Middle-earth: Shadow of War review

INTRODUCTION

Shadow of War (available only for PC, PS4, and Xbox One) is massive, and it should keep you busy for a long time because of its great and addictive nature because of it's great producers who always have thought of improving the game whenever a fault is found. The game has great characters, sound , great display , nice screen resolution and great graphics of nature..

ABOUT THE GAME & IT'S STORY

This addictive game simply tells a brilliant story of a Ranger, Talion, who is brought back from the dead by a strong and powerful of Celebrimbor, it's a great elven spirit whom Sauron had manipulated into entrapping the world of Middle-earth through the Rings of Power. Celebrimbor wants his revenge, and Talion is his right vessel.

In the first version of this wonderful game,Talion a powerful warrior who is also intellectually sound had used his powers to start a civil war among the Orcs (aggressive killers) in an attempt to take the throne from the Dark Lord (the devilish ruler who has great power than most characters in the game, he is tough to defeat).
While Talion wants to help and save the lives of the people,

But Celebrimbor is a selfish man with a single interest, and he's aim is simply to amass power to use against Sauron. As a result, Talion doesn’t fully trust Celebrimbor, and that lack of trust is something a temptress, Shelob, exploits. Talion and Celebrimbor begin the second game on Mount Doom, where they forge a new ring for Talion to fight against Sauron. Their challenge to Sauron is clearly going to end in some kind of tragedy, as Talion plays no role in The Lord of the Rings.

ABOUT TALION (YOUR WARRIOR/CHARACTER )

Talion's combat skills are now much more customisable and I think that's really better than the previous versions which had made combats and missions sometimes impossible. Captains drop gear with different abilities that you can grind for if you like, and each unlockable skill now has three unlockable sub skills to it, although you can only have one active at a time. Together it all means you can tailor your attack on a captain to his particular weaknesses. If he's sickly, for example, you can use your Might to unleash an arrow with a poison blast, or if he's terrified by burning you might equip a sword that has a chance to inflict fire on your target.
Sadly the camera is still your worst enemy at times, occasionally clipping behind an awkwardly placed hedge just when Talion has to dust off a QTE to not die, or swinging around wildly and changing which orc you're aimed at without you realising, but you can usually keep the chained, bouncing, Arkham-style hits going without breaking your stride, in a kind of 'I totally meant to do that!' way.

Even though the orcs get gamely into the spirit of things, Talion himself is still a bit dour and serious, possibly because his entire family is still dead, possibly because he is still unable to join them, and probably because an uptight elf ghost is still piggybacking around inside him. Despite some interesting takes on Lord of the Rings lore, the story is very strangely paced. You don't properly get to the army-building until after the first act, which can take a while if you don't blast through the story stuff quickly. There are some separate quest threads including Bruz the Chopper (which actually becomes quite harrowing), and a Welsh nature spirit being angry at a Balrog, and then a wholly unexpected bit after the second act.

Then there's the fact that Shelob , the giant evil spider, appears to Talion as a mystical and unaccountably sexy lady oracle. I found their interactions deeply, deeply hilarious, because whenever she stroked his face and whispered in his ear I couldn't stop imagining it cutting to a wide shot showing Talion dwarfed by a softly chittering monster.

But these issues are dwarfed in turn by how well the Nemesis System works. I was doing a fortress when a lad with the moniker 'the Poet' turned up and started walloping me with a lute that had an axe blade stuck in it. One orc got weirdly obsessed with my Talion, specifically how beautiful he'd look as a corpse, and I immediately made the decision to kill him outright rather than have him in my own army. In Nurn, I was repeatedly saved from death by the same sharpshooter, who found himself catapulted up to fortress Overlord as soon as we conquered the region. It's a really ridiculous amount of fun.

MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WHEN PLAYING

I give great credit to the team that produced this game, but when playing that after 30 hours, the system was still throwing up things that surprised me. Orcs can ambush you, betray each other, form blood brother bonds, and get really really mad that you set them on fire that one time, and that's not really a big deal for me because you can easily burn them up by and that's just what I love to do.

This time around you're forming your own army, so you get your own captains (all of whom have an accent from the following regions :

1. New Zealand

2. Australia

3. Austria

4. London

5. Cockney

6. Yorkshire

Funny enough, they can sometimes get annoyed with you, and will just switch back to the other side therefore becoming your enemy but that's only if you do something bad enough like killing their best mate.

But they can also turn up in the nick of time to save your life, or act as your bodyguard. The process of generating said orcs is also better this time. I only started to see repeat names near the end of my playthrough, but was still seeing new ones then. There are more interesting personality traits, combined with strengths and weaknesses, and the different tribes, too, to create an astounding number of combinations. It makes you feel like you're having a deeply personal experience, even if you're not.

