Middle-earth: Shadow of War

 

I finished the previous game, Shadow of Mordor some years ago and remember it as a decent sort of open world button mash combat game with weird Assassins Creed copy mechanics. The theme of the Tolkien universe with the high polish and cinematic fidelity is interesting enough to want to play more of this kind of game, so I eventually got the sequel at a good price.

The game asks what difficulty you want to play after hitting start, and theres a lot of them. It seems like the last two hardest ones are unique for people already very familiar, like a Nemesis difficulty and then an even harder one. So I just went with Normal, cant go wrong with that, right? After a pretty lengthy, but impressive introduction sequence and cutscenes where it sets up the premise where you play as Talion, a combination of a stoic ranger and melee fighter, he also has this companion side kick ghost being that resides within his body that comes out and talks to you, and a few other select characters throughout the story. The premise is something like the basic Tolkien thing where you have to find a way to get to Sauron and defeat the evil presence of the land, mostly. But as the game goes on, you start to grow your own army, taking over fortresses and gaining power over the land, so this starts to become the main plot as well.

Then you're set off into the open world to do the quests how you please. When you go to the menu, there is a quest category which shows you quests for each main character in the game. There are about a handful of these quest branches that you must complete to finish the game, its easy to understand what the main missions are, and what you must do. Then you are set off into each of the open world regions (theres a few different maps) So you open the quest menu and pick whatever category and mission is avalible , and try to fast travel near it, or travel there manually. The game is very fast paced, as in when you move around the world, you have an ability to super sprint where you run so fast you move faster than a car, its like Superhero stuff, the movement capabilities in this game are insane. Super sprinting across the world at 100mph, Spiderman climbing up almost any building or mountain, jumping 50ft each time, jumping from gigantic towers leaping across the world taking zero fall damage. The movement in this game is ridiculous, but it is kind of fun to control. And it is nice to be able to get to the main quests with ease. Once you get to a quest, you usually get a highly polished cinematic with one of the many memorable characters in the game. The general writing, and characters are well done here, and are interesting to watch and listen to. You have that spider lady, who you intiially give the Ring in trade for your ghostly companion fellow, whose a reoccurring character of mystique and she has wondrous powers, then you have the famous Smeagol, which plays a small role for a few missions during the campaign where you follow him around and do stealth, with perfect voice acting. Too bad he doesn't pay more of a larger role, guess they couldn't spare the change for the voice actor. You have other characters like the returning Ratbag from the first game, whose this small comedic sidekick, cracking jokes but having a rebellious side. Early into the game you run into this warrior lady character that at first seems like a love interest but turns out to be a completely pointless or mundane plot point where she just runs off with some other guy and then you never hear from her again, and this subplot about her father. You have this tree lady whose like the mother nature who controls the forces of nature, you have an allied Orc that you control, called Bruz, which at first is your enemy, then becomes another comedic ally, with this sort of weird Scottish accent (well, a lot of the orcs have this sort of accent). Theres something kind of..bad, or offputting, about how some of these characters feel more like children's mascot or childrens cartoons, it kind of takes you away from the immersion of the world, I don't know. The comedic relief characters are fine, but theres a few too many. Each region has a percentage of the story quests that are completed, which is easily viewed from the quest menu. You simply go from region to region completing the quests, until theres no more quests in a region, then you move onto the next one. Thats the general progression of the story.

The game is basically a modern beat 'em up. Meaning, the combat largely consists of mashing the X button over and over to do basic attacks, and then once in awhile over an enemies head you will see "Y" or "B" , almost like a quicktime, telling you to press the button in order to dodge or counter...and thats pretty much all there is to the combat. Its this strange clone of Assassins Creed combat system that I still scratch my head at. Honestly, it sucks. It sucked in Assassins Creed and it sucks here. For the first half of the game, the combat was so stupid and mindless that I was literally holding the controller in the air and pressing nothing but the X button with one finger, demonstrating how silly it is. The game can be played with one finger for most of its duration! Now you might say "Oh, you picked Normal difficulty, idiot!" thats the difficulty the developers thought was appropriate to introduce as the default option, why they thought this was a good middle ground, I have no idea. I think fundamentally the combat system just sucks, no matter how much you tweak the damage variables wont change the foundational issues. Later on, the difficulty does ramp up, mostly in the form of enemy chiefs which are invulnerable to pretty much every type of attack, which feels very cheap, annoying, and stupid. Like you'll come up against guys who block all your attacks, you cant leap over them, you cant grab them, you cant stun them. What the fuck are you to do? Chase them around the arena and wait until they stand at an explosive barrel and rinse repeat? Sucks. Or the difficulty gets introduced in the form of the controls being terrible because 1) Theres no lock on 2) You'll be surrounded by 100 enemies, and you really only intend to attack one specific guy, but because theres no lock on or targeting, you frequently are accidentally grabbing, attacking, the wrong fucking guy. Even more jank is the fact that you can get enemies into a stunned state with stars above their head, there are two stun stats: On the ground, and standing up. Confusingly, each stun state has a corresponding button combination to execute them. On the ground its Y+B, standing up its Y+X. Yeah, this works as janky and shit as it sounds. Frequently I would try to do the execute and it wouldnt register, because its attacking the wrong guy, or because I'm pressing the wrong combo for the wrong stun state. The controls actually are just terrible. Even something simple as just walking around the environment sucks. It copies that like GTA 4 movement system, where if you just push the stick, you walk, and you have to hold A to sprint....Why would you ever want to fucking walk in this game? Why? Just why is this even a thing? But, while you're holding A, you also automatically climb all over everything, like in Assassins Creed. The problem with this is , since you need to hold A just to run, you'll also frequently be accidentally climbing all over the damned place when you dont mean to. Was the first game this fucked up ? I can't remember, it probably was, I might of just had higher tolerance for shit games back then. For instance, about halfway into the game when you unlock the Dominate ability (Hold B at a weakened enemy) , I had constant problems of accidentally targeting the wrong guy, in the heat of battle where quick decisions need to be made, this was very frustrating. Additionally, you can also hold B to suck the life out of enemies, which is about the only way to actually get health in this game - Well the same problem there. You have to hold B for 3 seconds on some enemy, but I kept targeting the wrong guy, getting interrupted, which is clunky, frustrating, and sucks as a combat system.

