Review | The Lord of the Rings: War in the North

When it comes to source material, it’s hard to get more epic than The Lord of the Rings. J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy universe is richly detailed and has been the stage for more than its share of large scale battles and world-saving quests. Snowblind Studios are jumping on that magic bandwagon, with a completely original tale running parallel to the events of the famous books. Against the odds, the result is an amazingly average game.

War in the North focuses on three new characters and their quest to stop a sorcerer named Agandaur from helping Sauron to do evil things. In the north. Players can take control of Eradan (the human Ranger guy), Andriel (the elf woman who does magic and healing, because that’s women’s work) or Farin (the dwarf who likes dwarf things). If you’re hoping for an exciting journey with memorable characters, don’t bother. This paragraph gives them more depth and personality than the game’s writing ever will. The trio plod from place to place, killing all the evil things and stopping the bad guy, but honestly it was hard to tell if they even wanted to be there.

Not that you could blame them, considering how lifeless the Northern Regions seem to be. The game could have been a great chance for Lord of the Rings fans to explore new places from within the universe, but while the books are filled with fascinating people, the game is populated by disinterested and poorly-voiced dullards. A few well-known characters will pop up during your journey, but they too are afflicted with the strange life-sapping disease which makes everyone in the North very, very boring. Even the villain – who is hastily set up to be rather important and super scary – is a cookie-cutter evil wizard from Every Fantasy Story Ever.

The story does the bare minimum required to get you into the combat, of which there is a lot. And it’s actually pretty fun to begin with. Weapons have weight to them when you swing and bits of enemies are cleaved in satisfying ways. Critical hits are nicely animated and differentiate the characters nicely during a fracas. Both Eradan and Farin can wield sharp pointy things and ranged weapons with aplomb. The elf’s magic is useful in combat, although mainly in a defensive capacity and not in a very fun way.

That feeling of boredom is never far off though, even when you’re fighting. Seemingly endless waves of enemies are thrown at you and you’ll quickly notice there really isn’t much to do aside from press a few buttons. Soon enough fighting orcs turns from an exciting bout of escapism to wondering what else you could be doing with your life.

Hacking away at enemies is sometimes replaced with turret sections, where nasties stand near exploding barrels. They’re a welcome change of pace until you realise they are completely out of place and not very good. Occasionally – and by that I mean “all the time” – you’ll have to switch up and fight trolls. This means fighting the same way you did before but now the enemy is bigger and has more health.

At this point, it would be prudent to mention this is a co-op game. Not because the co-op is amazing, but because it’s almost necessary. Enemies deal out massive damage and attack in large swarms, meaning your poor characters will constantly require healing, reviving, or some other kind of frantic help. Playing solo can feel almost like suicide, and making the game simply more difficult all around feels like a lazy way to make multiplayer work. That said, playing with friends is a bit more fun, and you can at least chat through the dialogue.

Best to make sure your friends are at a similar level though. War in the North is an RPG, apparently, and having one player at a much higher level will mean they end up doing all the work.

Don’t get too wrapped up in the RPG idea, though. The game again does the bare minimum to earn the label. Characters can be levelled up and skill points can be assigned to different trees. New abilities come up often – as does a variety of class-based loot – but nothing substantially changes in the game based on your choices. That goes for the dialogue and story as well, as you’ll soon find that what looks like a branching discussion with an NPC is actually the game patiently waiting for you to pick the one right response before it moves on. Having a linear story isn’t an automatic black mark, but War in the North seems to want you to think it isn’t linear at all. Objectives are condescendingly referred to as “quests” as if you had any say in taking them, and there is only one actual decision in the game (which manages to feel completely tacked on).

This title is a perfect example of why people are wary of licensed games. War in the North contains none of the charm and excitement of the original source material, and shows no signs that the developers even like Lord of the Rings. The gameplay is passable without being outstanding in any way, and relies heavily on genre standards. On top of that, it isn’t even particularly polished, with glitches, collision detection problems and the odd game-breaker that stops the story progressing. The writing – which you would think should be a priority in a game based on a series of books – looks like it was the last item on a very short checklist. A quality RPG set in the Rings universe would be warmly welcomed by fans, but this isn’t that game.    [5]