The Lord of the Rings: War in the North Legacy Edition - Piddle Earth (Review)
The Lord of the Rings: War in the North
Released: August 11th, 2026
Developer: Snowblind Studios (original), Aspyr
Publisher: Aspyr
Systems: PC, PS5, Switch 2, Xbox Series
Why?
It’s a fair question, is it not? Of all the two-bit trash to ooze out of the seventh generation, The Lord of the Rings: War in the North has to rank among the least deserving of resurrection. Something as bad as Too Human or Amy could at least meme their way into justifying a rerelease, but War in the North possesses neither the historical significance nor the “funny bad” elements required to make the bit work. It is bloody awful, and not even remarkably so.
So, why is it here? Because it’s nothing but property, and the current owners might as well shit it out again.
War in the North was Warner Bros’ piss-fated attempt to actionize Lord of the Rings years before Monolith would show them how it’s done. I was sent a collector’s edition when it was originally released, it came in a cheap faux-leather quiver and failed to curry enough favor to avoid the low score I gave it. That quiver’s probably in a Mississippi landfill now, which is where the rest of the game should have been fucking consigned.
Middle-Earth’s least adventurous adventure launched just as the seventh generation’s most tiresome trends were solidifying themselves. It’s an oppressively gritty yet ultimately shallow campaign, more concerned with pushing an absolutely worthless cooperative experience than making something people would want to play. It’s rudimentary in all its bandwagoning endeavors, with pretty much every gameplay mechanic and system existing in their barest fashion so that a checklist of mandatory features could be ticked off.
Po-faced and bleached of color, the “war” is essentially one long-ass corridor with only minimal deviation from a rigidly enforced path. I’m an advocate of linearity, but I’m not exaggerating when I say that a literal train track allows more freedom of movement. The glorified hallway funnels you from combat area to combat area, with a few opportunities to find “secrets” exclusive to each character in order to justify the three of them. Every fight along the way is a drawn out affair, as waves of unvaried enemies ensure each encounter outstays its nonexistent welcome.
Our heroes are a trio of jobbers - a human Ranger, dwarves Champion, and elven Loremaster, each vaguely fitting the classic archetype of rogue, fighter, and mage. Everyone has both melee and ranged options, with their own skill trees full of unspectacular abilities. It takes quite a bit of investment before you can stop relying entirely on hack n’ slash combat, and that includes the magic user. Since you need ammunition and mana to pull anything off, much of the experience consists of melee combat so simplistic it makes Dynasty Warriors look complicated.
I’m loathe to get into the nitty gritty of gameplay because who honestly gives a shit? It’s a sub-mediocre action game dressed in the embryonic trappings of an RPG, complete with a flimsy loot system and uninspired cooldown abilities. No matter what you use to attack, every blow lands with the tactile power of a urine puddle, and it feels so utterly wimpy. It’s honestly pathetic how there’s no sense of impact or basic energy with these combat encounters.
Warner Bros. was obsessed with co-op in the 2010s, cramming it into as many releases as possible regardless of how appropriate it was or whether or not the developers could handle it. Despite the fact barely anybody was ever going to touch it, War in the North is utterly hijacked by an online offering that doesn’t even let players use their own characters! If you drop into somebody’s game, you’re stuck using their party members, with apparently zero reward for your efforts. Unless you’re planning to play in a persistent party with two friends, supporting somebody else’s campaign is a complete waste of time.
This is not a problem I remember encountering in the original release, but it appears to be immensely common with the Legacy Edition. Worth rereleasing, right?
Speaking of timewasting, single-player is somehow completely fucked up because of co-op’s dreadful implementation - in a truly embarrassing move, the game treats your party members as separate players even during a solo session. While they have just enough AI to move and attack, you’re otherwise managing three separate inventories, using shops three times instead of once, and even buying stuff via three individual fucking wallets! Since the character you’re playing picks up all the loot, equipping your allies must first involve manually gifting every piece of gear. Of course, the AI also burns through any consumables you give them, so you’re expected to constantly top them up using the same doling routine.
Essentially, War in the North is a quartermaster simulator.
You won’t be surprised to learn that the barely autonomous AI is thicker than pig shit. Woe betide you if allies arbitrarily decide to stop following the leader, because you might end up having to switch between them to cover the same ground three times in a row. When they do follow, they’re habitual tailgaters and will regularly trap you on staircases or narrow pathways, since allowing you to pass through the models and their aggressive aura of collision detection is apparently too much to bloody ask.
War in the North's voice acting is a major terrorist attack upon the English accent. Pretty much every way in which you could fuck it up is represented, with particular accolades going to the elf character - that stereotypical “posh fantasy lady” voice is already among the most infuriating fake accents, but I’ve never before heard it done to such an extreme that “barrow” is pronounced “bar-row.” She rhymes it with Sbarro! She may be the worst offender, but the entire cast would be wise to never put these performances on their highlight reels.
I’d discuss the audio, but it seems like the game doesn’t want to have any. There’s something wrong with the sound on this thing, it’s half as quiet as anything else on my TV even with its sound settings maxed out. I’m very confident in claiming it to be the least loud game I’ve ever played - it’s literally quieter than The Quiet Man!
Between the tedious party management and sluggish gameplay, War in the North is relentlessly boring. It’s a far worse sin than simply being bad, grinding down whatever small enthusiasm a player could muster for such mediocrity by doing precisely nothing to enthuse them. It’s a poorly made product in every single department, but not in any way that stands out. It’s just a sad little chore to work through, an exercise in feeling nothing, a place where entertainment has gone to fucking die.
Calling the Legacy Edition a remaster would be giving it too much credit, because heaven forbid any of the game’s unilateral inadequacy be fixed at all! It’s such a low effort port of the original that menus have an option to look at other players’ Gamer Cards - yes, as in the old Xbox Live Gamer Cards - regardless of the system you’re on. No amount of enhancement would be enough to redeem something this fundamentally unbaked, but to not even try is pathetic.
The Lord of the Rings: War in the North Legacy Edition is one of the most pointless releases in all of media. As charmless as it was forgettable, the original game was just another flop of its era, and this is a straight replication of the same thoroughly unappealing swill. I can’t even call it a cash grab, because that’d imply there’s enough cash worth the effort of rehashing something nobody wanted the first time around.
There are so many promising games that never shipped for a litany of sad reasons, yet we get to live in a world where this fucking shit shipped twice. Proof indeed that all our gods are dead.
3.5/10