Even worse, like I mentioned previously with the floating prompts above enemy heads, indicating to press to dodge or counter, well since theres no lock-on, and since the position of these prompts are just floating above enemy heads, and since you'll frequently be fighting like 50 enemies at once, its very easy to spin the camera the wrong way and not see these prompts. So actually the combat largely consists of desperately swinging the stupid camera around just to try to keep the prompts in view, all the while mashing the X button like an idiot over and over. Frankly the entire combat system is shit, which is a very sad flaw to have in a game like this. Its the prime example of how NOT to do a third person action combat system. Pretty much any other system is superior than this slop. I hate this button mashing, Assassins Creed, Batman Arkham Asylum combat system. Its trash.

You can also find gear to improve your stats, like sword damage and health, but its a very minor part of the game. Like once every few hours you'll find an upgrade, and its only marginal improvements. Its very barebones. Like you'll find a sword that goes from 50 damage to 54, once every few hours. Or some piece of chest armor that goes from 150 health to 175. Theres not much to it. Apparently there are Sets you can wear, that give extra bonuses if you wear all pieces, but I never cared or found an entire set, so its probably some end game grindy stuff. There is also a level up / skill tree system, but this too is very barebones and boring. There are multiple categories like Melee combat, Ranged, Stealth, Riding enemy beasts, and then Campaign. Pretty self explanatory. At first I just got all the Melee buffs, but many of them were confusing or like fighting game combo's to memorize, so I barely cared. Unlocking abilities of stuff like "Hold Y+X At this specific time to do this specific Move!" Well, Sometimes I'd try it, but because of the aforementioned combat issues, it felt like half the damn time it wasnt registering or doing anything, probably because I was accidentally attacking the wrong guy. Ugh. So Instead I just focused on basic passive buffs, like an additional revive if you die, or the ability to freeze enemies if you leap over them (Best skill in the game) , or things like more Energy to use moves, a system I still barely understand even after finishing the game. Theres like this energy meter, and when its full you can do some combo move or something, the whole thing is stringed together in such an incoherent, clunky stupid way that I found it hard to give a shit or really want to interact with much of it, especially when brainlessly mashing X works most of the time. Its like a weird bastardized version of a shit fighting game and a shit beat 'em up.

If you die, you get a quicktime prompt to press a button at the right time to get back up and do a last stand. By default I think you have 3 of these revives and then you die for real, going back to your last checkpoint (Or if its a siege, failing the siege). There is a skill point to make this 4 revives, which is one of the best buffs in the game.

The graphics and presentation are polished and mostly well done. The depiction of Middle-Earth is great, it has the various locations which are separate entire open world maps you can fast travel back and forth, like Gorgoroth, Cirith-Ungol, Minus Morgul, and so on. Each with their own distinct look and set locations. The maps mostly have nothing in them, but encampment after encampment of goblin enemies, or these big towers you must climb to use one of those floating eyes of Sauron to survey the area. The actual technical graphics are fine for a 2018 game, but its nothing spectacular or the greatest thing youve seen, but particularly the Goblin models and facial animations, especially when you confront their chiefs, are exceptionally well done.

