The big war troll with an Australian accent is called "Brûz". Get it?

GET IT?!

The game is fine. More of the same, and I got RAPIDLY tired of the nemesis system this time. Story feels like nothing then suddenly ties into the films. I thought I had finished it when it told me to "Keep Mordor in a state of perpetual war. Only then can the Free People of Middle-earth prepare for the War of the Ring". Sounds like standard post-game shit to keep you playing. Thus, I went looking to see what folk thought of the ending, and discovered a final cutscene you get for holding the forces of Mordor back. You need to withstand 20 sieges in a row, and losing one of them sets you back to 0. You can fuck that sky-high.

!!!TRUE ENDING SPOILERS BELOW!!!

The cutscene shows that Talion held back the dark for decades before succumbing to it and joining the Nazgul, taking Isildur's place. Meaning he was there stabbing the empty beds, and chasing down Arwen. Then later when Mount Doom went nuclear he was riding a fellbeast and got clipped by a flying boulder, and for some reason in that cutscene he has his mask off and we can see his face. Cut to him looking normal again walking in a nice field, dropping his weapons, and no doubt going to rest with his family.

Wow, I care so much now that I know some jobber Nazgul who got murked by a rock was actually my good friend Talion.

Look at this.

Shadow of War is, quite literally, everything Shadow of Mordor was, exept better, bigger and more in every way possible. The game, like it's predecessor, is a relatively slow burn, which is made worse by the fact that the overall loop is so enjoyable and addictive. Shadow of War was an unfortunate event in almost every way possible, pissing everyone off at release and cementing Warner Bros. as a truly awful entity. But for what it's worth, Shadow of War is an amazing game, well worth the time and effort the team has poured into it, and it is worth your time as well.

If you wanted to search for a perfect game with a mix of beat-'em-up elements and that allows the freedom of open world, randomness and chaos, there is no perfect game aside from shadow of war. This game combines the adrenaline players feel when they discover something unique to them and the way that they play, utilising the nemesis system from shadow if murder in order to create personalised and deep roted stories, that are primarily driven by the player- many Batman arkham players would fall in live with the similarities between ther games and this one, with the combination of challenging and responsive gameplay that is used to push your gamer instincts into overdrive and to count each individual victory or defeat as a landmark worthy of remembrance. Now that the microtransactions have been removed, there is only the validity and reward of having worked so diligently that this game rewards the player. The difficulty, chaos and randomness is all balanced perfectly for anyone who follows murder and its lore, or simply and fantasy enjoyed would revel in the things this game has to offer, and I would rate it higher if I could

Got 60 hours worth of an engaging, fun, and albeit a little repetitive gamplay loop. Don't regret this purchase at all.

Buy if you enjoyed the first one and ignore the negative reviews.

Also don't bother buying DLC unless you REALLY like this game because they are basically the same thing just with different characters and abilities.

Shadow of War is yet another fun free-flow combat open-world game set in the Lord of the Rings universe/lore. I really enjoyed the first game (Shadow of Mordor) and I had once again fun playing this follow-up even though I'm not into the story and/or lore of the LOTR universe.

Personally, it's the free-flow combat system that kept me engaged in this game along with some other mechanics that are part of this series such as the nemesis system, stronghold takes, army building, etc.

This game had a rough and controversial launch and early life due to microtransactions and pay-to-win mechanics that apparently have been removed or at least improved later on so I'm glad I decided to play this game many years after its release.

While this game did not have the 'wow' factor that I experienced with Shadow of Mordor, it remains a fun game for most of its duration as long as you are able to learn all the ins and outs of the free-flow combat system.
Admittedly, the gameplay can become a bit stale and repetitive since it's a longer than a normal game, and some mission quests (such as Carnan) are overall bland and poorly designed but for the most part the game is solid and has enough content to provide a good experience.

Led Zeppelin be like

epic hard rockin guitar riff

Ohh baby...i need some a-lovin...oooh baby...gotta give me some lovin...you know that i love you...like i always should...you know that that i love you...baby come on give me that lovin

HEAVY POUNDING DRUMS

YEAH! GIVE ME THAT LOVIN!

guitar vrooms across left and channel

YEAH GIVE ME THAT LOVIN

guitar vrooms

YEAH GIVE ME THAT LOVIN

vroom

ARLGITH RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT RIBGHT RIGHT!!!!! OOOH YEAH. OH BABY. OH BNABNY BABY BABY BABY. BABABABABABBABABABABBABABABY

music gets a bit quiter

baby...ooo baby...come on baby...baby...

guitar starts to do some trippy shit with some phaser pedals, drums start panning around speakers

baby...come on...i want you to come...baby...i want you to come...baby i want you to come to me...I WANT YOU TO COME TO ME TONIGHT

Band: DUN DUN

COME TO ME TONIGHT

DUN DUN

COME COME COME

Guitar: WOWOWOW

COME COME COME

WOWOWOW

I WANNA COME ON YOUR FACE BABY!!!!

DUN DUNNN

COME ON YOUR FACE BABY

DUN DUNNNN

oh yeah...FRODO!!!!

Band: DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN

FRODO AND SAM!!!!

DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN *

FRODO AND SAM!!!!

DUN DUN DUN DUN

THE BATTLE OF ASGARD!!!!

Guitar: WOWOWOWOWOWOOWOWOWOW

GOLLUM!!!!!

Drums: BADOOMDOMDOMDOMDOMDOMDODMODM

GANDALF!!!!!!

Guitar: WOACHOWHCOAHWIOCHAIOWHCAIOHCIOWAHCIOAW

LORD OF THE RINGS!!!!!!!!

Drums: BRATARTATRATRATRATRATRATRATRAT

AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DUNDUDNUDNUDNUDNUNDUDNUNDUNUDNUDN

YEAH GIVE ME THAT LOVIN

VROOOOM

YEAH GIVE ME THAT LOVIN

VROOOOOM
YEAH GIVE ME THAT LOVIN BABY

Band hits an ending crescendo, but Plant keeps singing a-capella

....OH YEAH

I WANT THAT LOVIN

GIVE ME THAT LOVIN

OH YEAH BABY

AH AH AH AH AH AH

AH AH AH AH AH AH

LOOVVVVINNNN

LOOOOVVVVINNNNN

OH BABY BABY BABY BABY BABY

I WANT YOUR

LOVVVVINNNN

COME ON...GIVE ME THAT

LOOOVVVINNN

OH YEAH

OH BABY

BABABABY

BABY BABY

COME ON BABY

SUCK MY COCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the end

I always have a hard time succinctly describing my feelings on this game, because it's one of the best superhero games I've ever played and yet just thinking about playing it is exhausting on some level. When the fights are at their best, it's about as good as Arkham-style combat can be, forcing you to do a little dance of managing smaller orcs while trying to work your way around the captain's specific resistances and immunities. There are always credible threats to your health, but there are so many ways to turn things in your favor that it doesn't really ruin the power fantasy when your near-death experience is also a chance to instantly counter and decapitate some idiot loser who thinks this is his chance to kill you.

I just... don't care about the rest of it? The world is too big and the regions feel too similar, there's more Nemesis interactions than the previous game but when you get to a higher level it's just too exhausting to keep track of all of them. There's like a hundred of these bozos and they're all mad at me for cutting their arm off and buddy, get in line. I don't care about gear! I don't care about sending hitmen to rival captains or customizing my Tolkien tigers to spit Baja Blast or Code Red during a siege. These systems aren't really deep enough to feel like you're doing anything, and they have almost no stakes other than one more orc yelling at you. It's primarily exhausting because the player is obviously meant to find them equally compelling - unless you're dying constantly, deciding to go out and do the fun part of the game (running into a fort and killing the strong guys) means you just... win? The way the AI generates new characters isn't frequent or aggressive enough to counter the player, even when the difficulty is cranked up. It's truly a bizarre design decision to have the player beset on all sides by uncountable hordes of enemies in the plot and then decide in the gameplay that the AI armies will never chip away at your gains unless you let them. Those late-game fights against strong captains forcing you to get creative single-handedly carry this to a low 7/10 score, because without the variety in combat, even the nemesis system couldn't save the mess created by tacking on all these other systems.

sinceramente que decepção de jogo, aguardei anos pra jogar e ser a porcaria mais enjoativa já produzida pelo ser humano, expandiram o jogo artificialmente de todas as formas possíveis só pra vc perder tempo farmando até teu cu fazer bico, tudo isso com uma historia dividida em 5 storylines diferentes que nem se conectam e nem fazem um pingo de sentido até chegar na última missão do jogo pra daí vc terminar essa merda e descobrir que o final verdadeiro requer fazer uma caralhada de coisas quando vc nao aguenta mais nem jogar o jogo de tão enjoativo e chato que ele é, definitivamente a única coisa que se salva é o combate que também vai ficar cansativo e o sistema nemesis que foi bastante expandido, tão expandido que ficou insuportável também, e por algum motivo os gráficos desse jogo são muito inferiores ao primeiro que tem quase 10 anos, e não satisfeitos a luta final contra o sauron é tão ruim quanto a do mordor e da dlc dele. por fim mas não menos importante, as missões são tão mal feitas que a maioria delas te joga num objetivo aleatório sem contexto algum, sem nem ter uma mini cutscene e te força a enfrentar os mesmos orcs 90x tudo dnv.

If you are familiar with my Letterboxd account, you know that when I give something a 4 out of 5, that means I would recommend it to everyone. That description is stretching it for this game, which I would recommend to everyone... who is willing to trudge through a generic opening and boring main quest to get to the meat of the Nemesis system. The Nemesis system, however, might be the greatest piece of ludonarrative design I have ever seen. The game remembers so many things you wouldn't have thought it would, and your actions are reflected back at you. When a game makes me emotional about a procedurally generated ally turning against me, that's how you know it's great. Overall, the graphics and main story might be shit, and the mechanics might be just a slightly revised version of Batman Arkham mechanics, but I will always cherish my time in Mordor, and I can't wait to jump in again.

