# The Lord of the Rings: Heroes — user reviews > 82 indexed App Store user reviews of The Lord of the Rings by Electronic Arts Inc., rated 4.40/5 from 9,433 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/the-lord-of-the-rings-heroes/id1556695949/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/the-lord-of-the-rings-heroes/id1556695949.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 6,914 · 4★ 1,067 · 3★ 441 · 2★ 323 · 1★ 688 ## What do users think of The Lord of the Rings? Overall sentiment: negative **Pros** - 🚀 Solid gameplay foundation - 👍 Familiar LOTR characters - 🚀 Fast progression early on - 👍 Nostalgia for LOTR fans **Cons** - 🐛 Frequent crashes and bugs - 💰 Overly aggressive monetization - 🔒 Lack of content and game modes - 👎 Slow progression and gold bottleneck - 👎 Bland graphics and animations **Commonly reported bugs** - Freezing and loading issues - Inability to join guilds - Broken tutorial and progression blockers - Disappearing UI elements **Most requested features** - More recognizable LOTR characters - Improved combat animations - Increased gold and resource rewards - Additional game modes and content - Better F2P progression balance ## Newest reviews (23 of 82) ### 2/5 — No offers not much gameplay while raids take too long *2024-02-06* Gameplay is fun but you can finish your daily quests in a few mins. The raids can take too long because of rng and they never spawn the same enemies. For a mobile game that’s in it to make money there haven’t been any offers in months. I’m no whale but I don’t mind spending on a game I enjoy. There’s so much potential but it seems the devs want this game to fail. Since the launch raids have been the only real addition to the game, unless you consider marquee events when they release new toons. Since the beginning of December there hasn’t been any new information on where the game is headed except for one post on their X page. I never witnessed a game more neglected by devs especially when you consider the rich history of LOTR. It’s extremely sad to see a game with so much potential to be treated like this. It’s like the game is something they really could care less about ### 3/5 — MissedPotential *2023-12-06* This game, like SWGOH, has so much potential. I mean come on, who could screw up Star Wars or Tolkien lore? Enter Capital Games. Other than Activision, I can’t think of a company that hates/neglects/abuses its player base more. I will focus just on this game now. First and foremost, the game crashes nonstop. I have played on a brand new iPad, brand new iPhone 13, and iPhone XR. Same crashes. No difference across devices. There is nothing like losing arena tickets because of a game crash (and I am in gold ranking so I do care about my tickets). How about getting almost through a grueling raid just for the game to crash and have to start over? Speaking of raids, that’s essentially the only game content. Arena and a single boring raid. Want to make your characters better? Better plan on buying lots of gold with real money because they don’t give crap for gold in game. Oh yeah, you guessed it, gold is the driving force behind all upgrades in the game. I never thought I would say this about Lord of the Rings, but pass over this one until they do a complete overhaul (never gonna happen). ### 3/5 — Just OK Right Now *2023-11-21* The game is fun when there are things to do. Collecting characters is fun, but it there is currently a major major major drought of content to use any of the heroes for. On top of that, nearly every character added is given to every player at 3 stars for free. There is NO FUN in being given every new character for free. None. It defeats the purpose of a game where you have to work towards collecting your desired characters. On top of this, the game runs pretty terribly. Lots of lag, especially when quitting and retrying fights in the raid. Some common, but frustrating graphical issues, such as icons disappearing and having to restart the game to make them appear again. Infinite load screens that are only solved by a restart. Minor issues, but they get quite frustrating when you just want to play the game. I have no issues with the graphics, no issues with the gameplay and no issues with the characters they’ve added to the game thus far. Just give us something to do with them!! ### 2/5 — Fun but not for f2p *2023-09-21* I love me a good phone/tablet game but i dont always like to pay a bunch of money to them. I’ve spent money before on games (summoners war for example), so im not against it. This game is just a huge money grab: ads popping up for items/equipment every time you close a window, the pvp aspect you have to either wait 15 min for refresh or pay gem (or crystals whatever you want to call them) to refresh — they don’t come easy in game (1 or 2 hear and there) or pay for them of course. Farming takes about 3 seconds cas you only have so much energy and unless you refresh — you guessed it with gems again — you dont get a ton. Farming for characters is extremely slow due to the fact some levels you can only farm 5 times per 5 hours and get practically nothing. I love LoTR and am willing to spend 5 min a day to play this game (for the dailies) but if you’re looking for a f2p game as a main game you play don’t choose this one — go to summoners war. You will hate your life