Any thoughts on Lord of the Rings, War in the North

I finally made it past the 2 troll battle at the inner door. My party members could not keep the attention of one troll for anything. Somehow after 20 tries I got both trolls down. I still don't know how, mostly luck with lots of potion consumption.

Kept on and finished the game. I liked this game alot. Really great story, very fun combat, hard battles, awesome attention to detail graphic-wise. The only thing missing was the ability to choose the skills and equipment of your party. Once I figured out to just ignore that aspect, the game was much more fun.

I played single player on Xbox and the game was flawless for me.
 
Good news! Turns out co-op mode is NOT broken, at least, I don't think it is.

The game does clearly state that player 2's progress will not be saved, but the game still does save. My dad and I just tested it and it works perfectly. Weird.

So yeah, I retract my statement saying that I wouldn't recommend this for couch co-op on the 360. I definitely WOULD recommend it, highly!
 
I finally made it past the 2 troll battle at the inner door. My party members could not keep the attention of one troll for anything. Somehow after 20 tries I got both trolls down. I still don't know how, mostly luck with lots of potion consumption.

Oh man, that battle was hell. I honestly thought we would not be able to do it. The worst part was trying to keep the troll's attention and you have those damn duel-wielding dudes coming at you at the same time. I hate those guys. They shrug off your attacks and immediately hit you consecutively and you can't move.

Somehow we did it though. Not sure how. Luckily I was able to kill one troll down the steps and my dad was able to kill the other near the door. Crazy battle.

Then what comes immediately after that was no walk in the park either. We got lucky and the game glitched and did not spawn the additional lackeys that can't be killed :D. We got pretty lucky there.

Great game but damn, some of it is brutal.
 
FYI its on sale on GMG for $5 until monday,see pricewatch thread
 
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You can now get this free if you have playstation plus account (15 months 49€).

I didnt expect anything from this freebie, but then I played it for 4 hours until 1 am. Its a bit like dragon age. Theres plenty of loot and visuals are good.
 
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With all those coop posts it's not clear how good it is in single player, any comment?

It seems very hard even in coop and in single player companion(s) suck (no pause no way to control them?) looks like an unplayable game in singleplayer, any comment?

Frankly I would skip it if it wasn't on coming Mac release so because of this new port I'm looking for players comments in single player mode.
 
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With all those coop posts it's not clear how good it is in single player, any comment?

It seems very hard even in coop and in single player companion(s) suck (no pause no way to control them?) looks like an unplayable game in singleplayer, any comment?

It's very playable in single-player. I didn't find it compelling enough to finish, but I thought it held up well as a simple action-RPG. You have no control over the other two characters, but the ai does a decent enough job with them. That said, it's probably more enjoyable in co-op.
 
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It's very playable in single-player. I didn't find it compelling enough to finish, but I thought it held up well as a simple action-RPG. You have no control over the other two characters, but the ai does a decent enough job with them. That said, it's probably more enjoyable in co-op.

Thank you, that's definitely the general feeling I got from reading more about it and watching a bit.

Here an overview:
- Difficulty : Some parts are quite hard on Normal, Easy is easy, difficulty can't be changed during a game you need restart a game to change it. Harder difficulties need be unlocked.
- There's no pause, the combats are pure action game unlike for example Dragon Age series. Companions AI isn't that bad, to counterbalance AI weaker than real players (coop) the difficulty seems lowered in single player in comparison with coop.
- There's some RPG elements like inventory, items, character management with attributes and skills with three trees, but overall it's medium quality, to compare let say the quality of this is a bit better than Dungeon Siege III but not much. You manage nothing of your companions.
- Overall it's a straight forward RPG from fights to fights with intermediate cutscenes and some dialogs building a mildly dense story telling. It's a pure action RPG very combat oriented and if DA2 was too much for you on that point this one is a lot more purely combats+story, in fact the comparison with Dungeon Siege 3 is better it's similar but more heavy on story telling and quite weaker on exploration knowing that DS3 is only fairly good on that point.
- The links with the books seem quite well setup from a story and lore point of view and overall the story telling seems well done.
- Combats are setup on duration with never ending waves, those who hated this in DA2 should better skip this game.
- Companions (AI) aren't fully puppets they provide hints during combats, require help, detect waves of enemies and warn you, seem have a good survival, comment some of their most important actions during combats, and they provide sometimes some comments.
- Exploration is very minimal but there's some, it's mainly explore area corners to find some loot. The loot is a bit generic but there's stuff and there's some basic crafting to enhance items.
- It is overall in the range of AA games with a lack of polishing you could expect at this production level. It's a RPG heavily oriented to combats with story telling.
- It bugs a lot with many ATI cards and PC version, it requires apply cautious for ATI owners.

So overall this RPG will rely a lot on how much fun you'll have with the combats, the story telling will be a nice addition but won't be enough to sustain the fun. The RPG elements will just reinforce the mood and their medium quality won't sustain the fun that will rely heavily on combats fun. ATI owners should know they take a high risk in buying this.

I enjoyed Dungeon Siege 3 but parts with better exploration did help and the key point is if I'll enjoy the fights and will find them enough diversified and deep without to be too difficult.

Because there isn't much RPG on Mac I'll certainly end buy it, but would probably never on PC.
 
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Basically it's a loot game (like Diablo) so there's lots of combat and looting. Only, unlike all these other loot games, it's got a camera positioned behind your character rather than being a top down view. Also while you have abilities, the regular moves narrow down to light and strong attacks, rolling, blocking and counter attacking which is what you should expect from an action game.

The result is that the combat always remains fluid and dynamic and doesn't become a tedious repeat of mashing one button or spamming your best ability.