Tied in to this are the new Fortress Assaults, which are what they say on the tin: assault a fortress and win it to take control of a region, turfing the enemy out and setting up your own boys in there. Each fortress has an Overlord, and the tribe he belongs to will change the style of the fortress — someone from the Feral Tribe is likely to have a bunch of caragors kicking around, for example. Then there are his Warchiefs, who'll each bolster the defenses, adding things like stone walls, flaming archers and siege beasts, which you have to compensate for with your attack force: if a fortress has spiked walls your army can't climb them, but sappers can blow through the walls altogether. Once you're in, it's a control point job: capture various areas and push through, until you end up in a fight with the Overlord himself.

You then choose your own Overlord, who will rebuild the fortress in their own image. I usually go with an orc from the Marauder tribe if possible, because they cover everything with gold plate and it's hilarious.
Fortress Assaults can be made substantially easier if you put in some time beforehand, drawing out the Warchiefs to kill or convert them and weakening the defenses. If you get all of them it's pretty much a one and done job, but that makes it kind of less fun. There are also less fortresses in the actual game than you'd imagine, which is probably why you can do online assaults against other real-world players' fortresses. They won't boot up their campaign to find they've lost a region, but you'll get some rewards for winning the battle, or they will if you were successfully repelled (usually because they've been a cleverclogs with their choice of Overlord), which is why you should think carefully about how you staff your fortresses.
This is also where the microtransactions and loot boxes full of orcs come in. You can buy the better loot boxes with real life money, or use some of the in-game currency to get the less good ones. It makes it easier to build up your own side, but the in-game currency racks up really quickly, and I didn't use even the regular loot boxes unless I was in a hurry to take a region, so the core game does seem to be balanced to play without them.
The game world is substantially larger than before, with underground tunnels and snowy mountain tops. It feels, dare I say it, a little more alive, although it's pretty funny when you're told that you're going into an epic story fight where two huge armies clash, and the game has to represent this in waves of about 20 orcs at a time because having actual hundreds would be a strain for your Xbox One.

SOME REVIEWS ABOUT THE GAME

Benny Johns

''The combat is really good and so much fun. The game never really gets repetitive since the missions are really different. Since you have so many different abilities it keeps the game interesting and what I really like is that each new ability has 3 sections where you can spend a skill point to change''.

FRANK ANGELENO

''Well, what else can I say. This game is amazing. The story is amazing and gives us an idea about what was happening in the early days of Sauron's return. All new characters, epic castle sieges, and forming a massive army out of orcs, not humans, not elves. It shows how life in Mordor is like''.

Joshua Shortt

''This game all in all is fantastic. The graphics are great especially watching Minas Morgul transform over the course of the game to the dead city we all I have read about or seen in the movie. I love the nemesis system though (Especially later in the game) toward the end the Captains can almost become unmanageable''.

''The story is good but is not canon which the developer even said it wasn't going to be so I will not address it or complain. The combat feels fast and fluid to the point you can literally take on dozens of enemies with ease''.

PARENT WARNING

''The combat is also at times brutal with lots of dismembering(heads, arms, etc.) which only happens with Orcs. As an adult is no big deal but if debating to buy this for a kid I would recommend doing research. As a parent I would appreciate the warning especially where violence is concerned''.

''I will also add that I love that they took out the store from the game. That had no purpose in the game and literally made it pay to win in a lot of cases (especially the fortress sieges)''

''I will give this game a solid 8.5 out of 10 . If you are a fan of the Arkham games and love Lord of the Rings I highly recommend this game. Its an absolute blast and the nemesis system is fantastic.'' Especially when you meet that on Orc whom you have many duels to the death with that becomes YOUR adversary. Mine literally started as Gom the Slasher lvl 3 to Gom the Undying maxed level. I ended up fighting him 16 times or more (I lost count). Yes the main character is set with no customization other than armor but the nemesis was a personal twist as no two nemesis are the same.
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CONCLUSION

It’s a huge open world that I have enjoyed exploring over the past dozen days, and I could easily see myself spending many more hours exploring. It is full of new characters, new stories, and new adventures that take place in the 60 years between the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Monolith has done a great job fleshing out the culture of the flesh-eating orcs of Mordor. That said, I found some sticky issues that the game raises that aren’t so easy to digest, and they detract from the story’s impact. I have finished all of the 63 story-based missions, and I would estimate I’m well into 50 hours of gameplay on my PlayStation 4 review copy.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is so ambitious that it is clear that Warner Bros. realizes that the time may have come for a video game to carry on the Tolkien legacy.

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