The Lord of the Rings: War in the North - Legacy Edition Gives a
- Antal Bokor
- 16 hours ago
- 3 min read
I can tell I’m getting old because the games that are getting the remastered treatment don’t seem so old to me anymore. This might be retro for some, but I was nearly 30 when Lord of the Rings: War in the North released.
And it had two things going against it: Skyrim and Dark Souls, both games that would go on to redefine the 3D action role-playing game as it was known at the time. War in the North, despite being the first Lord of the Rings game with an M rating didn’t really have a lasting impact.
It’s too bad that War in the North wasn’t more well known. It was a competent action roleplaying game with co-op baked in, which is exactly the type of thing I’d be down to play at the time. Despite this, I don’t know if I played through War in the North when it originally released. And while it's definitely a game of its time, it manages to be a pretty solid action RPG–but nostalgia and friends would probably help this title out significantly.
The Lord of the Rings: War in the North - Legacy Edition features three playable characters, each with their own skill tree, items, abilities, etc. All three characters are capable of ranged and melee attacks, but the dwarf is best for melee, the ranger is best for ranged, and the elf works as a bit of a support class. Even so, characters can all stay alive through anything through the power of team work. That is: holding A to get up downed members.
You can play War in the North with friends or with bots. I ended up playing completely solo, and while it was serviceable, I feel like War in the North would be best with friends, and all characters working at their full potential. But now that you can hot-swap characters, you can even tweak the bots to be their best selves. This is just one of many improvements Aspyr made to War in the North.
While it looks barely upgraded from its original version. Looks are indeed deceiving, because there has been significant changes to War in the North with this Legacy Edition.
The Aforementioned Character Hot-Swapping: A massive quality-of-life fix. Players can now seamlessly swap between Eradan, Andriel, and Farin on the fly during gameplay rather than being locked in at the start of a level. You can also finally manage the equipment and skill trees of your AI companions.
Engine Modernization: The game was upgraded from 32-bit to 64-bit architecture and shifted from the D3D9 renderer to D3D12, which should eliminate the RAM bottlenecks and crashes that plagued the original.
Performance & Visuals: Full 60 FPS support. Cinematics have been re-encoded at 4K using modern Bink video compression (v2024/2025)—which is why the install size is roughly twice as large as the original.
Modern QoL Adjustments: Added enemy target locking, visible health/mana/EXP bars for your party members, and autosaves. They also implemented "Triggering Secrets," allowing you to see hidden caches specific to other classes regardless of who you are actively controlling.
Networking: Online multiplayer is now routed through Epic Online Services.
So why is this getting released now? Nostalgia, surely. But also because Aspyr parent company Embracer now owns the rights thanks to their acquisition of Middle-earth Enterprises in 2022. That means there’s a possibility that more WB Lord of the Rings games will be rereleased by Aspyr, so this could be the first of many.
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