but at least you’ll still be playing a game for more than 21 min a wk lol ### 2/5 — Promising but disappointing *2023-09-06* If you’re looking for one of the most frustrating game experiences on the App Store, you’ve found it. With the release of the game, CG hyped up its first major content release in Raids, and it has been universally awful. The first chapter of the Mines of Moria raid is immensely frustrating, with multiple layers of RNG that leave all players in our guild angry, frustrated, and dumping hours into a feature for a game that should only take a fraction of that time daily. In addition, raids are both mandatory and unrewarding. So if your goal with your gaming experience is to be frustrated to the point of turning your phone off and walking away, this is the game for you. Players in discord have been complaining about this experience since raids released a month ago, and CG shows no interest in addressing it, so just be aware that your voice will go completely unheard. Additional knocks against this game include: underwhelming graphics and UI, excruciatingly slow progression, multiple resource chokeholds in a wildly unbalanced economy, and paid offers that are laughably pitiful. And a literal unending sea of bugs. Seriously, every week feels like there’s something new that will make you need to restart the app while playing. 2 stars because if you’re playing this game you’re obviously invested in the IP, and because the game has a lot of promise coming from the makers of Galaxy of Heroes. But let’s me honest, this is a really far cry from that. ### 3/5 — *UPDATED* Bland, buggy SWGOH clone *2023-08-31* Update: The annoying RESTART bugs have all but disappeared. Yay! Unfortunately, there are still far too many bugs for a high profile game that’s been out this long. The biggest bugs are the game often becoming unresponsive during Auto battle and the game getting stick on a Loading screen after claiming the daily rewards. Customer Support tends to be either unresponsive or utterly unhelpful. That said, there is a lot to like about this game and the more time I’ve spent with it the more I’ve learned its nuances. The many bland, indistinct characters are still a problem though. Original: I expected a LOTR-themed clone of Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes and that’s what it is. RESTART Unfortunately, the character designs are so bland that it’s often difficult to differentiate between the characters. RESTART With a few exceptions it’s all just a bunch of lookalike humans, elves and hobbits with swords, spears and bows vs lookalike orcs & goblins with swords, spears and bows. RESTART Nowhere near the variety and appeal of Star Wars characters. RESTART Worst of all, the game is super buggy. RESTART And, yes, the game constantly crashes and tells you to RESTART RESTART RESTART RESTART RESTART. ### 2/5 — Close to unplayable *2023-08-30* I just got the game and am having a blast. My only big critique is that when you complete a mission for the first time you get 1 premium currency. You need 600 to open the lowest level chest. Why even give us the one if that’s it? I don’t think it needs to be a ton but even 10 would feel a lot more rewarding and like I can save up my gems. Also a lot of the promotions are really expensive for what you get. I want to spend money but I am weary to just because I feel like my premium currency doesn’t add up which makes me weary of longevity of play and I don’t want to sink a ton of money into something like that. Like I said great game overall but it would be nice if they changed that :) Edit: This game is close to unplayable as I have gone further in. Most new missions I do freeze and steal the energy required to do the mission. I’ve lost premium currency in trying to buy energy then having the same missions freeze several times in a row. It’s so frustrating. I’ve lost hundreds of gems in total because of this. I love LOTR and this game has so much potential but it’s near impossible to play right now. ### 2/5 — Close to unplayable *2023-08-28* I just got the game and am having a blast. My only big critique is that when you complete a mission for the first time you get 1 premium currency. You need 600 to open the lowest level chest. Why even give us the one if that’s it? I don’t think it needs to be a ton but even 10 would feel a lot more rewarding and like I can save up my gems. Also a lot of the promotions are really expensive for what you get. I want to spend money but I am weary to just because I feel like my premium currency doesn’t add up which makes me weary of longevity of play and I don’t want to sink a ton of money into something like that. Like I said great game overall but it would be nice if they changed that :) Edit: This game is close to unplayable as I have gone further in. Most new missions I do freeze and steal the energy required to do the mission. I’ve lost premium currency in trying to buy energy then having the same missions freeze several times in a row. It’s so frustrating. I’ve lost hundreds of gems in total because of this. I love LOTR and this game has so much potential but it’s near impossible to play right now. ### 3/5 — i would rate higher, but… *2023-08-19* this game has so much potential, but the lack of technical support is staggering. There are glitches all over this game, there always