Seeing as Arwin asked in aother thread, here's a quick review. 5/10? And not a Snowblind game.
It's very apparent to me that this is a corporate pushed-out-the-door job. It is nothing like the snowblind games we knew in terms of polish or class or technical accomplishment. The result is true to form for a game with as much development trouble as this. 7 years in the making, or rather 7 years since the last SB game Justice League Heroes, SB had trouble creating a product and getting backing. Then WB offered to buy them, which meant security, only with WB coming in with their heavy handed corporate approach. Ryan Geithman left, and it appears Ezra Dreisbach isn't involved at SB any more - he's certainly not credited. The end result is
rough. The start in Bree looks unfinished to me. If you know the beauty of CON's opening tree village with its dynamic lights, you'll be gobsmacked at the blandness and flatness of WITN's Bree. the windows look like yellow rectangles pasted onto the walls. Even the clothes appear to have painted on folds rather than normal maps. Unlike the Dwarf and Ranger, the elf doesn't have a sprint animation and just gets the walk animation sped up a bit. There are plants one can collect but half of them have a generic icon. The game is unfinished.
Cutting a long and boring story short, this is a LOTR cash-in. It feels like SB were forced to make this and get it out the door. When it does look good, like the detail on the bridge outside the dragon's lair, and some fo the atmosphere, it's quite pretty. But the end result is technically poor.
Gameplay is okay. Hit attack until a yellow triangle appears, then hit heavy attack, sort of thing. Skills are a bit bland and don't tie in together well. The idea of the game being coop focussed is a farce. Apart from the elf's bubble-shield, there's zero cooperation other than healing downed teammates like any other game.
There are also lots of bug complaints on the forum with people stuck with unplayable games. This seems true to form for WB. They have bought out premiere quality studios like Travellers Tales who produced works of impeccable quality on PS2, and have them produce buggy, poorly supported and less capable games this gen. Snowblind are another such victim. The friendly chat of the original forum is also gone, with the devs hushed behind a corporate firewall no doubt.
Playing with a friend, WITN's an okay experience. We skip all the dialogue. Man, does it go on! I'm sure the Tolkien nuts lap it up, but it's sooo tiresome for anyone who's not pretty obsessive. It's also an okay timewaster if you want a little down-time and don't have anything better to play. All in all though, it's not worth bothering with. There's little to redeem it. The baddies are all flavours of humanoids, just in different sizes and number of hitpoints (except the spiders) so there's not even variety in the experience. It's not like there are elemental weaknesses to exploit or such. It's literally kill things and gain loot and level up putting points into unexplained skills and trying to notice if they've made any improvement or not. I always said LOTR wasn't a good universe for this sort of game. DnD/forgotten Realms provides far better options. Better yet, create something new (like KoA) where you can tailor it perfectly to computer games.
Did I say 'quick review'? I've gotta see the doc' about getting my -verbose flag disabled!
