The Lord of the Rings - Gollum

For all its many flaws, LOTR: Gollum is an oft-beautiful and oddly endearing adventure.

Daedalic knew how to make the adventure part work – and it does work, more or less – but everything else screams “amateur hour” so hard, it borders on naïve art. [Issue#262, p.64]

The Lord of the Rings Gollum is a limited installment that would have more potential as a visual novel. On a mechanical level, it requires much work to be entertaining. On the other hand, the scenarios and landscapes do not fit in the game. The title was a great challenge and needed to meet the players' minimum expectations on several levels. However, the story and some colorful winks coupled with specific movements may need some optimizations to be an enjoyable game.

It's heartbreaking because the project is courageous and good approaches are recognizable. However, the technical problems are hard to ignore, as is the stale gameplay. Still, we think the game is worth a look for fans of the franchise, if only because of the story.

The gameplay of Gollum, without great energy and suffering from a quickly palpable repetitiveness is balanced with the exploration of Tolkien"s lore, as well as with the duality of our character, central in the progression.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Lord of the Rings fans will appreciate a lot of what Gollum is offering. It’s genuinely cool seeing such a fascinating side character step into the protagonist role in a story that further expands on a universe teeming with secrets to discover. It’s a bummer that there isn’t much else to write home about. A dull gameplay experience and technical hiccups make The Lord of the Rings: Gollum just as much of a polarizing experience as its main character.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum has the features of a solid "middle of the road” game. Unfortunately, that’s not the case here. The game is tiring, and I really wish this Gollum had a chance to return – with all his dialog lines, sarcasm, and the Smeagol persona – in a different, much better game.

We were very sorry not to give at least the sufficiency to The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. But the limits are too many. The unpublished portion of the story is not up to Tolkien's saga and the playful phases are imprecise and obsolete. A thicker graphic rendering would have at least allowed fans to better enjoy some flashes of the pleasant artistic direction. In short, we hope that future patches will solve, if nothing else, the technical stumbling blocks. In any case, even if the stability of the game will improve in the future, Daedalic Entertainment's one is unfortunately not the treasure we wanted it to be.

Like the character itself, Gollum is an ugly, depressing, pitiable mess that's destined for a bad end and with little to recommend it. With a stronger design behind it, this title could've perhaps been redeemed, but the version we got isn't that. It's not good, it's not entertainingly bad, and it's not even interestingly broken. It's just a lackluster, licensed game that doesn't seem to have a point, and it focuses on a character that even die-hard fans don't want to play as.

The Lord of the Rings Gollum is a game that came out of time. the title almost never convinces in any of its aspects, resulting in many parts frustrating. the game optimization itself never manages to be stable making it difficult to play.

There is no point in beating around the bush, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a big disappointment. Despite starting from interesting narrative premises, Daedalic Entertainment's adventure appears extremely dated in every aspect and its best moments are the least original ones, proving how the whole system was realized under the sign of a sketchy, inconclusive and confusing game design, which moreover does not redeem itself even on the technical level and on PC in particular offers a really sad spectacle.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a love letter to a flawed character that shares some flaws of its own. The care and love of Tolkien lore are quite obvious, but it doesn’t always mesh well with the disappointing mechanics and less-than-stellar gameplay.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum offers a bleak and lackluster adaptation of Middle-earth, with one of its more divisive characters in the spotlight. Whatever potential the game had is buried under dull, generic gameplay, a variety of technical issues, and low quality visuals.

I really wanted to like The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. I genuinely wanted to enjoy a unique take on a game set in the Lord of the Rings universe. Sadly, Gollum misses the mark. While the story is actually interesting, the gameplay, bugs and mechanics make it a painful slog.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum didn't need to exist. The story doesn't add much to the lore, and doesn't entertain on its own, not to mention that the whole experience is plagued with technical issues.

If Lord of the Rings: Gollum were a short story or a low-budget film, it might be worth a look for Lord of the Rings fans. As a game, however, with over a dozen hours of gameplay, it is obviously a physically painful torment.