have been, but you expect them to smooth out over time, which has not been the case with this game. The raid system for the mines of Moria has been terrible. We’ve lost thousands of keys initiating battles that no one was allowed to play. we’re finally able to play in the current raid, and it is so glitchy that it is barely playable. We were told characters that would be used for this particular raid, that’s not actually the case, doesn’t really matter who you use, according to the new set up, and honestly, I don’t even know if it’s how it’s going to work or if it’s just another of the countless glitches that have plagued this game. I’ve been playing electronics arts games since 1987, how about putting some effort into this title, so it doesn’t sour what has always been a solid relationship, i would hate to think modern ea titles are no longer expected to be excellent. ### 2/5 — Fun but Needs Work *2023-08-10* I am enjoying the game. I play Capital Games’s Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes and enjoy that one much more. This game is similar but not nearly as polished as SWGOH. Levels freeze up halfway through, requiring a full app restart (and don’t get your energy back spent on playing the level), game sometimes just doesn’t load correctly. Also, for some reason this app overrides your audio on your phone. For if you’re listening to music and you turn on this app, this app’s audio overrides the audio of your music, so you can’t do both at the same time, which is really dumb in my opinion. Also, SWGOH does not do that, so not sure why a game from the same devs don’t have similar features like that? Overall, entertaining, but not nearly as clean and functional as some other games in the same genre. Willing to stick it out for a bit but we’ll see. ### 2/5 — Decent game held-back by overly pushy monetization *2023-07-07* The overall gameplay loop is very similar to other hero-builder games but the LoTR branding is refreshing. Grinding resources seems tuned considerably too far in the greed/grind direction. A few days into the game and you will hit a point where you just can’t get enough resources to make meaningful changes without spending money. The worst offense is that you can’t go through a single screen transition in the game without it blasting you with offers. It doesn’t entice me to make the purchase, it makes me not want to play when I need to close an ad every 30 seconds of navigating the app. These could be fixed and it could be a fun game, but not really worth the time or annoyance as is, the gameplay just isn’t good enough to justify the grind. ### 4/5 — New and waiting content/characters *2023-07-06* So I’ll be the first to admit after reading several reviews and before I made this one. I’m currently lv 50 in game and we just finished our first legendary event. I am also a free to play player and can say the gold and exp issues are true just not as much as other players are talking about them. The game is currently designed for you to build up 1 light/shadow team. Probably once they hit 60 start building a secondary light/shadow team. Obviously max lv will go up and so will gear tier items in the future but for now enjoy the simpler part of the game. With that said all my light/shadow characters I’m using are 45-50. I just think some people are trying to upgrade everyone from the beginning and it’s hurting valuable resources. Raids are potentially around the corner, but for now the game is mostly lacking content/characters but it is new and will be updating as it goes along. Yes pay to play players will get further faster but as the game releases these characters those free to play will eventually have the same character at the same gear tier ability tier and star, so just enjoy your own play style. ### 4/5 — Great Start *2023-07-04* I feel bad only giving this a four star review but I’ll explain. Good first: This is a really fun game. I feel like the developers learned a lot with SWGOH and came out with a solid starting lineup of heroes with basic synergies that leaves plenty of space for them to build our factions. The unlock farming is relatively easy and less frustrating than other games and the high shard count for greater levels means you can’t maximize every toon in a week. Feels pretty balanced so far. The not so good: It’s a new game. There aren’t a lot of game modes and there’s almost no point to guilds right now. This will hopefully get better in the near future. Similarly, there aren’t a ton of toons to unlock. The last thing, and this is the reason for the 4 stars, is that the game bugs up and kicks you out so frequently it can feel unplayable at times. I’m not sure if this is a server issue or what, but they need to fix it if they want this to be a long term success. TLDR: It’s still new and it’s buggy, but I like it and I’m excited for the future! ### 2/5 — Needs major improvements *2023-06-30* I was greatly looking forward to this game as I love Lord of The Rings and I’ve played similar hero collecting games but this one is a major disappointment to start out. The gold economy in the game is way out of balance with everything costing way too much gold than can be farmed in a day. Once you get heroes to gear 4-5 range you are simply not able to invest any resources into them any further because of the lack of gold. I was