Wrote a review for this one (link at the bottom)

Wrote a review for this one (link at the bottom)

Wrote a review for this one too! (link at the bottom)

Would you know it, there's a review for this one!

And there's a re… wait, no, this is a game I bought on my own to play.

If you've ever played a Total War game, you'll have a rough idea of how this game works. You pick one of the available races, which in the base game for Total War Warhammer 2 (why did they not just name it Total Warhammer?) are Lizardmen, High Elves, Dark Elves and Skaven (but if you own the first game, you can play on a huge map with all the races from that game as well), and you need to conquer your way through the world), and then you go out and try to conquer the world!

As in all other Total War games, this game is split up into two separate parts, the Strategic Map, and tactical combat. On the strategic map, you move around your armies, recruit troops, build buildings and so on, and once you run into an enemy, you'll enter into tactical combat, where you need to try and beat the enemy army, by use of clever tactics. The tactical combat in this game is just outstanding, probably the best the series has ever had to offer. While the AI is still a bit lackluster, the variety of troops make it less predictable than it used to be (after all, you did not really have huge dragons or rat mutant abominations in ancient Rome, at best you had elephants).

Total War: Warhammer 2 might well be one of the finest grand strategy games out there. It does not quite have the strategic depth of Paradox's outings, but it's far more accessible, and watching the enemy army getting stomped on by a gigantic dinosaur never stops being satisfying.

Lord of the Rings: War in the North is a co-op focused 3rd person action game. You play as one out of three characters, a dwarf, an elf or a human, who need to battle Sauron's forces. On your way there, you'll meet people like an Ian McKellen knockoff, an Elijah Wood knockoff and of course a Hugo Weaving knockoff. Basically what I'm saying is that the actors who try to portray the actors from the movies were generally not very good.

The gameplay is perfectly fine. The 3rd person combat feels okay, even if the enemies are a bit too damage spongey, and between combat you've also got an excuse to explore, as each character is capable of finding different secrets (the dwarf for an example can spot weak walls and knock them down, to reveal hidden rooms).

While the game is 9 years old at this point, it does have some nice art direction. A lot of it was borrowed from the movies (which in turn borrowed things from the art made for the books), but that does not mean it's bad, the movies were very good looking.

What makes this game worth playing is really its co-op. The different characters have slightly different strengths, but the game does not go overboard with it, making it a somewhat relaxed co-op experience. Had this been a singleplayer only game it would likely have just been a bit dull, but as a co-op game it's fine.

Well, would you look at that? Review at the bottom!

Well, this is actually bad.
I'm vaguely familiar with the .hack franchise, but I've never played any of the games, and now I can see why.

This game is basically trying to simulate a futuristic MMO, you're playing as a character who's in this MMO, and who lost their friend to some mysterious entity that made them go into a real life coma. And so you visit different areas, fight monsters and level up. But here's the first issue: The combat is kind of dull. It plays like a second rate Tales of Symphonia, with real time fighting, but you're far less agile here than in ToS, and combat feels button mashy.
Mediocre combat could be overlooked, if the story was great. But the main character has to be one of the most unlikable protagonists ever. He's just being rude to everyone around him for absolutely no reason. And yet for some reason, despite him being really unpleasant to everyone, most people he run into still insists on seeking him out. The character writing is really bad.

It is possible that this game is like Final Fantasy XIII, as in if you're willing to sit through a lot of bad, you might finally get to the good stuff. But I'm not willing to spend that much time on a game where I find the combat to be mediocre and the writing to be terrible.