[REVIEW] The Lord Of The Rings: War In The North – Legacy Edition | Nintendo Switch 2

In terms of gameplay, it is often stated that The Lord of the Rings: War in the North – Legacy Edition is a hack-and-slash action RPG. I would agree with that for the most part, but I find that most hack-and-slash games have much more fluid combat where you can easily string combos together to take down enemies. This game, however, is less fluid, and most of the heavier enemies seem unstaggerable. Strong combo attacks do little to knock them back, which means that the typical plan of attack is to roll up to an enemy, get a couple of hits in, and then dodge out of the way before they land a hit on you that you may not recover from.

Sure, you can upgrade your gear and your skills to do more damage and withstand enemy attacks better, but as is the nature of these games, you are constantly having to find/purchase better gear as the enemies continue to get stronger as you play. Upon defeating enemies, you can earn XP and eventually level up your character. You can choose which attribute you would like to increase, such as Strength, Dexterity, Will, etc. Some gear that you can obtain may have a minimum requirement of a certain attribute, so you may have to take that into account when it comes to upgrading your character around certain armor pieces or weapons.

Whether you are playing on your own or locally/online with a friend, there are some things to take note of. When playing on your own, you can freely swap between the other party members to make use of their skills or if you simply feel like changing things up a bit. When playing local co-op or online with others, you do not have this novelty and are restricted to playing as the character you have chosen for your campaign session. It’s understandable when online, as you will most likely have a human player for each party member. For local co-op, though, the third member is always going to be a CPU, so you would think that you could at least swap into the CPU character, but there is no such option.

Regardless of who you are playing as, you may find that a lot of the time, when picking up loot, you may not be able to use it yourself. The Lord of the Rings: War in the North – Legacy Edition is big on co-operative play, so you may find that some items you obtain may be equippable by other party members instead. You can gift such items in the inventory screen, which can help free up your inventory space whilst possibly helping make your fellow party members stronger. This is particularly helpful when playing on your own, as you can always make sure all of your party members’ builds are as updated as they can be. To go one better, you can take advantage of the other character’s inventory space to stockpile on the likes of arrows and bolts so that when the key character for that particular item is running low (Eradan uses arrows for his bow, for example), the likes of Andriel or Farin can gift them to him, as they do not need Arrows.

Speaking of arrows, I should probably talk about weapons. Each character has a specific weapon set. Eradan the Ranger can equip single- or two-handed weapons like swords, axes, daggers, and shields, as can Farin for the most part. Andriel, on the other hand, can use staves and certain weapons once she has unlocked a particular skill perk. When it comes to long-range weapons, Eradan uses a bow, Farin uses a crossbow, and Andriel can use her staff to project energy orbs to hit distant enemies.

As you can imagine, each character has a particular role, with Eradan being the attacker, Farin as the tank, capable of taking hits and dealing damage, and Andriel as a healer with powerful AOE skills. All three complement one another and have quite a nice balance going. I found it most helpful when playing on my own as Eradan that Farin does a fairly good job of luring enemies in, which allows me to pick them off with strong attacks, and Andriel’s Sanctuary ability is great for providing a protective shield where I can fire off arrows at enemies without getting hit by their projectiles. A winning team by any standard, for sure.

Now, although The Lord of the Rings: War in the North – Legacy Edition takes place in the northern part of Middle-earth, there are some locations in the game that will be familiar to series fans. The likes of Rivendell and Bree, for example, or Mirkwood. As for the other areas that you will visit, most of these have been mentioned at some point during the films, books, and appendices, including Carn Dûm, the Ettenmoors, and Mount Gundabad. The game itself is divided up into eight chapters, with each chapter centered around a particular location. You have your dark forests, mountain trails, ghostly barrens, and orc strongholds that each have their unique environment and secrets for you to explore.  The likes of Bree and Rivendell act like hub areas that you can go to between and during chapters and can act as a reprieve of sorts between long battles. You can take the opportunity to talk with NPCs to accept quests, repair your equipment, or purchase and sell equipment and items.

My time with The Lord of the Rings: War in the North – Legacy Edition has definitely not been wasted. I have really enjoyed exploring Middle-earth, and while the combat can feel a little long-winded and repetitive at times, I still get a kick out of the final blow slow-motion sequence when I sever the arm or a head of an orc. The locations have been a lot of fun to explore, and I appreciate that all of the secret locations can be seen regardless of which character you are using. These were restricted in the original game to specific characters, but the Legacy Edition allows all players to see a secret so they can tell other players about it so they can open it up.

The Gyro Controls for firing long-range weapons are always a plus, and I use them at every opportunity. The 60fps is a nice touch, but I have always favoured visuals over performance. The game, for the most part, does look pretty good, but there are moments when I wish the resolution were improved, as there are a lot of rough edges at times, especially around the character models during cutscenes. Locking onto enemies is also a welcome addition, as you have a better chance of hitting foes with long-range attacks or landing powerful close-up attacks. All these little features have become the norm for modern games, but it’s great to see them added to a classic game like The Lord of the Rings: War in the North – Legacy Edition so that it is much more accessible for today’s gamers.

One issue that I do have to touch upon about this game, and it is a pretty big one. In Chapter 6, when you are inside Mount Gundabad, I encountered many instances where the screen would become erratic, with colour changing all across the screen, and the characters, enemies, and the world could not be seen, yet the game would still function. You could still move your character, and by doing so, you could eventually move to a space where everything would go back to normal. It was a really weird thing to happen, and it did so multiple times on my playthrough that the game was virtually unplayable at one point. Fortunately, I did persevere and could continue to play without fault. I have informed my contact, who sent me a copy of the game, and they have relayed the information to the developers. Hopefully, the issue can be fixed in a later patch to squash that nasty bug.

Coming to the end of this review, The Lord of the Rings: War in the North – Legacy Edition has certainly been a surprise for me and a welcome one. There have been a number of games that have tried to capture the magic and wonder of the films and the books but have never quite hit their mark. I am glad to say that I really enjoyed my time with this game, and even though it is not canon at all with the mainline story, it feels natural enough that it could very well have taken place within the world of Middle-earth. Sure, the game itself has its moments, and constantly equipping gear becomes a chore as you find a new trinket to equip and another shortly after, but the game itself is well worth the punt. Hardcore fantasy RPG players will undoubtedly give this a miss, as there are far better games out there that do everything this game does and far better, but I think if you are a Lord of the Rings fan, you will appreciate The Lord of the Rings: War in the North – Legacy Edition and how it fits in with the universe of The Lord of the Rings.