greatly looking forward to Elrond joining the game but by requiring elves at 5 stars he will be impossible to get by the vast majority of players during his launch. Overall the game is lacking in content, the art style is holding the game back graphically, and the economy of the game is extremely unbalanced. Hopefully CG will see feedback on the lack of gold in the game and start making fixes or the player pool will dry up fast. ### 2/5 — Terrible delivery *2023-06-27* Heroes for Middle Earth was a game I had long anticipated coming out and the release is terrible. I played 6 years of Galaxy of Heroes until I got burnt out by what EA had come up with for daily game involvement and now they have greatly underperformed the exact same game only LOTR version. Overall look of the game was never my concern but the lack of characters reacting to hits and style is glaring and distracting. Gameplay is atrocious! Teams and characters are not designed well at all with turn meter a big problem which we can expect mods to be coming sooner rather than later and that just means more money. It’s been weeks and there has hardly been any new content including raids. The longer we wait the more glaring it becomes EA wasn’t ready to launch this game and is hurting everyone who wants to play this game. Even with changes coming in the near future, I would not waste my time or money on this game. ### 2/5 — Terrible economy, not f2p friendly, don't play unless you're a whale *2023-06-25* Been playing since day 1. Progress is extremely slow because of the gold bottleneck. I'm sure if you're spending money on this game, you're doing fine, but this game is not f2p friendly at all. Most gacha games at least make the f2p player feel like they are making progress or are doing something, but this game really lets you know that you need to spend money. It may seem like you get a decent amount of gold through battles and events, but abilities and level upgrades cost way too much and eat up every bit of gold that you earn. And, it takes a lot of upgrades just to make progress in the campaigns. This game was designed to frustrate the player into spending money. Not a complaint. I mean, if they can get people to whale on this game, then more power to them. But, if you're f2p or even just spend a little money, this game is not for you. ### 4/5 — Great, but needs some improvement *2023-06-21* I have been playing this game for a couple of weeks now and it is honestly a great game. One of the largest issues I have with it is the ability to obtain gold. I have several heroes just stuck in limbo because I can’t upgrade them. Between costing gold for equipping items (why?), leveling up characters, and upgrading abilities the amount of earnable gold does not meet requirements. I have maxed out energy usage every time it is available, earned every daily reward, and even bought one of the premium gold chests with gems, but still don’t have enough gold to even upgrade one character from 2 to 3 stars (19,000 gold, only got 10,500 from the premium chest). It honestly makes the whole game feel slow and boring, making me lose interest. This is the largest issue I have with this game. There have been a few minor glitches here and there, but nothing major. I love being able to collect characters, and not just the ones from the movies, but also those who were only in book, such as Elrohir and Elladan. Overall it is a fun game, but gets slow due to lack of gold. Please rebalance this!! ### 3/5 — Gold and experience bottleneck and in game purchases unavailable *2023-06-18* This game has so much potential however the gold and experience bottleneck is a major concern. Every update leads to another bug. The game is almost pay to play and I don’t mind spending money here and there to support it however with the last update I am no longer getting offers. I did all the steps that were listed on the website than created a case explaining the issue. They responded by telling me to do the steps listed and we’re gonna cancel the case. I had to reopen the case explaining again I did the steps and want to spend money but am not receiving any offers from the store except for Arwen and Alladan. I thought the company is in the business to make money. I posted on discord and on the twitter page and am not receiving help. I just started to play the new Avatar game which has so much more to do. I’ll spend my money on Avatar or will save it. ### 3/5 — Needs improvement *2023-06-16* I am giving it three stars because it is new. Everyone talks about the gold barrier and it is true. You basically can’t progress after 3 to 4 days of playing. It does make it pretty quick to do daily updates but it is just a wait and grind more gold. Gold needs to be easier to get. The grind should be something else like the gotcha feature. They made it easy to get character shards in game if you want to grind out certain characters that are available as you progress. Mostly unknown or little known characters. I really like the racial synergy that allows you to build same race teams that make your team stronger. Great concept. They help each other in each battle if you have more racial synergy points. It is a expensive pay to win type gotcha. On par with similar costs to Raid shadow legends. There are lower cost ones out there. The story line is actually pretty bad