Middle-earth: Shadow of War

2025-05-30
Orcs = British, Trolls = Australian. Got it.

2022-04-??
It's basically Shadow of Mordor but with more RPG bullshit, a more fleshed out system for managing your orc boiz, and more of a story. I think I made a fundamental mistake by playing this right after Shadow of Mordor because I was already sick of the combat in that one. And what do you know this is basically the exact same. The same rhythm and tedium until you get the OP moves, the same unskippable cutscenes every time you see an orc captain, the same fact that you lose no matter how good you are if there's too many orcs. That made me want to quit several times.

What held me on was the story. It's not a great story but having just finished reading the LOTR books it was enough to keep me engaged. The tl;dr is that at the end of Shadow of Mordor Talion and Celebrimbor successfully forge a ring they can use to control the minds of pretty much anyone. They meet up and work with Shelob to build up an army and bit by bit take over Sauron's territories. Along the way they are joined by an elf Eltariel who is a disciple of Galadriel. Eventually Celebrimbor grows power hungry and wants to take over Sauron and bend him to his will. He loses the fight and ends up fused with Sauron. Talion is forced to become a Nazgul by wielding Isildur's ring and starts to wage war against Sauron from inside. Him showing up as half Nazgul to fight the other Nazguls to take over Minas Morgul is very cool. Some of the cutscenes depicting the background of some of the Nazgul and their corruption are incredibly cool as well. Hammerhand's is brutal and awesome.

But at the end of the day it's the same combat and a little bit more of a grind as now you have to capture like 5 forts.

I'd say worth it to see some of the new systems but drop to Easy so you can cruise through without getting too bored and bailing.