There I stand, sword in hand, covered in the blood of all those who have opposed me, marching forward under the ever darkening shadow of the Isengard tower. Advancing alongside my allies, I have one simple goal to accomplish: to defeat Saruman and put a swift end to his Orc army building facilities. One final push should be all that we need to bring this battle to a close when abruptly it happens - I get a brand new objective to take control of an Ent. There should be no way that this could be a letdown but if you'd seen what I'd had to endure to get here - if you knew just how bumblingly-inept The Lord of the Rings: Conquest was - you'd perhaps appreciate why even the prospect of playing as a giant, orc-killing tree just doesn't generate the excitement it should.

The potential was all here; take a popular movie trilogy and use its source material to chart some of its biggest battles through a fifteen-level story campaign that gives you full control of a number of the Lord of the Rings' more exotic creatures, then tie the whole thing off with a multiplayer mode that uses the same template as the Battlefield games. This should have been simple, particularly for Pandemic, who have done this exact kind of thing twice now with Star Wars: Battlefront and Battlefront II; they have the necessary experience, which begs the question as to why nothing about this game, from its concept to its execution, quite falls into place.

There are hints at the great action that game Conquest could have been throughout the single player mode, beginning with the War of the Ring campaign that sees you fighting on the side of good. You're taken through eight levels of familiar battle scenes from the movies, starting with Helm's Deep and moving on through to Minas Tirith and eventually the Black Gate. While it gets the look and feel of the settings right, the meagre attempts at scale mean that the battles never come close to matching the epic scale of the big screen. If you've ever had the chance to play the console hack 'n' slash epic Dynasty Warriors then you're already familiar with the style of game that Conquest tries to create, but it's obvious from the outset that troop numbers and even the map sizes just aren't as large as they should be. It's all rather linear too; using the multiplayer game modes as inspiration, much of the objectives you are given tend to revolve around capturing flag positions, with some occasional, lightly varied objectives requiring you to kill a specific enemy or capture a special item. Exploration is an afterthought; you simply follow the path laid out ahead of you and concentrate on the important business of killing things.

Once a flag position does fall under your control, it then, as it does in the multiplayer modes, acts as both a spawn point for you when you die and the character selection screen where you can choose from the four roles available - the Warrior, Archer, Mage and Scout. These are as predictable as their names suggest; the Warrior is the main melee class, able to soak up more damage than his counterparts while relying on a varied mixture of powerful combo attacks to slash his way through groups of enemies - once his power gauge is filled from the incessant killing of those who stand against him, he can unleash special magical sword attacks that can flatten even larger groups of enemies with ease. The Archer on the other hand possesses neither the strength to sustain damage from those who venture too close or the capabilities to fight them off when they do, but can use his keen eye to pulverise enemies from a distance, while his own special attacks can also slow down or engulf enemies in flames long before they can reach him. The Mage takes on the responsibilities of the healer and can protect his allies under the safety blanket of a protective shield that prevents archers' arrows from hitting those within, but he also has offensive spells and is capable of charging up powerful lightning attacks that can jump between several enemies and kill them in one fell swoop. The Scout on the other hand is all about subterfuge; the second melee class who sacrifices strength and sheer brute force for speed and manoeuvrability, his real claim to fame is his ability to cloak and sneak up behind enemies, claiming one hit kills if he successfully manages to assassinate them. There are occasions when the game asks you to take control of a hero character - such as Aragorn or Gandalf - and despite having much more health and more powerful attacks, their style of play always fits into one of the four roles already available.

The class archetypes remain the same for both Good and Evil and do tend to be balanced for the most part, but there are problems. The archer for instance seems slightly overpowered, with headshots resulting in instant kills, while the poor old warrior needs to slash away at his opposition before they fall, and although the scout may have one of the more unique abilities in the game, he also has to endure an erratic onscreen prompt that tells him exactly when he can strike a target - but it's difficult to get the timing just right, meaning that there many occasions when whilst trying to assassinate someone you might accidentally reveal your position before getting the kill and find yourself surrounded. This is particularly annoying in the multiplayer games.