and really doesn’t track well. Plus it seems poorly thought out and it only partially fits the books. I like that you can play shadow or light timelines. Too bad they didn’t do that in Lotro online. Overall a three star for some good game mechanics and being able to grind fast and not have long grinds. Poor storyline and gold barrier seem to be a real issue. ### 4/5 — Tons of Potential! *2023-06-16* This game has a solid foundation for what could be years of fun! However, there is little content available to play right now. In addition to that, one of the game modes; Sam’s Journey is currently not working as intended and players cannot progress. Another problem I have seen is the Mordor team was released with a broken Leadership passive. Effectively making the team pretty mediocre. You can’t sell a team for real world dollars and then wait 3+ patches to fix it. We have very few teams even in the game. As I said, this game is promising, but I hope that these two problems are prioritized rather than left on the back burner. 4/5 ### 3/5 — Good potential, but… *2023-06-15* Game characters often default to their model stances (arms and legs spread). Mostly goblins. As we reach higher levels, the dailies are nothing more than crumbs. A new bug with last update allows a player to select more auto-attempts than is allowed (Hard limit is up to 5 but is allowing the count to go to 20 accompanying an error message). Also, the chat censoring is a joke. Some character names and conjunctions aren’t usable. I also believe the energy system is miscalculated. Ads would be welcome to watch for some replenished energies to allow for longer playtime. Requiring 5 star elves to get Elrond is pretty cruel. Hardly anyone has leveled their elves because they are weak. Now we need them at 5 stars to get Elrond… Shadow and Light should have separate energy types. It’s a bit too slow of a grind. We want to play… let us play! The primary issue is that fans want to play this game the way they want to with their own preferred characters, but the grind is slow and they are required to level characters they don’t want to level. There needs to be more gaming areas the way Galaxy of Heroes does. I want to spend at least half an hour playing, instead, 5 minutes in and I have to wait hours before I can properly play again. ### 3/5 — Can be enjoyable with adjustment to economy system *2023-06-10* It’s always fun to play a game that brings nostalgic memory based on one of the most popular film. For a game that just launched, it is a very enjoyable game and it has a robust features that enables players to have fun with one significant issue. The economy in the game is so unbalanced where gold is hard to come by. It is easier to level up than accumulating gold to level up character that eventually, collection of heroes become so unbalanced when it comes to leveling up or upgrading them. Either each quests needs to give a significant increase in the gold earned or have a separate daily quest to increase the gold input would benefit the infant stage of this game. For example, the Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes rewards players with a weekly event where players can be rewarded up to 5 million credits that balances the player’s credit/gold input to output. Once again, this game has ton of potential but what it needs now is the adjustment to the economy ASAP before players start losing interests due to lacking gold rewards or earning opportunity to develop their teams. ### 2/5 — Getting bored, losing players, economy is terrible *2023-06-09* Most of my guild from SWGOH started playing LOTR since day 1. Many have left the game because they're getting bored. Also, the economy is just bad. Gold is too hard to come by and every upgrade costs too much. So, basically what most of us have been doing is earning gold, making a single upgrade, and then grinding for more gold. It's worse than a normal grind because you don't really make any progress, especially in comparison to everyone else. As you, so very slowly, make progress, every one else does as well. Unless you want to spend a ton of money, that is. You can grow as fast and as much as you want that way. At least in most other gacha games, as an f2p or small spender, you feel like you're getting somewhere. Here, it's just clear that they want you to spend until you're broke. I'm sticking it out for another couple of weeks, just to see if things improve, but CG, especially after all the time developing and with all of their experience with SWGOH, should have really put out a better game. Did I mention that it's super-buggy also? Yeah, another year of development and maybe this game will be where it should have been at launch. