The gameplay is better than Shadow of Mordor in every single way, they refined the movement in pretty cool ways and made the combat more in-depth. The Nemesis system is back and it's the best its ever been. I loved how you'll shape your own stories with the orcs depending on how you tackle situations, some times it will vary for no reason. The castle sieges are very well made, and can be as hard as you'd like them to be. I personally preferred dominating every warlord so they would betray the overlord on the siege.
This was fun and all but probably for the first 15 hours then it got dull and repetitive, things like this are usually my fault for being a completionist but I wasn't even done with the plot. The whole thing is a playground for the Nemesis system and they will heavily drag the repetition in order to show it off, this stands out as you have to do 5 castle sieges in a row and then 5 more in the epilogue. I liked things from the plot but it was mostly irrelevant