I would also say both Battle for Middle Earth and Battle for Middle Earth 2 are excellent RTS.
Yes! I loved the second one and played it so much! A good fantasy universe is sort of my thing...
Yes, the CD version was a whole six discs! Now I'm wondering what the game with the most CDs ever was, and I'm sort of surprised this one was ever made on CD. I can't remember if I didn't pay attention to whether I was grabbing the CD or DVD version, or if they didn't have the latter, but oh well. It only mattered during the time of installation, thankfully.
That game is unfortunately in such an awkward spot now because the base game was only ever available physically, whereas the expansion pack (does this still hold the record for "longest game title" officially?) was only ever available digitally on what was then the new EA Download Manager (then Origin, and now... whatever it's called). If you wanted both the same way, tough luck. Because of what I imagine are licensing rights, EA probably can't re-release the original digitally.
Worse, if you wanted the no-CD patch or some quality of life unofficial mod updates (which used that), it was a gamble on if the anti-piracy method would kick in. For those unaware, the anti-piracy method in this game was apparently to destroy all your stuff (thus losing you the round) thirty seconds into the game. As I had a legitimate version of both games, it was quite a surprise when I encountered it once, and I found out the no-CD patch could do that apparently.
It's one of those old games that suffers from accessibility, and takes some time and effort to get working, but it's worth it if you do.
There's a certain
other RTS title using the same game engine from around that time which was also good. A lot of people give EA a hard time for ruining companies/series after buying them out, and don't get me wrong, I get that, but some of my favorites from some of those series came from around those times and were developed under EA after the acquisitions. My favorite Sims title is The Sims 3. I wouldn't call Command & Conquer 3 my favorite in that series, but it was great. It was
almost a 10/10 game worthy of a game of Westwood's standards, with the
only thing holding it back was that it was lacking a real soundtrack (it had "generic short music for certain events occurring" instead). I'm a very firm believe that great music (or lack of it) can be the difference in whether a game is perfect, or close but not quite. It would be like taking Nobuo Uematsu's music out of the PlayStation era and earlier Final Fantasy games. They would still be very solid games, but... something might be missing, because the music was a big part of making those games come together. For all the talk about gameplay, story, or graphics, I find that music seems overlooked.
