LotR: The Third Age (GBA): Part 1: Basics

Basics:

The Lord of the Rings, the Third Age for the Game Boy Advance is a turn-based strategy game with roleplaying elements in which you have to use your army to fulfill certain goals. Those goals can veer between killing specific units, reaching certain destinations in the many levels (usually shown in the level with a flag) or defending your positions for a specific amount of turns. An example of a goal that appears in many levels is killing enemy heroes. You get two points for killing a hero and you usually need between ten to fifteen points to win the level.

Heroes are the stronger units that give command points. Command points (or CP) are the points that allow you to move units and attack enemy units. Every hero has a certain amount of command points. For example: Aragorn has a Leadership of 1-4, meaning that every turn the flank Aragorn is on gets either one, two, three or four command points. The amount you get is based on a random number generator or RNG. This means that the game is partially based on luck.

The game exists of many levels, with those levels following the plot of the movies of the Peter Jackson franchise. The game exists in three different parts, with each part following one of the movies. The levels themselves are divided into three different flanks: the left, middle and right flank. Each flank will have their own units and heroes and depending on how you want to play the game you can make sure the units in each flank fight their own battle or whether the flanks work together to achieve their goals.

What's nice about this game is that you can play as both the good and the evil side and that both sides have different gameplay styles.
The Good side has a more defensive play style. There are many more units that have ranged attacks, allowing you to attack enemies from afar while trying to protect yourselves. The good side also seems to have more defensive goals in many levels, having a fair amount of levels where you have to survive for a certain amount of turns (I call them survival levels).
The Evil side has a more offensive play style. The Evil side has a lot more units that only have melee attacks, which means that you have to move your units to the enemy as quickly as possible and try to attack as many enemy units before your melee units die. That's why playing as the evil side generally means developing an aggressive play style, because the good side WILL use ranged attacks to defend itself.

As stated before this game has roleplaying elements. That's because every units has a few stats that you need to understand in order to play the game effectively.

HP: HP or hit points is a number that states how much damage a unit can take before it dies. Having a HP of 10 means that the enemy needs to deal ten damage to kill that unit.

Spirit Points: Every hero has the ability to use skills. Skills are special effects in the game that affect your own units, your hero, enemy units,... However, using skills isn't free. You first need to gather Spirit Points which allow you to cast those skills. You can gather those Spirit Points every turn and this depends on how many Spirit Points your hero has. A hero with ten Spirit points will get ten Spirit Points every turn. The problem is that the game doesn't show how many Spirit Points a skill needs, nor does it show the maximum amount of Spirit Points you can get. What is known though is that the maximum of SP depends on the amount of heroes you have on the field. The maximum amount of Spirit Points will be higher with three heroes, for example.

Move: Every unit has a move number. That means they can only move that many tiles per turn. Most units have 3 move, meaning they can move a maximum of three tiles per turn, after which they either have to attack an enemy units or do nothing.

There is one special unit in the game that ignores this rule: the mounted unit. The mounted unit is a unit on a horse (good) or warg (evil) that can move three tiles, then attack and then move another three tiles. This is known as a hit-and-run tactic and is the main reason why mounted units are useful.

Attack: Fairly straightforward, attack determines the amount of damage a unit can do. However, this isn't a fixed number. Having an attack of 4 doesn't mean that you always do four damage. This is decided by RNG and the general rule is that an unit can  do between 0 and (attack x2) damage. That means that a unit with 4 attack can do between zero and eight damage. Usually a unit with 4 attack will do between three and five damage. Dealing less or more damage doesn't happen often and is based on luck.

Range: Range determines whether a unit can do ranged attacks or not. The Range number determines how many tiles there can be between two units to allow ranged attacks between those units. A unit that has a range of 4 can attack every unit that is a maximum of four tiles away from it. However, there is a damage reduction involved. Your unit loses -1 attack during ranged attacks for every tile between it and an enemy unit. This reduction is not permanent and only for that one ranged attack.

Example:
Your unit
x
x
Enemy unit

In this example your unit is two tiles away from the enemy unit. Let's suppose that your unit has 4 attack and 4 ranged. That means that during a ranged attack your enemy unit will suffer a penalty of -2 attack. So during the ranged attack your unit has 2 attack and 4 range.

Morale: Morale is a mechanic that determines whether units are able to attack or not. Every unit has a specific description: cowardly, green, average, brave and fearless. Whenever a unit gets attacked there is a chance that the unit will suffer a morale failure. A morale failure essentially means that the unit can't attack and is useless during the next turn. The chance of getting a morale failure depends on the morale of the unit. A cowardly unit will easily get a morale failure whereas a fearless unit will never get one. There are some strategies that involve trying to cause morale failures within the game, so it isn't completely RNG.

Leadership: As stated before Leadership determines how many command points your hero will get every turn. Units can only move when the flank they're in has command points, which means that you always have to make sure your heroes don't die. Flanks that don't have a hero in them will generate a leadership of 0-1, which really isn't interesting.

There is another reason why this game is an RPG game. Winning levels means that the heroes you've used will get experience points or XP, which can be used to purchase upgrades to the hero. XP is gained by killing enemy units and you will get double the amount of xp if you kill enemy units with your heroes.