This game is not at all what I expected. But that is because I, quite literally, did not know what to expect. I bought this game blind because I saw that Snowblind made it and they made Champions of Norrath which I loved immensely. I'm not a huge fan of Lord of the Rings, but damn if I am not a fan of good ol hack and slash games with character classes and all that nonsense.

I'm not terribly far in the game yet, but so far I have to say that LOTR: WiN is pretty damn fun. But it is not fun for everyone. If you enjoy hack and slash games (think of a toned down Dynasty Warriors or something) with a heavy emphasis on loot well you'd do well to check this game out. You are constantly getting loot in this game and you are constantly being attacked by various enemies from the Tolkeinverse. At times the amount of dudes you have to slaughter to advance seems fucking insane. Early on you enter a sewer-like area and to advance you have to kill around fifty or so Goblins. They go down quickly, but it is still a LOT of dudes to mow down for the first level of the game.

The combat is fairly simple. X does your regular attack and Y does your heavy attack. However, if you attack a dude enough there will be an icon over his head. If you press Y you will do a Critical Strike. More often than not this will zoom in on your character cutting off a limb and blood going everywhere. Sometimes it will just knock a dude down where you can ground stab him. The game certainly earns its M rating with how often orc arms and heads are being lopped off. In addition to melee combat there is ranged. The Ranger has arrows, the Dwarf has a crossbow, and the Elf has magic bolts. Ranged combat turns the game into a really crappy third person shooter and I don't like it so I don't really use ranged combat.

I've only spent time with the elf so I can't comment on the abilities of the other characters, but the elf has three tech trees. One has to do with support, one with magic based abilities, and one buffs. I am speccing more towards offense because I like cutting dudes with my mage staff. Abilities work like they would in any other game. You have a meter, you use abilities, meter runs out, you refill meter with potions. The best ability by far is the ability to summon a giant eagle to fight dudes for you. Yeah, fuck that Gandalf guy, these dudes can summon a giant talking eagle whenever the fuck they want.

The biggest surprise to me was that this game has dialog wheels. It literally has the Mass Effect wheel complete with INVESTIGATE on the left hand side of the wheel. The dialog system is in no way comparable to Mass Effect, but it is still pretty cool and better than the dialog system in, say, X Men Destiny.

I'm rather enjoying this game so far. So much so that my biggest complaint is that there is no run button and so I find myself rolling all the time because the move speed is so slow.

If you're a fan of loot-based hack and slash games, Snowblind, or Lord of the Rings, you should probably check this game out. It may surprise you.

@DonChipotle: Just remember to be extremely careful with the item you give your companions when playing offline. Once you give an item then it's gone forever.

EDIT: You do have a run button. On the PS3 it's the R1 so i'd assume that on the 360 it going to be your RB.

@Mordukai said:

@DonChipotle: Just remember to be extremely careful with the item you give your companions when playing offline. Once you give an item then it's gone forever.

EDIT: You do have a run button. On the PS3 it's the R1 so i'd assume that on the 360 it going to be your RB.

I'll be sure to try RB next time I boot the game up. And I haven't yet given anything to my companions but since I can switch who I play as inbetween levels I figure it won't be so bad to find some loot when I swap to them for a spin.

I too am enjoying this game so far. The one thing I wish I could do was swap between the characters on the fly. And its very strange that when swapping between missions, no matter how you specced a character, they will revert to a default when you are not playing them, abilities and all.

Glad to read this, I wanted it to be good so I could pick it up. I may do so if I like what I see from the quick look tomorrow.

I picked this game up on a blind buy because I was starved for something LOTR and read about the original story crafted just for this game.

I must say, it's been quite a surprise. The game is very fun. The combat is kind of a mix between Batman and an action RPG with it's Hero Mode and criticals. The story so far has been very engaging and it's one of the few games where I've wanted to check out more than the main dialogue tree. I like how they didn't get too nuts and yet somehow wove in this alternate story line pretty seamlessly. Also, the biggest surprise for me was the visuals. The game is drop-dead gorgeous. I think it may be one of the best games graphically that I've seen in quite a while. I've caught myself checking out running water in the distance, the fog effects, the glowing from the stones in the Barrow Downs - it's all astonishingly good. The character animations, especially during dialogue and cut scenes is also amazing.

If I had to sum it up, it's an average hack and slash game with beautiful visuals and a great story. I give it a thumbs up for genre fans for sure and for LOTR fans definitely.

@DonChipotle: Me and a buddy have been debating whether to get this or not. You've swayed me...if it's wrong I WILL FIND YOU!! ;)

I'm finding that, the further I get, the less I like it.

I've ran into multiple bugs (one which prevented me from making progress in the game), and the combat gets tedious and frustrating. The loot could be better, and the inventory system kinda' sucks. It's simple and organized enough, but you can't compare items directly to each other when you're at a merchant. It's just not very convenient.

I say rent it, don't buy it.

I got the vibe that this is a good Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale and that is what I really like about it.

Quicklook convinced me to give it a try, just need to convince some others to play co-op.

Hell, it can't be worse than Hunted: The Demon's Forge and I still managed to have fun on that due to co-op.

Lord of the boRING.

I actually think the combat is very, very fun. Each character has basically 3+ ways of fighting. For instance, the Ranger character's dual wield, two hand and range specializations all play completely different and have their own quirks. 
 
I love the Hero Mode timing and going for huge combos. 
 
I know many will disagree but it's like a better Batman combat system.