I'm just glad that Tolkien's heirs kept such careful control over the IP to make sure it was only licensed to companies that would love and respect it.

"Gandalf returns from where ever the hell he's been" To be fair, that is accurate to the lore

A lot of people don't know this, but the reason Sauron is so malicious is that he saw a vision of this game and resolved to kill anything that might evolve to develop computers.

"They are your first premium currency"... That is an ominous statement.

''And then Gandalf returns from where ever the hell he's been'' is surprisingly canon.

To be fair, this game probably captures Tolkien's feelings about war quite well: most of it is waiting forever for something to happen, sometimes it is painfully expensive, overall it is blatantly stacked against you and there's nothing fun or romantic about it.

Josh: *Explains all the systems in the game* Me: *Brain glazes over*

You know, something tells me Gandalf wouldn't be advising anyone to use any of the rings of power.

"You are meant to be lost so they can sell you the method to become found." Apt description of any manipulative systems (or people) really, well said.

“I don’t have any friends. That’s why I’m playing this game. “ I felt this.

I love how people are protecting this game, basically saying Josh is a fraud and telling people to go play it. Some of them probably aren't even trolling. Just very sad.

"I don't have any friends, that's why I'm playing this game!" OOF, that hit me like a truck.

You know you're beyond saving, right? Not one person who has gone into a shitty mobile game like this this deep, came out of it and is still normal.

I imagine Faramir turned into a raging alcoholic after being in this game.

This is an icon for the entire reason I don't play mobile games. 99.9% of the app store is this particular variety of trash. It's frustrating, and it makes me want to invest the time to make a mobile game myself that is actually fun and monetized ethically. Thanks so much for the review, though, Josh, really enjoying your content and your style!!

Couple things from the perspective of a developer (no, not of this... thing): 1. Their site drops a bunch of cookies on computer without your permission (neteasegames and easebar). Would suggest anyone clear their browser after visiting the site. 2. They've left a _crapload_ of commented-out code in their live site (stuff like an entire game panel) on their site. Yuck. Oh, and one of these games is apparently... Overwatch? Hmm! 3. The slideshow navigation button IDs are "perv" and 'next". No, not "prev". Interpret that how you will. 4. They seem to have meta tags for a bunch of their crew, which is... kinda sleazy, tbh. All except their designer, whose tag is just blank. I think we can guess why.

Ah, NetEase. Blizzard's partner for the making of Diablo Immortal. How to start on the best of notes.

As someone who played Battle for Middle Earth 1 and 2 + Shadow of Angmar, the idea of a scam mobile game like this existing instead of a sequel or a remake of those beloved classics makes my blood boiling.

I consider it a righteous duty to hack these mobile games as I loathe their time gate models which is nothing more than a means to entice a player into spending money.

"pointless number embiggening" reminded me of a magical ring called "the embiggener" in an old game called "crusaders of might and magic". +10 strength when equipped. which makes a BIG difference in that game, all your melee attacks will do 25% more damage!

"The best way to monetize a game is to intentionally break parts of it and let players pay to skip them. So, by that logic, the best way to monetize a mobile game intended for casual audience is to break the entire game and then let players pay to skip all of it." -someone from somewhere at some point in time

"We can occupy higher level lands to obtain more *Power* for the *ring.* The higher a land's *Power,* the stronger its defending army." - Gollum. Yes I want to hear Andy Serkis as Smeagol in full performance capture tell me I need to construct additional pylons. (edit - 18:14)

For anyone interested in the math, to get any single elite commander with 95% probability, where you don’t care which one you get, you would need to open 3,190 loot boxes. To have a 95% probability of getting all nine elite commanders you would have to open 5,470 loot boxes. Remember that by the time you get the first one you will likely have close to 30 items for each of the others. Either way, that’s a ridiculous amount of real money.

It makes me so sad that such a gold mine of lore from the books or beauty from the movies is so wasted. There are dozens of Lord of the rings games and maybe 4 of them are good.

"They've told the voiceactors to crank the sexy sultry voiceacting to 11", "it's not about understanding, it's about clicking, quickly, watching numbers get bigger and sparkles happen" "you're meant to be lost becouse then they'll sell you the way to be found" and the calculations about elite commander that pile over each other....not every hero wears cape.

Tolkien's fucking backflipping in his grave

I have alot of mental health issues and have fallen for alot of this stuff/gambling... thanks Josh for always talking about this predatory stuff.

"the flayed mangled corpse of something that I'm not comfortable calling a game" That was brutal.

“Game design is evolving backwards” to us yes, but to the massive corporations it is evolving forwards and the money is going up so it is good right?

"So you just keep throwing wave after wave of your men at them" Well at least they got how Mordor fights wars accurate.

