If you want to play alone, or with a friend on this epic quest. Return of the King will satisfy very well for both.
The story is pretty much what the title says. This time how they did it in the game is split it into three paths. Path of the Wizard is Gandalf the White's part of the story. Path of the King is Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli. And path of the Hobbits is Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee. The story follows the events of the film and book pretty well and like it's predecessor, The Two Towers has a blend of cutscenes using CGI and clips from the film. There may be spoilers for those who haven't seen the films or read the books though, and that's pretty much the only flaw the game has in terms of story.
The gameplay has both a single player and a cooperative. The single player starts with the Path of the Wizard, after that starts seperating the story with adding the other two paths. Cooperative tells the same story, but pulls it off differently. It starts with Path of the King story, then proceeds to Path of the Wizard, back to the Path of the King for one more mission, then to the Path of the Hobbits. Both gameplay modes are fun whether single or multiplayer. However, they each have some flaws. Single player sometimes picks up at the wrong sort of checkpoint when you dig deeper in the mission you're doing. Multiplayer has lack of checkpoints and while it has the convienience of restore points for a player's fallen character, it is only limited and if the same character or the other player dies. It's "Game Over" and you have to start all the way back to the beginning of the level. But despite those, both single player and multiplayer are really fun.
From graphics and sound, it can be safely said that they both have the Lord of the Rings charm. The graphics looked and felt like the films and the sound has the right sort of sound medieval warfare has. Not to mention the music from the films is well put out in each mission and has a well done voice cast from the cast of the films, such as Elijah Wood (Frodo Baggins), Sean Astin (Samwise Gamgee), and Christopher Lee (Saruman).
Controls are pretty much the same as Two Towers and are just as great feeling. And like the Two Towers, it also has a combo and upgrade system from spending experiece points you earn in the game. Which is still just as great as the last game.
Quite a bit of replay value is placed as well. You can gain a little more higher levels for your characters unlike The Two Towers. You can go back and try to reach perfection with all characters in almost every mission you can. Even quite a bit of unlockables, such as three new characters to unlock.
Overall, like it's predecessor, Return of the King is another beautifully done game based off a beautifully done film based off a beautifully done book. It will satisfy on both terms of single player and multiplayer.