The game is not very good and unfortunately quite boring. We would have liked something more epic on a saga like the Lord of the Rings. It's a pity, especially since the game is full of bugs as it is.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is filled with dull stealth, bad platforming, and a pointless story, and does little to justify why anyone should take the time to play it.

Just like the character at its center, the game is in sad, broken shambles, held together only by the faint belief that the good things about it are enough to make its existence worthwhile.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is shocking at times. The gameplay is flat and repetitive, the stealth poorly implemented, the narrative dull, the progression nonexistent, the character models ugly, the bugs plentiful, the list goes on. This is a game that feels like it belongs in the 2000s with how its super linear design and limited gameplay mechanics work in practice.

In the end, my experience playing The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was disappointing. A creative take on the character's journey interested me prior to its release, but the core concepts should also fall in line with what we've come to expect from the current generation of games. Outdated and plain bad mechanics simply mean that this title, much like the Balrog, should go back into the shadows.

It was always going to be tough to pull off a Gollum game, but there’s simply nothing precious about this amateur stealth adventure. A general lack of refinement lurks in every shadowy corner of LotR: Gollum, a game disappointingly barren of interesting ideas or substantial gameplay. Even the most loyal Lord of the Rings fans will struggle through it. If you value your time, do yourself a favour and avoid it like the Eye of Sauron.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a poorly designed, bug-ridden, untested game that’s only redeeming quality doesn’t matter in the whole picture.

LOTR: Gollum is a prime example of the results of a game that relies only on IP's power without solid structure. In the devastated gameplay, only a few people would be intrigued about the story of the unlikable protagonist.

It’s a game that seems like it’s for hardcore The Lord of the Rings fans, considering its playable character and the lack of recent releases for the franchise, but even diehard fans couldn’t enjoy this unexpected journey.

Well-known brand, interesting main character, mix of different genres. What could possibly go wrong? Everything. You really don't have to waste your money on this today.

A monotonous, frustrating adventure game that wouldn't be fun even without the severe bugs and performance problems.

There are more positives – character designs, too, are phenomenal interpretations of Tolkien’s descriptions, and the creepy folk horror vibes of the Mirkwood Elves is inspired – but they’re too few and far between to save this boring game.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum fails to live up to both the Tolkien name and its own potential. From exhausting, repetitive gameplay to a poorly constructed narrative, this is a piece of Middle-earth you should never explore.

This game is a joke, and not a funny one. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is shockingly ugly, awfully designed and annoying in its many inconsistencies. Let’s just forget this happened.

I really can't recommend The Lord of the Rings: Gollum to anyone. From the ghastly gameplay to a story that adds nothing to, and actually only detracts from, Middle-earth's brilliant overarching history... Not even the biggest LOTR fan can get anything out of this. The only bright spot is that J.R.R. Tolkien is spared.

There is no sense in pointing out any specific bad decisions — The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is awful on some basic level of a game design. Almost every task infuriates me in this game.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum has a bunch of disjointed game mechanics, and none of them are well executed. The performance is also unacceptably poor.

There is no joy in Lord of the Rings: Gollum. It is a linear stealth platforming experience where none of its systems are designed to make either sneaking or platforming a smooth process, let alone a fun one. In fact, it is actually a frustrating game to play as a result of its issues. Assuming that Gollum’s myriad bugs one day get ironed out, nothing can really save it from its poorly executed gameplay core and baffling mission structure. Boring, clunky, and pointless, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum should have been cast into the fires of Mount Doom long ago. At least Gandalf’s hat looks neat.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum unfortunately didn't turn out to be "my precious" and only rarely manages to captivate. Dramatic bugs and performance problems abound.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a disaster in a way that I sincerely thought wasn’t possible anymore. With so much money on the line, I thought we’d long passed the days where a game as transparently bad as Superman 64 could exist. Popular IPs are like gold in 2023, and companies carefully guard them like protective dragons. And yet, Gollum seems to have slipped by the watchful eye of so many stakeholders undetected. It’s a rare sight in the modern gaming landscape, and one that almost makes me nostalgic for the bad games of my childhood.

A strong sense of character is let down by poor controls, fiddly implementation, and bugs.