What's so great about video game sequels is that the developers can take all the criticism with the first game and improve upon their flaws and expand into new ideas to keep the game fresh. Shadow of War accomplishes this almost perfectly. My favorite mechanic, the army system has been expanded on and now you can build siege teams to raid enemy fortresses and guard your own. My least favorite thing about the first game, the traversal and open world has been greatly improved. Climbing is more consistent, you can now press the x button each time you grab a ledge to increase your speed. You can also double jump and use up focus to super sprint shortly. But the best addition is the ability to instantly call a creature to mount to reach destinations even quicker than simply running. In the first game, you would climb a tower and hit it with a hammer and that unlocked a fast travel point and revealed all the collectibles nearby. In this game, you cleanse the Haedir towers and use Sauron's flaming eye to look around the area to find the collectibles. I thought that was really neat. Had I wrote this review a couple of days ago, before 100% completing the game, I would have given this a 9 or 10. However, as I near the end the game was losing a lot of steam.

First off is the Pit Fights. Why do I have no control over what's happening? You have to hope and pray your guy wins. I thought this was really stupid, especially since you need to win 15 times (3 for the 5 regions).

Second is the combat. Mechanically, it's not bad or anything, but when you raid enemy fortress and you got 100 different people fighting each all at once, I start losing track of what was going on and I ended up dying because I couldn't figure out where I was getting hit from.

Third is the story. Like in the first one, there's a bunch of side stories that combined make up one big story. This time, it's very clear the main narrative is on Eltariel on her missions. Unlike the first one, the side stories are more interesting, but there's a lot more missions to play. For the most part, they're fun and interesting, but there's also a lot of missions that feel very filler. All the missions are very short which helps keep the fast paced nature of this game.

My biggest problem is the ending to Act 3 and the overall ending. Those were a total gut punch. Warning! There will be spoilers! Celebrimbor, the guy that stood by your side for two games, the guy you sacrificed the ring for at the beginning of this game to save, betrays you and leaves you for dead. There's no real build up, it just happens. I was kind of upset, but I was more curious of how things were going to end. Would you have to fight/kill him at the end? No. Celebrimbor and Sauron fight, which is a pretty lame boss by the way, they can't each other so they fuse into one. Talion sees this all unfold inside a snow globe, does nothing about it and that's the end of Act 3. What kind of conclusion if that? But wait, it gets worst. Talion needed Celebrimbor to survive. But since, Celebrimbor betrayed him, he needed another way to stay alive. So, he wore a Nazgul ring (Nazguls are servants to Sauron). Eventually, Talion gave in to its dark powers and became a Nazgul. Kind of tragic considering he spent two games trying to kill Sauron only to end up as his servant. It would have been cool to end it there and maybe get a third game to save Talion from the Nazgul and properly kill Sauron. But no. Instead, a narrator explains that some decades after this game, the movies happened and Talion is free again. What the fuck? How could you gloss over something important regarding your main protagonist in two minutes like it's nothing? To me, that just says "we need to wrap this up and quick". The games aren't canon, but they are written as in they actually take place in between the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Make up your mind. Which is it? You can't have both.

To wrap up, Shadow of War improves upon Shadow of Mordor in every aspect. This is a game I enjoyed playing a lot and would have liked even more if the ending was on the same quality level as the Gollum game.

Shadow of War improves on the first game with a much larger variety of orcs for the nemesis system and with orc side missions actually being useful this time. Combat is fun but can be difficult to control well, this is made worse with added environmental hazards (which can often come from your own attacks) and enemies that can counter certain moves or become more powerful when hit with certain effects that can come from your abilities or additional effects from the gear you have equipped. The game being able to auto target your allies with your own attacks can also be an occasional annoyance. Another problem with combat is still the dull basic attacks and beast riding, fighting enemy captains also involves you using special attacks, knocking them over, or pinning them into place as basic attacks always do very little damage and are often countered or ignored making it so you never really can have a good looking battle and are instead rolling all over the place trying to raise the meter that allows you to activate abilities. You have a variety of abilities and can choose to augment most with between two and three additional effects, these can be swapped (or all turned off) whenever you want, some of these can allow you to alter your play style but most abilities have one upgrade that is clearly more useful than everything else. There is a good photo mode that allows you to use a variety of filters or to remove certain kinds of characters that are in your shot. Most of the game's time will be spent with the nemesis system, recruiting orcs, fighting them against each other, and doing the different kinds of side missions the system creates. There are some poor collectible side activities, a few main missions and a series of four different side quests. Some of the side quests can be fun but one problem with them is that they always feel separate from the main game, you won't make use of your army and it's not using the nemesis system the game is built on in any interesting way. Even the ability to take over enemy forts that the game was sold on is disappointing, you will most likely end up taking out all their defenses by recruiting all the orcs and defenders in the region, leading to them betraying the overlord and allowing you to walk right in to face them alone. Seeing as you only need to take over four forts with your orc allies the real use of it will likely come from the endgame arc that has you defending them (and recapturing if you lose them). It's a better game than the first with an improved nemesis system, locations, and combat options but there are still a lot of improvements to be made in every area, before even getting to the poor story and use of the lore and the sudden ending that the main and some of the side characters get.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/919367931334500353
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/919380514527526912