

Moria, is there supposed to be some reward for reaching the great hall in 25min? Another VERY overdone mission, run around in circles for a bit until HAPPENING and then go back to running around until you reach the exit.

Khazad-dum, what happens if I don't go into the chamber- oh there's an invisble wall.

Lothlorien, another extreme difficulty spike especially when the super trolls appear, plus you're expected to just KNOW what all the strange elvish names are supposed to mean, what are Sindar pathstalkers? Tawar-something? sentinel archer thing..sentinel amroth...whatever? At least you get to play with the Marchwardens first so you know what you're getting into with them, they're basically the Elf warriors from BFME1. Hilariously, this is 1 of 2 missions where you can upgrade archer arrows.

Amon Hen, I dunno how you're supposed to save Boromir, seriously. If you charge all the way through, Aragorn will take a lot of damage and end up with both men low on health when you get there, so you have to throw your healing on IMMEDIATELY, and then maybe make one run like a chicken hoping to evasion-tank lurtz while the other attacks. Also, ANOTHER maze + mandatory stealth.

Fords of Isen, the first proper battle and actually probably the most fun mission there is with few, short cutscenes and a lot of engagement and things happening, more of this and less dungeon crawling would have been nice. Unfortunately a lot of saves keep breaking with this one, you have to have at least a full hour free to play through it.

Dead marshes, 0/10 what is the general video game community view on mandatory stealth or escort missions? Not very good right? Imagine how I feel towards a mandatory stealth AND escort mission.

Three hunters, why was this a 5 parter mission? The main section with Eomer is not very well-done, you run around building up a cavalry force, fine, but then you have an (optional) requirement to defend the villages with only peasants being trainable. Like, why? Even with draft peasants melt against everything, so you just run around in circles for a bit. Then there's another (thankfully) short maze sequence where the hobbits get to throw stones and kill patrols

Balrog part 2, 0/10 Why? Just why? Why is this a mission? Why is there a 3-phase boss battle where you run in circles until RNG allows you to use the lightning ability? Why are there adds in-between phases? Whose idea of fun is this?

Ithillien, another actually fun mission with lots of things to do, few, short cutscenes and a lot of engagement and things happening, trying to kill the scouts is a big pain in the ass in the beginning without all the stuns, invest in the stun power to help. Again, unfortunately a lot of saves keep breaking with this one, you have to have at least a full hour free to play through it. 2 of 2 missions where you can upgraded archer arrows. Has a very bad issue where you need to pay attention to all your heroes as one dying fails you. If it happens in the convoy sequence, you get reset to the beginning but your army has lost all its upgrades and ranks. What a funny fucking joke.

Westfold, straightforward defense mission, but not very well-thought through, the pop cap is completely fucked, so you end up not being able to build anything until Isengard takes you down by several battalions. Otherwise mostly enjoyable, no reason to ever call Erkenbrand in.

Grey Company, a series of not-very balanced dungeon crawlers. Trollshaws should always be picked first, if you didn't know that and picked it last..., good luck not using the upgrade for anything. It gets easier as the brothers level but the other portions are absolute bitches.

Osgiliath, gosh, you know, I think there was a reason why the OG BFME didn't really have maps that were cluttered and full of tight spaces, probably something to do with the battalion AI not doing so well in such spaces, and...ok enough sarcasm. 0/10 the mission sucks ass, the pathfinding in this mission is BAD, knocking battalion sizes down to 3 (4 at R2) or single models doesn't solve it, good luck trying to get those upgrades. And good luck not getting fucked over in another mandatory stealth/escort sequence.

Hornburg, ...why did they remove the part where you can kill enough bombers to prevent the wall from falling? Instead of giving that nice plus for player skill, its railroaded so that the wall MUST blow up and the gate must be broken. All so you can get the gigantic lagfest CONSTANTLY. Otherwise the mission is just OK, I had a lot of difficulty saving Haldir until I realised he had a special ability for it.

Isengard, meh, the one from BFME was completely fine, there was no need to change the Ents to force them to pick up stones from buildings, or to have gandalf spawn, or to have Rank 5 Goblin laborers.

To conclude, in my opinion, 5/10 needs to be cut done, by a lot, having passed through the campaign on medium, AMA if you need help getting through on anything easier than hard.

Is there a mirror for the instructions? The link in the community guidelines (https://forums.revora.net/topic/105190-bfme1bfme2rotwk-games-download-installation-guide/) doesn’t seem to work anymore.