It is time for us now to play our part in these events and not to forsaken the fate of Middle Earth.įellowship is the core of Lord of the Rings: War in the North (WitN) and it is through this understanding that your success or failure will be determined. While Frodo, the fellowship, and The Ring venture southward on their quest towards Mount Doom, the trio of Eradan the Dunedain Ranger, Andriel the Elven Loremaster, and Farin the Dwarven Champion must assemble what forces they can and fight back against the shadow that grows in the North. This is a tale of a new trio of comrades who join together to prevent Sauron and his forces from commanding the realms to the North under the leadership from Sauron's Chief Lieutenant Agandaur. While these tales are popular and widely known, there is a part of the story that has almost slipped away from the legends of lore. Where a fellowship banded together under a banner of brotherhood to undertake a quest that held the fate of every living thing in Middle Earth.
This might sound like you won’t end up with that many skills, but when I ended my first normal playthrough of the game at level 20, I had six active skills and a good number of passive abilities (including one that let me dual wield a staff and sword like Gandalf!).Legends have told the tale of Middle Earth and the quest to destroy Sauron and The One Ring. Character customization can get pretty deep as not only do players pick and choose which actives and passives they get, but how many points they want to invest in those skills (some skills only take one point, while others get stronger the more points you put into them). The ranger, on the other hand, gets a melee combat tree, an archery tree, and a stealth tree. The loremaster, for example, gets a tree that focuses on support and healing, one that focuses on offensive magic, and one that focuses on ranged staff attacks. Investing points in any of the skills or passives of a tree will eventually unlock subsequent tiers within that tree. Each hero has three different skill trees with four levels. All their other spells/skills, however, are unique from the other classes. They also all have the ability to call the Great Eagle Beleram (the fourth, non-player-controllable member of the party) by using the correct consumable. The story will lead players through an impressive variety of environments, including (but not limited to) Mount Gundabad, the Barrowdowns, and the Ettenmoors.Īll three heroes are adept in melee and ranged combat, and players will spend much of their time happily thwacking or shooting away at enemies. The plot is fairly simple, but it does the job of coherently connecting the various areas in the game together. These three have been tasked with combating a great evil in the north (Sauron’s champion Agandar) while the Fellowship bears the one ring towards the fires of Mount Doom.
The game follows three new heroes in the Lord of the Rings universe: Eradan (the human ranger), Andriel (the elf loremaster), and Farin (the dwarf champion). Though online drop-in/drop-out is supported online, I couldn’t find a way for a local player to drop-in/drop-out. Split-screen is a vertical split, which I found to be quite suited for the game (I hardly had to do the lean-in-and-squint at all!).
Split-screen, online, and mixed split-screen/online are all supported for the consoles, with just online multiplayer for the PC. The entire game can be played with one to three players (only one of each race is allowed in a given game, however) with the AI filling in the remaining roles. Players use attack combos right alongside their spells and skills, and the blend between the two styles feels quite seamless. As a result, War in the North is an action game with deeply integrated RPG elements. Instead of their traditional, top-down dungeon-crawler view, though, Snowblind opted for a third-person view. At its very core, War in the North is a co-op RPG that’s all about the character progression and, let’s not lie here, the loot.