The Lord of the Rings: War in the North™ - Legacy Edition

I didn't have the nostalgia for this game because I never played the original. I was however a big fan of the EA Return of the King game, and hope those get remastered as well for steam/modern consoles. I went into this game with some reasonable expectations knowing the general type of game this was and when it was released. I'm not a huge LOTR fan, but I do enjoy the series and was excited to give this a whirl. So, to get the bad out of the way and why I don't rec this at this time after getting through the campaign and starting a little bit of NG+. It's got a LOT of bugs, and a few that severely hindered the gameplay and overall experience for me. There are also some very needed QoL additions that are just not there, and at times just made this feel like a bad emulation you downloaded from a reddit link or something. Here's the bad for me: - Weird bug where all the sudden your arrows/ranged attacks do not connect with enemies. Happened a few times INCLUDING THE FINAL BOSS. Which was frustrating and a real big tone/vibe killer. Especially since I mostly played the ranger and literally had an entire build around dexterity and the bow. Made the fight a real snore, and just not fun considering Agandaûr (the big bad) has a phase where he flies around and does some bs, and you have to hit him... with range attacks. Tried restarting, switching characters, unequip/requip gear, rolling back saves to earlier check points, none of it worked. I eventually just sweat it out and was very bored of the ending because of it. - Steam Machine experience was awful, and each loading screen would kill your frames down to 1fps and do this slow motion thing, only fix is to pop the steam menu a few times and it returns to normal 60. This also happened to me for some reason each time I checked a mirror to alter appearance. Did not experience this on pc though and for the most part ran a locked 60. Couch co op with Steam Machine became unplayable because of this, and that really really bummed me out. - Horrible Character ai. To the point often times your party members just kinda stand there and watch you get smoked. Then if you switch to them to kinda "wake them up" your other chars will just BURN through all your ammo and potions. Like VERY quickly. Really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ annoying when the ranged skills are very important for getting crits/hero mode going. - Tiny inventory space and no real way to keep things. It would've also been nice just to kind of upgrade things or have some sort of armor transmog system so I could keep armor looks I liked. Instead majority of the game you are just in menus selling things and moving stuff between characters. - No way to repair things during long ass missions? Really? Some of these are super long and your things will get near 0 durability. Why even include durability in this remaster if I have to go back to a blacksmith every other check point basically. - Multiplayer experience was less than good imo, didn't really enjoy it. Might've been different if I had a squad I guess, but I really craved the couch co op experience with this type of game. - A lot of skills are pretty useless, and you end up finding the few that will open up crits and just relying on that to be honest. The enemies will dog pile and juggle you if you don't take out certain ones quick, so it becomes a little repetitive. - Game won't let you simply teleport when done back tracking. It makes you work to get to a checkpoint EVERY time. So when you go back to get one little secret area, you are in for at least 10-15 minutes redoing the level basically. Just seemed like a real easy thing to not make the player do and waste time on. The good for me: - A few of the missions were really fun and the gameplay loop started to work in the later game when you actually felt strong and could keep the combos going. - Range of locations is fun, even though the game is relatively short I did appreciate that I wasn't in a similar cave/dreary location every time. - Some fun bosses/enemies. - Did definitely give that older gen feel that games used to have and it was kind of nice to play something that is very simple gameplay wise. Boot up and go kill orcs. No connection to servers or battle pass etc to think about. Just "damn I sure wish this sword I like could be upgraded." while I mow another 100 orcs down. - Story is ok, I didn't mind it and it definitely isn't the main selling point of this game. I did enjoy it though and it was a fun reminder of how many movie tie in games there used to be for everything. - Lastly, I did have fun with this and think there's a good game in here for the price tag. I just really with there were more QoL improvements like inventory management and some way to store things. Or to have some fun gear quests that make back tracking actually fun. TLDR - buggy, sometimes to the point where it takes away vital things in a fight with seemingly no fix, runs like dog water on steam machine but fine on pc, couch co op is rough and multiplayer rougher, some fun locations and fights, but overall very aged and didn't have enough QoL inclusions to make this worth full price imo. A nice walk down an older console's lane but still a wait for sale and pickup only if you're a die hard LotR person.