I played Lord Of The Rings: War In The North Legacy Edition, and 'Middling-Earth' best describes this average action RPG revamp

The Lord Of The Rings: War In The North Legacy Edition (henceforth known as WITN ) is a new version of the old action role-playing game (RPG) with a few quality-of-life fixes, tweaks, and improvements.

It ends up being diverting fun and well-priced for what it is, and gamers who loved the original (or perhaps loved games like it, such as Dragon Age: Origins ) will enjoy the return to this sort of simple-but-satisfying gameplay loop of hitting orcs, looting gear, and upgrading your characters so they can hit orcs harder, faster, and for longer without falling over.

Review info Platform reviewed: Nintendo Switch Available on: PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch Release date: 11 August (PS5, Xbox, PC), 18 August (Nintendo) But while much of the game is fine, if not spectacular, it's a shame there are a few technical problems and deeper issues.

Swapping between characters on-the-fly is novel, and there has been an effort to incorporate this into all aspects of gameplay.

However, hot-swapping is obviously not quite what the original game intended, so there is some awkwardness here, while glitches and bugs sometimes mar the game at key points.

What about second Fellowship? (Image credit: Aspyr) If you never played the old version, the basis of the game is this: as the Fellowship of the Ring embarks on their quest for Mount Doom, you play an adjacent, original party consisting of Eradan, a Dunedain ranger with all the skills of Aragorn; Farin, a dwarf warrior from the Lonely Mountain who looks an awful lot like Gimli with the serial numbers filed off; and Andriel, a Loremaster elf from Rivendell who can create magical blasts and forcefields.

Together, the 'other' Fellowship party chats with old friends like Aragorn, Arwen and Gandalf, visits familiar and new locations (book-readers will get a kick out of delving into the Barrow-Downs and fighting the famous Wights), and slices through hordes of orcs led by an evil man called Agandaûr, a fallen Numenorean like the Mouth of Sauron.

Agandaûr is one of Sauron's trusted servants, one we've never heard of before or since.

So yes, it's all a bit fan-fictionesque, and it plays a lot like other action RPGs set in fantasy worlds, only this one takes the basic fantasy character set and plops them straight into Middle-Earth rather than a parallel-but-similar setting of elves, dwarves and dragons.

It's even funnier when you get hold of special character weapon options, and you're controlling a random dwarf running around with legendary gear like Anduril or Sting.

Dedicated Tolkien enthusiasts might find it a bit egregious, but it's all in the name of good fun and enabling the sort of repetitive hack-and-slash gameplay the genre is best at.