Need further proof? My nerdy girlfriend, who once read The Silmarillion because she was that into the LOTR canon (and very few people are that into the LOTR canon), thinks this game’s simply awesome. Some of the dialogue spoken between characters here is so dense and, well…Lord of the Rings–ish, that it was almost putting me to sleep. Not my fangirl significant other, though. She ate up everything these Dwarves, Elves, Wizards, and Hobbits had to say, and she was thoroughly impressed that so much detail went into an action game.
On the gameplay side, War in the North does little wrong. It’s very clearly meant for cooperative play, and you can tell the designers put plenty of thought into that. If you’re short a three-person online or system-link party, the AI takes over (and it’s more than capable as a partner, too—it’ll usually do a better job of reviving you than a human player will). If you give a computer player any gear, it’ll keep it in its inventory in case you ever want to switch to that character later. And if that happens, you’ll be able to level up right away, because the other warrior’s been racking up the same experience points you’ve been gathering that entire time.
In other words, everything’s consistently persistent in War in the North. Whether you want to play with friends or play with the computer, whether you want to stick with Farin the Dwarven Champion or switch to Eradan the Human Ranger or Andriel the Elven Lore-master, you won’t lose out on anything (from XP to skill points to gold), no matter how you play.