Most of the problems at this point in the game are very nearly - and I hasten to emphasise the word nearly - forgivable when the Rise of Sauron campaign is unlocked upon completion of War of the Ring. This seven level campaign is a 'what if' story that attempts to chart out what might have happened if Frodo had failed in his task of destroying the One Ring. Playing the part of the bad guys, you find yourself returning to many of the levels of the previous campaign with the sole purpose of crushing those you once valiantly fought alongside. This all culminates in the Razing of the Shire, playing Sauron himself as you slaughter hundreds of Hobbits and burn the Shire to the ground. Everything about this campaign is a vast improvement over what comes before and some of the level design even manages to impress in its scale and diversity, but it's just at that point when you are about to start having fun - when you very nearly start to forgive the game for some of its earlier mistakes - that one of the other critical flaws rears its unwanted head and slaps you across the face, reminding you of just how poor the quality of the whole experience is.

One of the crucial problems with the game is also its most important of features - the combat - and it just never feels right, thanks to a combination of poor, glitch-riddled animations and the fact that most weapons feel unusually weightless, making the whole business of killing unsatisfactory. You swing your sword and some orcs clumsily fall over, repeating the whole thing like it's a chore. Even when you finally gain control of one the game's huge beasts, such as a troll or Balrog, the whole thing manages to be a complete letdown, due primarily to their enormous scale. They just move too damn slowly and with the camera panning to awkward positions to try and show the whole battlefield, it can be equally difficult to navigate the terrain as it is to identify what you're attacking.

The list of flaws certainly don't end there, either. The AI frequently manages to frustrate and annoy; no matter how many of your allies are onscreen, it's always you who becomes the centre of attention to the hordes of enemies, which seem unnaturally attracted to you. This wouldn't be as much of a problem if it wasn't for the fact that your teammates are so blitheringly stupid that if they aren't throwing themselves into bottomless pits, they're frequently fighting enemies in areas that you cleared five minutes ago. There are also some bizarre design decisions that might see you able to withstand huge drops without taking any damage, yet so much as dip a toe in a waist-high stream of water and it's instant death. The whole game just feels broken and unfinished.

Where Pandemic get some things right are with the audio; roping in the voice talents of Hugo Weaving to narrate his character's role of Elrond during the cut scenes certainly adds some gravitas to the proceedings and the use of the movie's soundtrack is also a nice touch that aptly fits with the rest of the game. But Pandemic squander this effort with the rest of the voice cast, who speak their lines in some of the most dull tones ever and seem to feel the need to repeat themselves every five seconds. It's difficult to get through an entire level without the urge to throw your speakers out of the window. As for the presentation, I think I'd be fair in saying that this is a very pretty looking PlayStation 2 game, because it certainly doesn't seem to be making any use of your PC's hardware; at the very least it looks adequate and some effects very nearly manage to look impressive, but for the most part it's a myriad of technical glitches, poor character animation and dreadful lighting effects.

There was at least some sliver of hope with the multiplayer portion, where some of the game's problems might have been forgivable and where you would hope that any enjoyment you could get from the game would be found from playing against other people online. Sadly, the multiplayer just ends up being as inept as the campaign experience; you get four game modes to play - Capture the Ring (i.e. flag), Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Conquest, a territorial game mode requiring the capture of certain control points in the map. Basically we've been given the bare minimum of modes that are riddled with exactly the same technical flaws and glitches of the rest of the game, but with the added intrusion of connection issues and server disconnects, it actually manages to feel worse. Even if you do manage to get into a game, you'll find that both player limits (up to sixteen players) and populations are just too low. Some of the maps can feel near deserted, even when servers are at capacity, which makes the use of Trolls or Ents and such feel pointless, as there just aren't enough people playing to unleash them upon. This is a real shame, as the multiplayer mode certainly had the most potential, but in the end, as with the rest of the game, it's just another big letdown.

There's some limited fun to be had with The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, and there are even times when the great game it could have been almost shine through, but plagued with such gaping flaws and wasted potential, the small amount of enjoyment that you might be able to gain never seems to justify the time you spend trying to discover it.

Reviewed by Kieron Giacopazzi for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).