The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth

The players control the heroes or villians from the famous Lord of The Rings movies. With a hero characters similar to the Warcraft series you control both the armies and all the unique heroes. The game…

84 6 December 2004

Real Time Strategy (RTS) Strategy Fantasy Warfare

The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth is a real time strategy (rts) developed by EA Los Angeles, released 6 December 2004 on PC (Microsoft Windows).

Verified 15 Oct 2026 Sources: IGDB , Wikipedia

What The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth is

The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth is a real time strategy (rts) game developed by EA Los Angeles and released in 2004. It was published by Electronic Arts. It is available on PC (Microsoft Windows) only. It runs on SAGE.

The premise, in the publisher's words

The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth is a 2004 real-time strategy video game developed by EA Los Angeles for Microsoft Windows. The first part of the Middle-earth strategy game, It is based on Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, in turn based on J. R. R. Tolkien's original novel. The game uses short video clips from the movies and a number of the voice actors, including the hobbits and wizards. It uses the SAGE engine. The sequel, The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II, was released on March 2, 2006.

Description from Wikipedia · source

How it plays

It is played from a bird view / isometric perspective. Its themes are fantasy and warfare. It is a single-player game with no multiplayer component. Available modes: Co-operative, Multiplayer and Single player.

Where it sits in the The Lord of the Rings series

The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth is the 24th of 69 entries we hold in the The Lord of the Rings series. The next entry was Lord of the Rings: Warrior of Middle Earth in 2004. Its critic score of 84 is 10 points above the series average of 74. The highest-rated entry is The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring at 91.

See all 69 The Lord of the Rings games in release order →

How it was received

The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth holds a critic score of 84 out of 100. That places it above 81% of the 612 rated real time strategy (rts) games in our database, which average 72. Games released in 2004 averaged 70, so it scored 14 points above the year average. Player ratings track closely with critics at 83, across 255 votes.

What it launched against

The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth launched on 6 December 2004, within three weeks of Half-Life 2, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords and World of Warcraft. It reviewed better than 1 of the 4.

Released around the same time: Half-Life 2, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords, World of Warcraft.

Cheats and codes

We have not confirmed any working cheat codes for The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth yet. Rather than reprint a list we have not tested, this section stays empty until one is verified.

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