Guardians of Middle-earth

A shadow grows over Middle-earth as the greatest armies of the Third Age prepare for the coming battle. Take up arms in the clash over Middle-earth as the most powerful heroes and villains from the greatest…

73 5 December 2012

Arcade Hack and slash/Beat 'em up MOBA Real Time Strategy (RTS) Strategy Action Fantasy

Guardians of Middle-earth is an arcade developed by Monolith Productions, released 5 December 2012 on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC (Microsoft Windows).

Verified 27 Sep 2026 Sources: IGDB , Steam , Wikipedia

What Guardians of Middle-earth is

Guardians of Middle-earth is an arcade game developed by Monolith Productions and released in 2012. It was published by WB Games. It is available on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC (Microsoft Windows).

The premise, in the publisher's words

A shadow grows over Middle-earth as the greatest armies of the Third Age prepare for the coming battle. Take up arms in the clash over Middle-earth as the most powerful heroes and villains from the greatest fantasy epic of all time. Guardians of Middle-earth delivers an authentic multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game set in Middle-earth! Play with friends to bring up to 10 players together in strategic five versus five competitive multiplayer battle arenas in this epic setting. Call upon legendary heroes and villains from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit as you form memorable alliances in this truly groundbreaking MOBA experience! Guardians of Middle-earth was one of the many…

Description from the publisher · source

How it plays

It is played from a bird view / isometric perspective. Its themes are action and fantasy. It is a single-player game with no multiplayer component. Available modes: Co-operative, Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO), Multiplayer and Single player. There are 29 achievements to unlock.

Where it sits in the The Lord of the Rings series

Guardians of Middle-earth is the 44th of 69 entries we hold in the The Lord of the Rings series. The next entry was The Lord of the Rings Online: Helm's Deep in 2013. Its critic score of 73 is almost exactly the series average of 74. The highest-rated entry is The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring at 91.

See all 69 The Lord of the Rings games in release order →

How it was received

Guardians of Middle-earth holds a critic score of 73 out of 100. That places it above 49% of the 2,164 rated arcade games in our database, which average 70. Games released in 2012 averaged 70, so it scored 3 points above the year average.

What you need to run it

The minimum specification calls for Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.4 GHz | AMD Athlon X2, 2.8 GHz or better, 2 GB RAM and NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS | AMD Radeon 3850 or better. At 2GB of RAM, it will run on essentially any working PC — that is below what a budget laptop ships with today. Install size is roughly 8GB. Both tiers are compared side by side on the requirements page, and you can check your own parts against them without installing anything.

Full requirements and PC checker →

What it launched against

Guardians of Middle-earth launched on 5 December 2012, within three weeks of Far Cry 3, Game Dev Tycoon, Hitman: Absolution and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Dragonborn. It reviewed better than 1 of the 4.

Released around the same time: Far Cry 3, Game Dev Tycoon, Hitman: Absolution, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Dragonborn.

Official trailer

Sourced from the publisher’s YouTube channel.

Screenshots

All media

Guardians of Middle-earth gameplay screenshot

Quick answers

Guardians of Middle-earth — frequently asked questions

When did Guardians of Middle-earth come out?

Guardians of Middle-earth was released on 5 December 2012 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC (Microsoft Windows).

What are the minimum PC requirements for Guardians of Middle-earth?

At minimum, Guardians of Middle-earth needs Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.4 GHz | AMD Athlon X2, 2.8 GHz or better, 2 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS | AMD Radeon 3850 or better graphics, 8 GB available space of storage.

How many GB is Guardians of Middle-earth?

The PC version needs about 8 GB of storage, going by the storage line in the system requirements ("8 GB available space"). Updates can add to that, and console versions have their own sizes, which are not listed here.

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