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Maker of that greedy Star Wars game *2023-08-01* I would recommend passing this game. Super greedy company. Also games runs like crap and characters look bad. Also, they probably charge 100 dollars to level up to 85 and unlock a lot of characters like they do in Star Wars game. Also, if you fall behind you probably not enjoy the game a few years from now as this company don’t care about new players anyway like star wars. At least they could do is give more characters or shrink how long it takes for unlocking for players have a chance to have fun. Everything locked behind characters and high pay wall. This game probably be no different in long run. Adding on, it appears they wipe your Game Center clean and you have to start over. What appears to happen to my account. Also makes phone hot and shows no download in back ground. Phone never got hot on this game so they doing something wrong. ### 1/5 — Nothing New Here *2023-05-26, version 1.5.3* Sure this game is new, supporters will say ‘but that’s why it’s a complete carbon copy of MSF and SWGOH’, just wait. This game is a reskinned clone of SWGOH, except it is buggy and lacks any polish whatsoever. Chat is a joke, so buggy and you get placed in different chats based on how the game feels at the moment. If you like tappy games and collectors, I guess, but there are so many better ways to spend your time. They also have no movie rights, so all the characters are either made up nonsense, or have no resemblance to their screen counterparts. SWGOH is much better in that regard. Harrrrd pass. ### 1/5 — Don’t bother *2023-05-26, version 1.5.3* CG, same developers as SWGOH, so if you’ve played the latter, you’ll have a general idea about how this works. Except, while SWGOH is openly predatory in its monetization, it is as at least fun, we’ll balanced for the most part, and rewarding to progress. Heroes of Middle Earth is none of those things. Granted, the game just released so you have very few characters to choose from, but it is already apparent that the design of the balance and character progression is endemic and is something they designed on purpose to get you to spend more money. I’ll give a concrete example of each: - Balance: My arena group is nearing 10,000 power and is all the same category of people and clearly designed with synergy in mind. But they’re so underpowered they regularly get beat by hodge podge enemy teams of 8k power and no synergy. This clearly wasn’t tested even a little bit. - Progression: you will immediately hit a wall in progression by gold. As bad as credits are in SWGOH, HOME is exponentially worse. A single skill level up in a single character can cost an entire days worth of gold earnings, and a single rank up almost a weeks worth. There are virtually no effective ways to gather gold, and your need for it is limitless. This is a shoddy way to treat such an amazing IP and CH should be ashamed of themselves. ### 1/5 — Edit: The pay wall and balance is poor *2023-05-24, version 1.5.3* Edit from 3 to 1 star: You will hit the wall around 30. By 35 you are broke, without energy, and unable to get scarce gear. The free energy you get throughout the day is minimal. The timers are not the same so you may login to a new day, get your login rewards, and not be able to do much. The hard lvl timer doesn’t match and you have to wait to hit the hard lvls for gear, which has a poor drop rate as it is. Your energy is gone before you know it, you are broke, and not able to do much. You never recover enough during the day to make you want to play a ton, let alone spend any money. It’s in the same genre as SW GOH and MSF, but buggy and unbalanced. ### 1/5 — Boring Galaxy of Heroes Reskin *2023-05-22, version 1.5.3* Any LotR fan should stay clear of this game, while it starts you off at Weathertop with Strider and Frodo, it quickly shows it’s true colors with strange narratives and boring cutscenes that were clearly written by someone who has never seen or read the source material. As for the Gacha aspect of collecting heroes the main characters are all missing from the roster, meanwhile random name generated elves, goblins, and humans have made the cut and provide nothing interesting to chase after. Once again LotR has been used to try and make a quick buck in a game with no personality or care. ### 1/5 — Don’t waste your time predatory money grabs *2023-05-22, version 1.5.3* Game is just another money sucker. Hit by the pay wall after charter 2 in the main story line. No real ways to get character’s other than buying packs. Challenges unlock at 14 but unless you’ve paid for and maxed out a bunch of characters don’t even try the challenges. The characters don’t level in the campaign mode, you have to separately level them which I find dumb. This game has potential but while never get there because it’s just a money grab. It’s a shame I log in and I’m done within 5 min because there is nothing to do if you don’t pay for their overpriced packs because that’s the only way your getting anything in this game. ### 1/5 — Can’t seem to contact support *2023-05-20, version 1.5.3* Reached out regarding an isssue where members are stuck in our alliance and we can’t boot them, when you go to the boot option it only allows you to “invite them to the guild” which then gives you an error message. Reached out to EA support, got a response to essentially fill out another ticket and request to chat with someone, only issue is when I go to contact method it doesn’t list a “chat with agent” or “wait for email response” feature, I get nothing. This is becoming very frustrating and going on a week now, very close to just quitting the game all together. At least with MSF you can’t get ahold of support fairly easily. ### 1/5 — shameless cash grab *2023-05-18, version 1.5.3* The game it self is ok and what you can expect from a hero collector game. The first few days are the honeymoon and then you just start