The fact that you're casually using a Ring of Power is the first indication that this game goes against every point Tolkien tried to communicate.

16:09 To be fair, this is Mordor’s entire strategy in both the books and the movies, so they at least got that right.

Unfortunately this isn't just one game, this is 100s, 100s of reskinned low effort garbage with different themes, kingdom builders, dragon kingdom builders, viking's, pirates, fantasy settings, old english settings, eastern settings, cave men, pet tamers, tribesmen, vampires, zombie invasions, other ips like warhammer/star trek ofc, hell you name it; from multiple developers. Whatever garbage they can use as an excuse to drag in a few more whales with the lowest effort content imaginable, ever since around the time of Travian these games have just been multiplying over and over again. Anecdotally so take it with plenty of salt but from my experience they seem to attract a surprisingly large amount of boomers with little time/knowledge to game properly and well paying jobs, ripe for these companies to manipulate. Recently though they seem to have gotten a lot worse as people continue to turn a blind eye to what's going on in the mobile game industry and more and more companies try to cash in on the dodgy business practices.

If that's what a NetEase game is like, Diablo: Immortal is screwed.

So basically this entire game is just a menu

Ads for predatory mobile games with fake gameplay during a Josh Strife Hayes video about a predatory mobile game with ads featuring fake gameplay. Peak KZfaq here.

now there will be ads of this game saying that jsh said "the opening cinematic is actually quite good"

Game: "Your ring... what does it look like?" Josh: "Damn, game, at least buy me dinner first! " Line totally killed me :P

I actually always enjoyed the idea these games have. Like, time based strategy city builders with semi-automated battles. Unfortunately they are just build to abuse your patience and throw money at em. Wonder if there are actually games like this,but without the abuse to get money

„We‘ll get Faramir by throwing beer at him, which every LotR fan can tell you is completely accurate because Faramir was clearly a raging alcoholic and not the warden of the White Tower! I don‘t care what the books say, this is canon!“ X-D

"I don't have any friends, that's why I'm playing this game." 😆 True friends would indeed keep you from playing this 😉

Just a reminder: Pay to skip is the most profitable form of microtransactions, by far. Not pay to win, not cosmetics or anything of the sort. The most effective way to gouge consumers for money is to make them pay to skip the wait or eliminate tedium. This is exactly why all major publishers started including some sort of boosts or skips in their single player games, under the guise of "player choice". Nope, they know very well that this will earn them stacks of cash and you better believe that the game design was influenced by this decision too. Everything will be made just a bit too long or too annoying.

honestly hearing "lord of the rings" and "mobile game" in the same sentence is already disheartening.

Allow me to explain: I played this game for like 3 or 4 weeks. I understood it completely. It's hardcore pay 2 win (I stopped playing - but not without spending around 150€ before...). It's a battle simulation and this is it. I got one T3 commander (0.1% Chance...) but it doesn't matter if there are other ppl w more money to sink than you. You can get better "Hero Idle Missions" in the moment you get more Honor/Respect on your commanders you also get better mission -> this leads to: you spend more money, you get higher respect on ur commanders, you get better missions which actually allow you to get T3 points (like 60 from the multiple thousandths u need) also the amount of the points increases the more respect u get. This is loop which will rob your money like a casino if you get addicted to it. Trust me. I lived through it and stopped due to things in my personal life -luckily - it's actually funny finding your vid by now bc finally someone points at the mistakes.

That sigh at the end when he said "thanks for watching" shows just how much he enjoyed playing this masterpiece. Sigh / 10

As soon as I saw Gandalf helping a character to level up a ring of power(!) I knew the developers probably hadn’t even seen the movies much less read the books.

"Not all those who wander are lost..." ...as long as they buy our premium currency!

Really appreciate the cost calculation on the commander recruitment lootboxing. I was about to do it and write it up in a snarky comment, but you did it magnificently. Great video, you have saved the world from uncounted wasted gamer hours and the heresy of it's 'lore'. *golf claps *

You obviously missed the fact that this was based Tolkien's little known alternate version of LOTR where no named character could ever die. It was a scathing commentary on hero worship and the futility of the endless cycle of warfare.

