After Fantasy Flight Interactive shut down earlier this year, not a few people thought that their only release, Lord of the Rings: The Adventure Card Game, would be no more. Not so. Publisher Asmodee Digital announced earlier this year that digital mercenaries from Antihero Studios would be taking over, and according to fans, Antihero has been quite communicative ever since. This week marks the first major update since last fall.

Antihero's first update adds major quality of life changes, including a mid-mission restart mechanism and a fully functional offline play mode. Offline play is a feature that the community has been requesting since before the original game was released. The game's menu UI has also been reworked in line with future development directions, with plans to release further UI updates, a new adventure mode, and a new free adventure pack, The Fords of Isen, by early 2021.

Despite the very long name, I quite liked "LotR: ACG" when it was released. Although I was wary of the monetization, I admired its production values and unique writing. With the studio closure and studio changes, monetization has changed considerably. At the time, I said, "You have to go into a mission on mostly easy the first time to see how the mission unfolds and what Sauron's deck looks like. As the difficulty increases, more nasty surprises and more heinous random events are added to hold players back." This update makes me want to re-download the game tonight.