hitting the bottlenecks and cannot even develop fully your 5 light and 5 shadow characters for the basic campaign. It is then the usual slow and painful crawl. And that’s where the cash grab start. The game is not a week old and they already have so called “micro” transactions at $100! If they shamelessly display such an amount of greed now, that does not bode well for the future. And That’s a lot in general and even more considering that the gameplay is dull, the graphics poor and the roster is small (you can’t develop it anyway). ### 1/5 — Disdain for source material *2023-05-15, version 1.5.2* I rarely write reviews for anything, but this needs to be said. I gave this game a try for a couple days, just to see how far they corrupted Tolkien’s vision. And the answer is that, by comparison to wizards of the coast race-swapping and altering characters to fit their political narrative, EA and middle earth Enterprises have stepped it up to simply rewrite middle earth and its history in their own “inclusive” image. This alone is despicable; but that isn’t even mentioning the predatory nature of this cash-grabbing disaster. Everything useful is hidden behind a massive paywall. You cannot and will not succeed without paying loads of money. If you are a true lotr fan, do yourself a favor and stay far away from this game. ### 1/5 — Unplayable and Buggy *2023-05-15, version 1.5.2* I am playing on an iPad and iPhone. I can’t turn off the music. I can’t go back to the main menu. It’s the same game as Galaxy of Heroes with a Middle Earth theme. It’s just gambling with extremely low stakes. The heroes include Elrohir but not his brother Elladan. They tried to make it fun, but the characters and animations are bad. I wish Electronic Arts, Disney, Middle Earth Enterprises, and Warner Brothers would go out of business so someone with talent could create something amazing for Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings. There are also two other games like this for Marvel Superheroes and DC Superheroes. They’re the same game with different cartoon characters. ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Awesome game! *2023-09-07* I just got the game and am having a blast. My only big critique is that when you complete a mission for the first time you get 1 premium currency. You need 600 to open the lowest level chest. Why even give us the one if that’s it? I don’t think it needs to be a ton but even 10 would feel a lot more rewarding and like I can save up my gems. Also a lot of the promotions are really expensive for what you get. I want to spend money but I am weary to just because I feel like my premium currency doesn’t add up which makes me weary of longevity of play and I don’t want to sink a ton of money into something like that. Like I said great game overall but it would be nice if they changed that :) I started this game with an old phone and it sucked and froze all the time but got a new phone and now it works amazing, just beware! ### 5/5 — Great game mostly overall *2023-08-11* I just got the game and am having a blast. My only big critique is that when you complete a mission for the first time you get 1 premium currency. You need 600 to open the lowest level chest. Why even give us the one if that’s it? I don’t think it needs to be a ton but even 10 would feel a lot more rewarding and like I can save up my gems. Also a lot of the promotions are really expensive for what you get. I want to spend money but I am weary to just because I feel like my premium currency doesn’t add up which makes me weary of longevity of play and I don’t want to sink a ton of money into something like that. Like I said great game overall but it would be nice if they changed that :) ### 5/5 — Really fun *2023-07-06* Whether it’s SWGOH or LOTR HOME, people always complain about things. I enjoy these type of games that aren’t necessarily pay to win but pay to not wait. You can get every thing the game has to offer without paying a dime. If you want to get things earlier you have the option to pay. Currently, people are complaining about the economy and the game being too slow but it just came out. More game modes will be coming over time. You aren’t meant to max out every character or a whole team in the first month of the game. These games are designed to be played for years, and if you really enjoy the LOTR world, then that sounds awesome. I enjoyed SWGOH but I’ve always been a much bigger fan of the LOTR and have thoroughly enjoyed this game so far. Excited for raids and other game modes in the future. ### 5/5 — Phenomenal start to this game *2023-06-11* This game has what it takes to become great. It’s in typical EA fashion at the moment (huge FIFA fan here). The game progresses slowly so as to encourage overpriced purchases (although FIFA has much more ways to get larger cards by in game events). It’s a typical turn based game that mirrors Star Wars Heroes as well. Same game - new skin. Suggestions to make this be more appropriate to the masses (and increase earnings) - similar to Raid Shadow Legends- make the store have significantly more and cheaper options. Reduce energy time refill to regain playability. I can play shadows for 1.5 hours easy. Unless I spend I can only play this game about 15 minutes. There’s got to be a way to improve arena. Again - shadows playbook has