The Lord of the Rings: War in the North – Legacy Edition

What the report says

War has swept through the lands of Middle-Earth as the Dark Lord Sauron’s forces march north to reclaim a mysterious Ring with the power to rule the world. An unlikely hero, however, is carrying the Ring south, into the heart of darkness, to the one place the Ring can be destroyed… but you knew all of that. The recently shadow-dropped The Lord of the Rings: War in the North – Legacy Edition dares to ask: what were a few other dudes doing in the background of fantasy’s all-time classic?On paper, War in the North’s premise is pretty compelling.

As the would-be king Aragorn awaits Frodo and co. at the Prancing Pony, running parallel with the start of The Fellowship of the Ring (picture the Peter Jackson movies, as that’s the aesthetic this game pulls heavily from), Aragorn calls on three previously unseen heroes: Farin, a dwarf warrior; Andriel, an elf mage; and Eradan, a human rogue. At Aragorn’s request, the heroes are to travel to the north to distract the orc forces that amass there and put a stop to Sauron’s servant, a powerful human spellcaster named Agandaûr (like the playable heroes, an original character to the game).As a diehard Tolkien fan since I was about nine years old, I wondered why I missed War in the North when it first released on PS3 in 2011.

Oh, right, it came out a mere ten days before The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and was poorly received to boot. With this new Legacy Edition handled by developer Aspyr, War in the North now runs at a smooth 60 fps (though not on the first Nintendo Switch, which also lacks couch co-op), a more detailed UI for other party members, and, most importantly, the ability to swap between the three heroes when in single-player. But is a tune-up enough to justify taking the ride?Simply put, War in the North is still a bad—sometimes terrible—looter action RPG in single-player… and a goofy beat ‘em up blast in co-op.

Key details

I was looking forward to playing with my oldest childhood friend, but the initial days of the PS5 release had busted online multiplayer, meaning I played halfway through the 12-hour campaign solo.The story checks all the boxes of a Middle-Earth adventure, including orcs, goblins, eagles, dragons, and cameos from heroes and their relatives from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Annoyingly, they use a ridiculous amount of dialogue real estate to repeat names of people and places and cover up potential plot holes this game might insert into The Lord of the Rings.

Almost every conversation goes something like: “Well, [Person] of [Place], shouldn’t you go help Frodo, the Ring-bearer?”“That’d be wise, [Person] of [Place]! But here’s why I cannot…”War in the North‘s cast includes an all-star lineup of video game voice actors, including Laura Bailey as Andriel the elf and Nolan North as the human, Eradan. They do their best to elevate the material, though depending on which hero you’re playing, the other heroes act and speak surprisingly tranquil during the dialogue segments, which play out via Mass Effect-like choice wheels. As expected of composer Inon Zur, the original soundtrack is notably strong, evoking but never aping the Howard Shore scores from the films.Aside from the wax figure faces of movie cameos (please don’t haunt my dreams, pseudo-Aragorn), War in the North looks great for a PS3-era game, especially in its environs and with its seemingly hand-painted skyboxes.

Being M-rated, the game does have a strange fixation on black, spurting blood and decapitation, including a post-chapter segment tally of enemy limb dismemberments that I think would send Mr. Tolkien rolling in his grave. That aside, it captures the aesthetic of the Peter Jackson films (in turn inspired by the paintings of Alan Lee) quite well.The gameplay, then. Hoo boy. I like the combat less than half as well as it deserves, which is to say, it stinks. From the jump, players mash square to chop at orcs and goblins’ sizable but invisible health pools until a yellow indicator says it’s time for a heavy triangle attack.

More from the announcement

Chaining enough hits puts you in hero mode, in which your momentum from doing heavy damage or decapitating one enemy chains to the next, so you can rack up kills like Legolas and Gimli at Helm’s Deep.War in the North also has a third-person-shooting bow/crossbow/staff ability, though on Normal difficulty even a standard orc can take upwards of six arrows to fell. You can block (which is mostly useless) and roll, and as you level up, you gain various abilities via a skill tree.