This game in reality - You’re a tourist visiting a new city and you’re looking for something fun to do. You’re walking on the sidewalk and a man walks up to you and asks if you’re looking for something fun to do. You say “yes how’d you know”? He answers “your recent search history told me”. “Follow me” he says. And you do what he says immediately and follow him. You walk to a park and he picks up a very large black lawn bag filled with rotting garbage. He dumps all the trash on the ground and tells you “now I want you to pick all the garbage up and put it back into the bag”. You agree immediately. Before you start picking up the rotting garbage of half eaten moldy hot dogs and crap filled baby diapers he tells you “now you can pick all that garbage up with your hands or I can sell this small plastic children’s shovel to you for $30 and you can use that instead” you agree immediately and pay him $30 cash. After you spend 10 minutes shoveling the garbage back into the bag(would have taken 15 minutes without the small children’s shovel) you ask “what’s next”? The man handcuffs you to his own arm and says “follow me”. He takes you to different places around town and at each consecutive stop he dumps a larger bag of rotting garbage on the ground and tells you to pick it up. He says each time “you’ve used up the number of times you can use that shovel, you need to buy a new one”. So you buy a new shovel each time and the price for the shovel goes up $10 each time. After doing this 10 more times you have spent all your money and several hours of your time. The man turns to you and asks “well did you have fun?” What would your reaction be?

Hearing Josh list the convoluted economy system of an abusively designed mobile game like he's the Micro Machines guy fills me with a sense of dread.

I like how they have a detailed battle log to try to make you think it's a detailed, complex game you're playing where your choices matter - to cover up the fact that it's actually literally not that.

"Uninstall BlueStacks with antivirus", I really hope that wasn't the official support site basically calling out its own installation practices as being akin to malware.

You could probably generate a lot of electricity from Tolkien turning in his grave because of this if you wrapped some cable around him. And had some magnets in the coffin to function as a stator and a cable to bring the electricity out.

Actually a good trick if you ever tackle mobile games in the future: They don't track if you *actually* join, just if you pressed the button that links you to there. As soon as you hit it you can just stop the window from even finishing to open. :D And you get the free stuff!

i felt like explaining this cause you keep mentioning it but the reason you gain insane amounts of loot in these types of games is to give the feeling to new players that they are catching up to older players so that they will start believing the creators care about new players and don't just view them as walking atms.

My first question about this game was, "They're using the rings of power, and they're characters from the books/movies who aren't wraiths?"

"Like a christmas special, where everyone shows up for the sake of showing up." Oh you mean like the Star Wars Christmas Special? 😎 Also I'm still convinced that the voice actress for the intro was actually an AI. Gutfeeling.

Just here to confirm I’m not going mad by those annoying ads. You can tell they’re bs but still mad they still think the cinematics are fooling anyone

Lost count how many times I laughed 😅 I totally fell for every single instance designed to make you shell out money. Why? Because I'm a Tolkien sucker. He asks, "if this had no attachment to the Tolkien mythos, would u still play?" Without hesitation, no. Absolutely love this video!! Now, I think Faramir just woke up...

Christopher Tolkien would have never let this happen. It’s sad to see the Tolkien estate start whoring out JRR’s legacy as soon as Christopher died.

Not surprising as soon as I saw netease. Every game they make is like this, have a million different systems to give you the illusion you are progressing and also just autoplay everything to give oyu the feeling of progressing without needing to do anything

Genius. Thanks for saving me the trouble of playing it for a few hours to realize all that you’ve said. Remarkable how high the reviews on the App Store are.

Just awful to see the lord of the rings reduced to predatory money tactics.

I just remember one of the adverts was like "Ugh, I got Gandalf? I already have too many wizards!" And I'm here thinking, "Aren't there like, only 5 wizards in the canon of Lord Of The Rings?"

I love the rising level of anger in these videos over time soon itll just be Josh screaming at flashing lights and powerups going off by themselves

I played this for a little while, I don’t know the name of this game type, but the ads always promote it as essentially Total War for mobile, but in reality it’s an army marching simulator.

So they ban all the lotr overhauls for skyrim, but greenlight this shit. I hate this planet.

A mobile game being terrible - imagine my shock!

Not a single mobile game of this type has ever been good in a decade, yet they still make billions off their Asian marker and whales. It's pure lunacy That's why the arena based games are better if you like mobile games. Still a little whale-ish but much more engaging and competitive unlike these strategy city builder husks

You did such a good job showing how awful and boring this game is that I had a hard time watching the video itself. I can't imagine what it would be like to try and actually PLAY this awful thing.

I think this game would be a dime-a-dozen predatory, shitty mobile game if not for it being under such a massive IP. As sad as it may sound to say, nobody would care if it was unrelated to LoTR. It would be a vacant husk nearly indistinguishable from every other game in its genre.

I knew when the fella died who ran the Tolkien Estate the other year this shit would happen. They had a good run, but LOTR is now going to be milked good and proper.

" It only takes 30 seconds to decide your fate" = Adverts like this prove why to avoid most mobile games

I have little respect for people who fall for terrible mobile game ads. I have even less for people who unironically like these games. And I have none for the predators who make them.

It's really sad that Tolkien's descendants (of both J.R.R. and Christopher) agreed to this use of their IP. I guess quick easy cash is quick easy cash no matter who you are.