what it takes. Give us a bank to play from so we can play more in mass in a time frame instead of only 1 at a time. You could even use the same refill time frame, but start with a bank to pull from. Please let us have more than 5 plays on “hard” matchups. Love the new character drops and adventures to play for them. The game really is good. I’d adore a PvP after a certain level reached overall. In this game level 45 would be appropriate to begin. It’d be likened to a chess game with the character abilities. Cheers ### 5/5 — Nostalgia *2023-05-17, version 1.5.3* This game is really good, it’s like Disney sorcerer or Raid, but it’s better. I’m a long time fan of Lord of the rings, every since I was a kid, but there aren’t that many Lord of the rings games out there, and I think that’s a big mistake. Lord of the rings is on of the best franchises ever and I’m glad it’s growing decades after its first creation from the book. Thank you for building on to this well know and loved franchise! Now I have one problem, but I am forgiving. Every time a goblin character goes to run somewhere or do a basic attack the animation for it doesn’t work. But I know that this game is new and I fully believe that you will fix it. ### 5/5 — First LVARP App for this halfling *2023-05-13, version 1.5.2* Yes, it’s me, Viper. As stated, along with the lessons taught and learned until present from my lifelong obsession with ANY and EVERYTHING LARP video games, this is indeed my First in our present App age. I’m so far unimpressed. I do understand most of this feeling comes from the limited amount of functions this phone platform can provide. I’ll bite my tongue for now as this is but my 3rd day of gameplay. I will be in touch. ### 5/5 — Really good game, just needs more recognizable characters *2023-05-11, version 1.5.2* Gameplay is good, wish there were more recognizable characters such as: Light Side: Gandalf the Grey/the White, Legolas, Gimli, Boromir, Arwen, Elrond, Balin, Faramir, Denethor, Isildur, Elendil, Galadriel Shadow Side: Gollum, the Ringwraiths, Saruman, Sauron, the Balrog, Shelob, Lurtz, Grima Wormtongue, For video game characters: Definitely use from “The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age” if you can get the rights Mostly for Light Side: Elegost, Hadhod, Idrial, Morwen, Berethor, Eaoden Because as an LOTR fan of both the books, the movies, and video games the character list is short and I do get that the game just released but personally I would have had a few more recognizable characters But overall great selection of characters and game! ### 5/5 — Must play lotr game *2023-05-11, version 1.5.2* Must play game if you love Tolkien and his works. Characters are not designed by the movies but that isn’t a bad thing the still hold a familiarity to them. I look forward for them to add more characters like more of Thorins company and more of the fellowship to start plus any other characters from the books. I look forward to all features they will add in the future. This is so much better than the more recent lotr mobile game. ### 4/5 — Solid LOTR RPG Game But Lacking Content & a Few Issues *2023-10-27* I understand the game is still somewhat new but it has the potential to draw a massive crowd if things are done correctly. Some issues are… Currently, gold is way too hard to obtain without spending tons of money. I don’t want gold requirements to be nerfed severely but it’s incredibly expensive right now. Some of the best Hero shards cannot be obtained unless you spend a buttload of gems (aka real money) The game needs more content that’s F2P or somewhat. You have your light and shadow campaign that lasts you a month maybe if F2P. Guild missions that end a bit sooner usually. After that you can only play one arena (pvp) game every 15 min with a max of 5 per 24 hours unless you spend gems. After that you get to do a guild Raid usually once per week or so that lasts 24 hours per stage (most guilds will clear maybe chapter 1 on average) Besides that there is nothing else to do. The game itself, mechanics, characters, gameplay, etc… is incredible so it 100% has the ability to be a big time hit but it really needs more content to play. Hopefully in time! I definitely recommend playing it though even if you don’t do much besides the F2P stuff. That way you’ll have a head start for when the game has more playable content and game modes. ### 4/5 — Great game but….. *2023-10-16* So far the only gripe I have about the game now that I’ve played it a decent amount is whenever and I mean this could happen whenever is that it will freeze up or be like stuck or stalled out at any moment wether I’m loading something or playing a battle when I’m playing a battle I’ll beat all the enemies at a specific stage then my guys will just be standing there endlessly not progressing to the next stage and I have completely restart the app and do it all over again just for it to do the same thing 5 times out of 10 and the same problem will happen sometimes as well when it brings up the loading ring symbol it will just be stuck on that and I have do the same thing close it and re open the app to hopefully get pass that but sometimes it will do right all over again other then that I love it but I’m bias cause I love Lord of the Rings --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-06-10.*