The main problem is the loot which could have been fleshed out more but apparently some people keep playing through for the rare finds...

It's a good game for what it is and one of the most enjoyable games I've played of this type. Diablo and Torchlight bore me.

Don't go in expecting something like Dragon Age: Origins. This is an action-loot game with RPG elements pure and simple. It just happens to give the player dialogue choices to make the story more fleshed out.
 
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I agree it's a skip-able game and sometimes it can be pale. But after first parts I found the game wasn't that bad at all, here some key points in my opinion:
  • It is very fights oriented, fights are above the average, there's no link with diablo like games and the fights aren't as deep than in games like Torchlight 1&2. Must be quote, the fights against trolls, one or two, is hugely fun.
  • There's a fair thinking in fights design to have it fun for the bad players. There's multiple tools and tricks to use without to have to be very skilled in such actions. And it's not hyper speed action, it's more slower than usual.
  • The companions system works very well for the fights, I don't remember have seen an overall system working as well with companions as bots in fights. You don't control them but you can definitely play by using them. And at some key points or for a load you can change the character you play, this could give you more choices to overcome some situations.
  • It's almost a railroad RPG quite story driven. In few parts there's a bit of exploration, but the exploration is mainly guided tourism. It's not that bad in fact because there's many references to the movies or the books and many places not only are references but often have a good mood.
  • References to the trilogy is a key of the game. That part is rather smart with constant crosses, constant references and many time the game use an element of the trilogy and transpose it very directly in the context of the game. For example if you control the dwarf you could have a dispute dialog with Legolas almost directly taken from the movie, and it's up to you to choose the dialogs option to enter in this dispute game.
  • It's also a sort of references to the world of the trilogy, many dialogs are about element of this world, some cover the subject of the compatibility of the game story with the trilogy story.
  • The weak part is rather often the writing is glued in this constant reference and the only little bit of emotions and fun are coming from the slight echoes from the trilogy. It's like if the reference work is rather smart but the writing is academic and from writers without talent.
  • For secondary quests, it's only to get the dialogs to trigger it, and collect something. it's better than nothing but it's the minimum service.
  • Classes are skils of trees, it's not very complex but it's ok.
  • For items and equipment, it's tune down on drops and quite light because you have auto quick pick and you'll hardly have inventory problems because there's a good spreading of places where to sell stuff. There's a little bit of crafting, it's simple but not bad, you have also to manage repairs.
So if you are a fan of Tolkien stuff it's a must have and it's a almost good stuff from this perspective. If you aren't fan, it's only for the action and the references and don't expect a real RPG, more a light action RPG but not in the Diablo like category, and in that point of view it's mix of fairly good parts and pale parts, overall playable and fair fun.
 
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I finished it, it's not really a good game but it has fun IF you have fun with the fights.

After to have play more after previous post, I quoted annoyances that didn't bother me much before:
- There's only one automatic save for the whole game, no load back.
- The inventory tab for non equipment get me troubles many time because of overload to manage. In one part either I didn't noticed a shop either there should be a shop sooner. Two other times I passed the shop, went past a point right after where I couldn't come back to the shop and noticed I had forget clean the general items inventory tab.
- Both savepoints and block points (not allowing get back) was often unclear generating some troubles and confusions.
- A few fights are very at the limit in term of management, it's weird because it's not a logical difficulty progression, for example the final was easy in comparison of some with high difficulty spike.

Overall I had good fun plus few ragequit :) and few tedious trunks. Not a game to advise but for me it was quite playable and I don't regret.

Some time after the middle of the game I switched to mouse with keyboard controls, I don't know if on PC they are the same but on Mac they are quite well done, good port from console on this point. I regret not have noticed sooner that the controls shortcuts could be customized.
 
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What does it have to do with lord of the rings? just curious, is it setting? or is there some story or ?
 
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It's not a game to advise but I have to admit it got me as I replay it through the Heroic mode. Knowing all the classic and top game waiting I play it's total non sense.

But to answer to Gothicness, the writing is about 1/3 average, 1/3 bellow average and 1/3 very bad. That's why I think that the links with the trilogy or Tolkien world is only a minor element, despite there's a significant amount of work on that.

You'll cross the paths of the book few time and then will meet some characters of the trilogy: Gandalf, Elrond, Frodo, Bilbo, Legolas, Gimli, Arwen, Aragorn and Radagast. But this last is only in the books not the movies. And there's also not from the trilogy, but Tolkien world, Elrond's sons Elladan and Elrohir, Gwaihir. Not sure if other NPC/characters are from Tolkien world.

Form the villains point, you'll heard about the Nazguls, will met/see some of their flying mounts and wargs, you'll fight some Uruk-hai and many types of Orcs, various type of Trolls (some really remind the movie).

You'll cross path of the trilogy in three places, Bree, Sarn Ford, and Rivendell. And that's through Bree and Rivendell that you'll cross some characters of the trilogy and have interactive dialogs with them. After Rivendell the reference of the trilogy are mainly few references of the main events of the trilogy that happen in parallel.

There's also many dialogs took from the movies trilogy and transposed in the game context. One I quoted is when you play a Dwarf and have a dialog with Legolas you have a chain of dialog choices allowing you mimic a dispute between Legolas and Grimli.

But again, it's not a good reason to buy this game because of the very uneven writing quality. Only if you are fan of Tolkien world, perhaps.

The main reason to get this game are the fights, which are for me, one of the best in this genre, and the more I play the more I feel it like that. It even gives the feeling that the game is far to exploit all the possibilities of the fight system through the design of the fights.
 
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