In today’s world of expiring rights deals and IP constantly changing hands, it’s an unfortunate reality that many licensed games are doomed to forever languish in the gaming world of yesteryear. That’s what makes moments like the return of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game or the remastered SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated such triumphant success stories.
By that same token, Aspyr’s re-release of The Lord of the Rings: War in the North should be cause for celebration. After all, the developer has rescued the 2011 action RPG from the clutches of ever-aging hardware, bringing it back to modern platforms and giving both nostalgic fans and newcomers a chance to experience its unique take on the world of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic saga. Unfortunately, this trip back in time left me with more than a few mixed feelings on both the enduring quality of War in the North itself and what this re-release brings to the table.
The rather confusingly-titled The Lord of the Rings: War in the North – Legacy Edition rests somewhere in the liminal space between a basic port and a full-blown remaster. It is by-and-large the same game as it was back in 2011, which sees you (and some friends, if you prefer) taking control of a trio of heroes and hack-and-slashing your way through classic Middle-earth locations across a LotR side story. However, a number of adjustments and quality-of-life features have been added to this re-release, such as on-the-fly character swapping, along with a cranked up resolution and frame rate.
Make no mistake, though, War in the North still feels like a game from a bygone era in ways both good and bad. It’s quite a linear affair for an RPG, as you largely progress through levels and locations in a set order and direction. The game’s core loop of slashing and shooting through enemy hordes, leveling up your character, and talking to NPCs for side quests is all bog-standard stuff for the genre, executed competently but without much in the way of unique flare.
The combat is weightier and more methodical than a lot of the game’s modern counterparts, offering a slower-paced and slightly more grounded alternative to button mash-heavy entries in hack-and-slash space. It’s engaging enough fare in single-player, and even more enjoyable in multiplayer with a bud or two playing alongside you on the battlefield.
On the more negative side, the game retains its frustrating penchant for swarming you with a ridiculous amount of enemies in battles that go on for far too long. A lack of gameplay iteration and variety over the runtime means that the fighting grows stale quickly, as you do little but engage in the same sort of repetitive battles over and over. The game’s RPG systems also remain poorly explained, while menus are still clunky and obtuse.
The unchanged story remains an impenetrable, exposition-heavy slog to anyone who isn’t a devoted fan of the source material, though its commitment to adapting the world and tone of LotR down to the smallest nuances is admirable. There’s an impressive amount of voice lines nestled in each character interaction and corresponding dialogue tree, and it’s all written to sound authentically Tolkien-esque.
The refinements that are present in this re-release are decent enough, though they don’t make a massive impression. Character swapping during levels is arguably the biggest draw, allowing you to take control of your different party members at a moment’s notice. Gyro aiming for ranged weapons is a solid addition, though rather finicky in my experience. Other features like visible health bars for your teammates and lock-on for enemies blend in so seamlessly, it’s surprising to think that they weren’t available previously.
It’s also nice to see everything with crisper visuals and generally improved performance (60fps target), though some more intensive touch-ups in the graphical department would have been appreciated. For all of the improvements, there are also some glaring omissions feature-wise, such as the continued lack of any sort of manual save system.
For the handful of positives it brings with it, War in the North – Legacy Edition unfortunately also continues Aspyr’s frustrating trend of classic re-releases riddled with bugs. In my time with the game, I experienced issues including barely audible dialogue, strange echoes and noise artifacts underneath voice lines, audio cutting out entirely in the middle of a level, characters phasing through walls into subsequent areas that weren’t yet supposed to be accessible, performance dips, and textures glitching out.
Most egregiously, I encountered a recurring glitch in which a miniboss would suddenly vanish during a fight and refuse to respawn, barring progression entirely. This issue, combined with the uncontrollable save system, ultimately resulted in me having to start the entire game over from scratch. Fingers crossed for patches, but buyer beware.
Conclusion
The Lord of the Rings: War in the North may hold a niche legacy as a middling-to-decent multiplayer action RPG that serves Tolkien diehards above all else, but I can’t help feeling like it deserves a more spirited revival than this.
As it stands, this Legacy Edition is a (largely) functional way to play the game on modern hardware that includes some nice yet non-revolutionary tweaks and additions. That holds merit in itself, but once you’ve spent time revisiting the repetitive gameplay loop or chafing up against the unpleasant bugs present in this re-release, you may find yourself wondering if this particular title was better off staying a pleasant memory from a simpler era of gaming history.
