The overlooked RPG gets a second chance to head into the colds of Middle-Earth
Remember Elder Scrolls: Skyrim? Yes. Remember Elrond Scrolls: Celebrimbor? Nope! That’s War in the North. Snowblind’s game, the second based on both the film trilogy and the books together, was criminally overlooked when it launched in 2011 because it was facing an uphill battle against that other big fantasy RPG. It’s a shame because it was actually a decent game at the time, especially for Lord of the Rings nerds who only had The Hobbit movies to look forward to.
It’s very basic in its action RPG execution, and falls back on all the different tropes that are common today like light and heavy attacks, an open-ish world, sidequests that just have us collecting things and dialog trees. But what it lacked in novelty it made up for in satisfaction. This was a game that we could play if we liked RPGs and LOTR, and we’d be perfectly okay with it. It was cromulent, some might say. And while it’s been available and floating around for a while it aged quickly and was promptly forgotten.
Cut to today, with aspyr punching out an updated version seemingly out of the blue, and we have something that’s, well, surprisingly adept at being what it is.
Whatever we thought about that original game back then, aspyr’s goal with this version is to get it into the hands of more players by doing just enough tweaks to give us a reason to do so. They’ve updated the visuals with some better resolution and textures, and added some quality of life improvements, like the nice ability to switch between the three main characters on the fly. It’s almost game-changing for the experience. Yes, it kind of breaks it because the game wasn’t initially designed to be played this way, but now it’s way more accessible for someone like me who doesn’t have the hours for multiple replays. I don’t want to nitpick everything with each individual class, I just want to try the game, to play it just enough.
There’s even multiplayer thrown in for those that want to squad up with friends. A fellowship, if you will.
I have to say, though, this isn’t a GREAT game. There’s still a ton of jank, hitboxes are off, animations can weirdly get stuck or force us to wait through them when we’re trying to just hack at an enemy – and a dev should fix all of that when releasing new, modern games. But this is in the weird genre of remasters where a dev will keep as much of the old game as possible and gloss it up with visuals or audio – and then throw one big new change into it.
And that’s… okay? It’s okay. For preservation purposes I can appreciate bringing it to modern platforms and adding something new to point at, without taking away any of the trueness to what that era of gaming was.
The Lord of the Rings: War in the North Legacy Edition is not a game I will force myself to sit down and finish in a regular play through, but it’s nice to remember that it exists again, especially since any of the movies after The Return of the King don’t.
I’m still salty, Peter Jackson.
This review is based on a Steam code sent to the Editor by the Publisher. The video originally appeared on The SideQuest Live! for August 16, 2026.
