Story
The story in War in the North takes place simultaneously alongside the Lord of the Rings. Everyone knows there had to be more going on in Middle Earth during Frodo's trek to Mordor than what was shown in the movies and books. There had to be. Which is where War in the North comes in. The story here tells of an elf, dwarf, and man who discover a powerful new lieutenant of Sauron is planning to attack the North and they set out to stop him. Along the way they come across some familiar places and characters from the books and movies (you arrive at Rivendell literally right after the Council of Elrond ends, for example), which is always sort of a treat when you go "Hey! Its that guy!", but the core story is fully their own and most of the locations you go to are completely new. You get to see new things and do new stuff, which automatically makes WitN much more interesting than EA's LotR: The Third Age RPG last-gen where you just followed the real Fellowship around.
The story in War in the North is really quite interesting and works without stepping on any toes in the official canon. It isn't as grand of a story as the Lord of the Rings itself, obviously, since the scale is much smaller, but it doesn't have to top the main story. It just has to compliment it, which it does a fantastic job of. It does mirror many of the climaxes of LotR - you fight lots of trolls, a forest full of spiders, an army of undead soldiers, and there is even a Helm's Deep-style battle thrown in. It is even brave enough to try to answer one of the key questions people have about The One Ring - Why didn't they just fly the ring to Mordor on the back of an eagle? The answer is pretty darn obvious, but you'll have to play to find out.
While the story works fantastically well, the characters are pretty darn dry. They are just plain boring and have pretty much no personality. The dwarf has the typical serious Napoleon complex common of his race. The man is a Ranger and is basically Strider from FotR. The female elf is wise and stoic to a fault. It is like they are just copies of characters from the movies but without the personality.
The gameplay is pure action RPG. You select one of the characters - the elf is a mage, the dwarf is a melee-focused tank, and the ranger is projectile-focused (though all three can use both melee and projectiles) - and set off. You can switch characters between chapters, but it is also just as enjoyable to use one character for the whole game, which is what I did. The A.I. controlled characters will level themselves up as you play, and will also equip the best weapons and armor you give them (only your character can actually pick stuff up, so you have to give the other characters new weapons and armor). If you want to switch to the other characters, you get to re-spec them however you want, which is a nice touch. It lets you play without worrying about the other characters, but also gives you freedom to level them up however you want when you do play as them.The gameplay is pretty much hack and slash with some magic or projectiles thrown in. The X and Y buttons are your melee attacks and you can also use special abilities and magic with combinations of the shoulder buttons. You end up with quite a large number of skills by the end of the game and really feel quite powerful. By the end my elf had a magic dome she could cast that not only stopped all projectiles, but also healed whoever stood under the dome, a couple of great AOE attacks, powerful magic projectiles, and more. Plus she was as beast in melee attacks as she could dual-wield a magic staff along with a sword.
A fun component of the gameplay is that consecutive hits along with getting critical hits and finishing blows rewards you with more XP, so it was fun to go through battles with dozens of enemies and really rack up the XP at the end.
Co-op play (two-player local splitscreen or three players online) is a major draw of War in the North, but it is definitely still a lot of fun to play by yourself. There are some somewhat crazy difficulty spikes, though, that make playing by yourself not quite so fun. Towards the end of the game you have to defend a dwarf city and you have to kill two trolls before they break down the inner door to the city. With human players, this is a cakewalk. With A.I. partners, though, it was brutal. Part of it was because it always played out differently. Sometimes the trolls would stay at the beginning of the level. Sometimes they would both run past you to the door and beat it down before you could do anything. One time I lucked out and beat one troll ridiculously fast, but by the time I ran over to the other one it had already beat the door in. When I finally beat it, the A.I. had an apparent brain fart as the trolls didn't really ever move. They just stood in place and I hacked away until they died. Then a boss showed up - an orc general - which took another half dozen tries to beat. The end-boss is a lot easier than either of these battles.
Your A.I. partners are kind of idiots, which is the main problem. When a character runs out of HP they drop to the ground and can only crawl toward their partners so they can be revived. The problem is that the A.I. gets knocked out a lot, so if they are already out it is game over if your character also goes down. You usually can't easily revive the A.I., though, because if you get hit by an enemy the revival meter gets reset. You spend quite a few tough battles at the end just letting your partners lie there half dead because it is easier to fight the enemies yourself. With human partners, of course, this won't be a problem because humans presumably won't suck and die so much.
New Game+When you beat the game, you get to start a New Game+ with all of your weapons / armor / skills and just keep right on playing and leveling up. The NG+ is a HUGE jump in difficulty over the first playthrough, however. Enemies that you shrugged off and didn't worry about on normal can suddenly one-shot you on NG+ and you can't really afford to babysit the A.I. anymore. Which is why I recommend playing through the game solo the first time, but the next two times (yep, you unlock an even harder difficulty level when you beat it a second time) human players are pretty much required.
I would say the game is definitely replayable even though the combat does get kind of repetitive. You collect new weapons / armor and level up at a fast enough clip that you always have new toys to play with, and it is fun to feel so powerful. Your first playthrough takes about 15 hours or so and there are side missions and challenge missions (basically horde mode where you fight waves of increasingly powerful enemies) to play as well.
Graphics & Sound
Visually, War in the North isn't exactly a pretty game. The environments are all rather plain and have bland textures. Remember all of the great vistas and panning shots in the LotR movies? Nothing like that here. When you do get the opportunity to look out across a valley or something, all you see are blurry textures and a disappointing lack of detail. The character models do look okay, at least, with the in-game models changing depending on what weapons and armor you have equipped. The enemies also look decent, though the same handful of enemy types are reused over and over, but at least you can cut their head and/or limbs off which is always satisfying.
The sound is also only okay. The sound effects are fine, but the voice acting is flat and disinterested sounding, which kicks the "serious business" feel of the story and characters up even more. Musically, the game is okay. Nothing spectacular like the movie OST, but music is used at key moments to add to the drama and works well.