This is literally the game for the average mobile gamer, who just logs on during their breaks and just quickly clicks on everything and then comes back during their next break to get that personal satisfaction of having gotten some more pointless digital rewards, that aren't even 10% of what you could just straight up buy in the cash store. Then they think the game is good, spread the good word and that's how whales are attracted. It's shameless...

Remember the good old days of Age of Empires, Age of Mythology, The Settlers, & Heroes of Might & Magic, & there were no microtransactions or waiting times?

This the exact same formula as hundreds, literal hundreds, of click here and numbers go up that mean nothing. As gamers we need to condemn these with the strongest wording possible.

They’re taking advantage of a generation of gamers who buy games and rush to the ingame store to buy everything because they never want to work for anything..

These sort of games can only ever hope to be a fraction as entertaining as Josh's sparkling commentary.

“The only thing they got right is the branding.” They know it too. Their latest ad is a guy saying how the game probably sucks, but then someone else convinced him it’s good and the only thing she had to say about it was that it is “Officially Licensed!!”

I liked the part where 500 rangers showed up to help a little caravan with some orcs

Mutters: "loss leader... but digital asset..." realising I don't need to watch these videos, I know everything in them already

I'm a MASSIVE LOTR fan, have been ever since my parents first read the books to me as a youngster. (Not that you'd EVER be able to tell by my username.....*cough*). When I saw this on the mobile store, I jumped at the chance. ten mins later I was regretfully deleting the app. TERRIBLE, terrible, terrible. I'm glad Josh is doing a video on this, I can't wait for the premiere!

As someone who actually does play Raid Shadow Legends, the ads they have for their game actually do lie as well. A common thing is that they show that putting armor on champions changes how they look which is a complete lie. Most of the time, it's the ad changing from one character to another. Other ads seem to show characters with wrong stats and going over the level limit. I think we can all blame Hero Quest for that due to every single one of their ads being a lie...or maybe every mobile game just hires the same people.

I espacially liked the part where he clicked the button!

So basically it's the same as any other p2w mobile game just reskinned as lotr

So this is basically _Battle for Middle-Earth_ except shit.

Another fun thing is when you play Evil, your guide/helper is Saruman. Imagine playing Mordor and the faction leader of another faction is telling You what to do. Imagine playing Rhun and this bearded guy you never heard of is telling you what to do. Imagine playing Angmar and this robed Witch-king wannabe looking guy(without a cool helmet) is telling you what to do. Imagine playing Isengard and your faction leader is telling you what to do. Huh. At least on Good, everyone knows Gandalf, and Gandalf is a neutral party.

If Chris Tolky disliked the Peter Jackson films then he would suffer a stroke if you showed him this shit.

Honestly thank you for this video, I kept seeing the ad for the game and being interested in LOTR I wanted to check it out. I take a look at the game in the store, say to myself, “oh no this looks a bit shit, doesn’t it?” I’m glad that I watched your video to confirm my suspicions, and the commentary was spot on amazing.

A friend of mine told me about the game and since he is a LOTR fan I just played along and downloaded it. Thing is, even as an avid gacha gamer that gives a pass to some barebones games just because waifus, this shit was so bad I couldn't bear to play more than a few hours before quiting and I just lasted that long because my friend came in to "remind" me to play so we can build a guild and shit. I feel bad for him... I have my guilty pleasures, yes, but this dude unironicaly likes Raid shadow legends and this "game".

The advertisement for this exact game interrupting this video in the middle was simultaneously hilarious and depressing... Truly pathetic, how the majority of the games industry (mobile and otherwise) is now fueled not by creativity and passion, but cheap marketing and charlatanism.

I don't understand why people pay for the rubbish in these mobile games. I remember downloading 1 mobile game and before I even played it it asked me for money.

The balance issue are horrible (ie. there are no meaningful balance mechanisms). Early stages were ok, building your city and getting land. But by mid-game it's just a small handful of factions dominating over all others. Unless you happen to be in one of a very small number of powerful factions, everyone else just gets steamrolled over, and there's nothing you can do but be dominated and watch your resources disappear. Not much 'game' in that.

Voice overs are expensive and they probably didn't expect anyone to get this far. As someone who quit and uninstalled right after you watch the first battle I can say this is very accurate.

You could have summed this whole thing up with "It's a predatory city builder mobile game with a LotR skin. Avoid at all costs." Also, I bet you this is one of those games where the "devs" would never fix the actual bugs but the second anyone edits their gems the devs dox them, kill their dog, and EMP their house

The toughest part about that caravan rescue was not clicking away during the ad break i got during it

This is pathetic. Thank you for the excellent video explaining how rubbish the “game” is. So sad for Tolkien’s memory