A long-lost Lord of the Rings action RPG makes a surprise return to Steam

16 years ago, we used a trailer for the then-upcoming action RPG Lord of the Rings: War in the North to drop a sick burn on people who maybe take their Tolkien a little too seriously. The game launched a year later, in 2011, to middling reviews and disappointing sales, and there it sat until the delisting process began in late 2018; SteamDB indicates it got the axe on Steam the following February.

But now it’s back, which you already knew because you read the headline, in a Legacy Edition version, with enhancements including hot-swappable characters, refined enemy-target locking, an improved interface, new autosave feature, and numerous bug fixes.

The Lord of the Rings: War in the North – Legacy Edition follows the “untold story” of Agandaûr, a servant of Sauron who’s raised a powerful army in the ruins of Fornost. Naturally, it falls to you to deal with it while that other Fellowship is horsing around on Mount Doom: “Build your own Fellowship of three heroes and confront the growing threat in the North, making your mark on Middle-earth in a grand adventure with visceral, satisfying combat and rich character progression.”