Fun singleplayer or cooperative card game with the topic and illustrations bound to please every Tolkien fan. However, it’s worse than its board game counterpart and hampered by an amateurish interface and a weak AI.

Personal bias aside, with all the influence coming from The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game and the fact that the cards are essentially permanent, you would be as well just buying a deck and playing at your friendly local game store. The only real advantage to the video game version is the story and the ability to change card art by unlocking it with points - which is a nice change from paying for it though the groundwork is there for microtransactions to seep in eventually. However, if you want more stories about Middle Earth, then I guess it’s worth it for that. Just, maybe mute the game whenever Smeagol is involved.

The Lord of the Rings: Adventure Card Game has a lot of potential and it's possible that an expanded library of cards and some new modes will help to elevate it in the future, but the game needs a lot more content if it hopes to be a major player in a marketplace that is dominated by competitors with more to offer.

The Lord of the Rings Living Card Game is crafted by a company that loves Tolkien, and understands both the lore and how to craft a unique world around the source material.

Both solid and promising, Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game has some good ideas, such as the Eye of Sauron, which keeps pressure on the player. But too often, the game pushes the player toward its micro-transactions system. [Early Access score = 65]