The Lord of the Rings: War in the North

I found it to be a pretty rewarding experience. It's definitely best if played with friends, but the single player side works well enough.

Fans of the Lord of the Rings won't mind the slightly disappointing graphics, the confusing story and the many small flaws in gameplay. They'll be happy to fight their way through Middle-Earth once more, using more than decent combat mechanics alone or with up to two friends.

A repetitive yet addictive hack'n'slash game which offers an engaging loot system and a good co-op mode. Fanservice is brilliant and fans of Tolkien's works will have a good time reading through tons of dialogues and meeting a few beloved characters. You will not keep playing it for long but it will be fun until it lasts.

A heartwarming story is what we miss the most. You get the feeling you are doing the dirty work for the real Fellowship. While they are making history in the south of Middle-earth, you need to cause some diversion in the north. [December 2011, p.93]

It's the best game using Middle-earth's franchise that has beed developed in the last 10 years, but you have to remember that other Tolkien based games are not a thing to be very proud of. It's a well made game that deserves a chance. It has some budget implied simplifications, but a Middleearth fan should experience one of more satisfying journeys.

The Lord of the Rings: War in the North is a good game. Unable to achieve excellence because of limits of the gameplay, it is still a title recommended to fans of the genre and of The Lord of the Rings.

The Lord of the Rings: War in the North is a fun but flawed experience.

An enjoyable action-RPG with solid Middle Earth inspiration, Lord of the Rings: War in the North is best played with others and its flaws aren't enough to ruin the experience.

The game stands for lots of action, a story besides the One Ring and cooperative gameplay at its best. With two friends by your side, this game shows what it's really worth.

War in the North is a solid game that has some challenging battles despite of the bad AI. The game can't stand up towards other big releases during this time of the year, but the three player co-op will keep fans of the franchise and the genre busy for many hours.

What keeps me coming back to War in the North is the fact that the game does a remarkable job of divvying out loot. Enemy drops, breakable items, and eager shopkeepers are all there to make sure that you always have a consistent IV drip of high-fantasy swag at your disposal.

While decapitating enemies never got old. other aspects of North fall short. [Holiday 2011, p.80]

A perfectly competent beat-'em-RPG, even if it doesn't do much to carve out its own niche in the Lord of the Rings universe. Its strength and weakness is that it's completely inoffensive -- the perfect middle-of-the-road game. Unfortunately, it's hard to see what helps differentiate War of the North from the pack, and the pack is where it's apt to stay.

While it's admirable that the team had opted to create an original story set alongside the events in the books, you'll wish that they had attempted to take more risks with the project. The characters are bland and lifeless, and the combat, while fun at first, gets pretty repetitive before too long.

It isn't amazing, but it's a competent effort and certainly one of the better LotR games to come along. Isn't it about time that the smaller characters, bland as they are, got their due?

Although the story is original and its combat and roleplaying gameplay is a good idea, there are things that doesn't work well. Roleplaying elements are well-made, but they are not that important, and combat lacks depth, and the enemy AI is limited. An average game that won't make history.

When it works (and when you have friends to play with), the game is a perfectly average hack-and-slash RPG. However, the laundry list of aforementioned issues not only hold the game back, but inhibit it to the point that it's not fun.

In many ways, War in the North is a Gears of War version of Lord of the Rings. In fact, the game introduces an enemy type that looks and functions identically to the Ticker and there are wave-based Horde modes to play through. Like Gears of War, however, the game's saving grace is the three player co-op because it is much more fun to slay Orcs with friends.

If you're a diehard fan of Lord of the Rings and just have to have everything then War in the North will tide you over nicely till The Hobbit finally hits theatres. For anyone else, it's a competent rendition of an action RPG and worth the look if you're done with Skyrim, but I wouldn't go out of my way to play this.

Entertaining for fans of Tolkien's universe, but too repetitive and linear to appeal anyone else.

Lord of the Rings: War in the North has a good story which is intertwined with the original saga, but it isn't a good game. Repetitive hack and slash action, a low difficulty level and a lot of small errors prevent it from being any better. Even though it doesn't pose much of a challenge it is still fun enough to play through the adventure with two other players.

No, War of the North is not the blockbuster expected by the most enthusiastic of the fans. If it wasn't supported by such a strong license, it would even stay under the radar. But here we are : the fact that it remains so true to Tolkien's world and references it so well, with some true epic moments (the combat against a giant, the journey mounted on an eagle, the encounter with a dragon...) just saves it. Despite the numerous bugs and an energic but average combat system, it works : one always wants to make progress, and discover more. Lastly, the split-screen play has but one merit, to exist, since it's so chaotic to play. On the other hand, the online co-op is a real plus.

An interesting attempt to tackle the Middle Earth franchise, but lacks new source material. Snowblind Studios has attempted to tell a side story to the story established by the books, casting it in their familiar style of hack and slash games, but it fails to spark any direct interest in either story or characters. Combat becomes slightly tedious shortly after being introduced, but can still be fun for frantic multiplayer sessions either locally or online. For Middle Earth fans, this could be enjoyable in well-paced out dosages.

Too many frustrations interfere with the joys of killing orcs and collecting loot in The Lord of the Rings: War in the North.

I can only say one good thing about War in the North: It could have been awesome.

There's a fair amount of content here, but it's tedious and repetitive enough that you won't want to play it for very long.

War in North is a rushed game. The Gameplay is simple and it doesn't take any risks, and the story had potential but fails to stand out.

Considering its overall lack of polish and gameplay depth, War in the North proves to be a mediocre hack 'n' slash that will only appeal to real fans of the brand.

A derivative hack-and-slasher which offers nothing new and does nothing old particularly well. [Issue#213, p.89]

It's essentially a third-person hack 'n' slash with an RPG film laid over the top.

In its present state though, I cannot recommend Lord of the Rings: War in the North. If patching is successful, I can only recommend this to starved genre fans, but don't expect much.