So the plot has you entertained with various interesting characters, what are the actual missions like?
You're mostly doing things like going into enemy camps, either through sometimes forced stealth missions, which arent too bad. The stealth is very forgiving, or youre going in and rescuing some tied up people. Missions arent always dull or mundane, though, there are quite a few explosive and memorable unique moments and objectives. One time you're doing flying sections riding a dragon shooting down enemies in their forts or fighting against other dragons on a field of ice. Another time you commandeer this sort of big hulking tree beast as a sort of like mech section, fighting against another big boss. Its kind of cheap and lame, and feels like a series of quicktime events or mindless button mashing, but it is different. The game even has missions where you're  put up a siege against enemy fortresses, capturing the points, breaking down the walls, and even customizing your enemy force for the best way to take it over. There is a decent variety in objectives to keep you interested and to break up the pacing, there are a few boss battle moments, too. There are sections of the campaign where you're fighting against these ghostly Nazgul warriors, which is pretty cool and interesting. Mostly the only way to take these guys down is to ...just mash X like a brainless idiot and wait for the Y prompt to show up, counter it, and then rinse repeat. Oh well, at least its visually cool.

But really the bulk of what you will be doing is interacting with the Army system. What this means, is that there are thousands upon thousands of generic goblin enemies all around the map, but there are more higher up, unique captains that are also roaming around, that once they start fighting you, each give a brief cinematic and voice lines announcing themselves and showing their personality. They each have their own unique personalities, weaknesses and strengths, which you can inspect in a menu if you so desire. This is of course the same system from the previous game, which I finished, so this isnt anything surprising or new, but it probably is expanded upon more here in this game. So many of your main objectives and purpose in this game is to defeat these Captains, to weaken the enemy encampments and eventually take them over. At first, early into the game you are just simlpy killing them. But shortly into the game you unlock this ability to hold a button, and Dominate them once their health is low enough,meaning you then get choices of what to do with them. You can choose to kill them, which means they will drop a piece of loot. You can Recruit them, which adds them to your own Armies pool, which is visible through a menu (Either Garrison, or Army pages, but I admit the graphics and UI for these are confusing as hell and even after beating the game I still barely understand what the hell I'm looking at there, unfortunately.)  - Or, you can choose to "Shame" them, which is useful for in the case where you cannot recruit them because they are too high level, if you Shame them, they lose some levels, run away, so the next time you encounter them you can probably successful Recruit them.

Probably the games greatest strengths are its cutscenes, interesting characters and dialogue, and the enemy captains talking to you and battling eachother. Everytime you get into a battle and suddenly theres a cutscene of an enemy captain talking to you and trying to intimidate you, its like an "oh shit" moment that really makes it intense and fun. But unfortunately since the combat system is pretty bad, it loses much of its impact. Not only that, but actually managing your army through the Garrison and Army menus are clunky, confusing, and unintuitive, which actually made caring about my own soldiers hard to do. Like you're supposed to take troops from one map and swap them around to other Fortresses? and theres this whole Garrison menu where you can level up your troops, give them Legendary status, or remove them from a fort to put in another? I dont really know how it works. The thing is, you don't really have to care or know, because its almost superficial. There are only a few moments in the entire campaign where you actually have to interact with your own army or troop system. These are all four different Siege sequences you must complete to be able to unlock the final mission. These sieges let you pick a few of your troops to lead the battle, and thats about it. The sieges are cinematically cool, sure, you get epic cutscenes of the enemy warchief standing ontop a tower, taunting you, you stand there with your huge army and rush into battle, climbing over his tower walls, destroying his fort and capturing points.. but thats all you have to know about the army system. It doesn't do enough to entice you to care about it, during normal gameplay otherwise, it has virtually no effect that I can see, maybe once or twice one of your troops will randomly show up and save you from death, but stuff like that is rare. Its like they built this whole grand system to tout how unique the game is, but really you barely have to interact with it, and really its not much of a big focus in the game. Like, most of the main missions dont have anything to do with your army or your troops. Yes, the main missions do task you with killing other enemy Chiefs, so in that sense you are interacting with the army system, but in terms of actually having to put your own army to use, not really.

The game does a good job of giving you that grand Tolkien cinematic experience, its depictions of the characters and Middle-earth are captivating, like I mentioned earlier, but the actual gameplay its self...leaves much to be desired, sadly.

Towards the end of the game my enjoyment started to plummet even more. First of all, you get to a point where its like "In order to do the final mission, you must capture all 4 fortresses" Well, the menus and UI are kind of bad, especially the main world map. I found it hard to figure out what the hell this even meant, even after Googling. I couldnt tell if the Siege quests were optional or not, well they're not. You have to do all 4 siege quests to unlock the final mission. Sure, cool enough. So I did 3 of 4 sieges,  but I got absolutely floored on the last siege at Gorgoroth. For some reason, during some sieges, when you get to around the final capture point, you have these Chiefs show up that just one hit you. I cant figure out what the hells going on. Out of nowhere I'd go from taking barely any damage, to all of a sudden these guys show up and tap me and I'm dead. Super frustrating, this happened on a few sieges, but I just jumped around like an idiot waiting for the capture meter to get full so I could atleast bypass it without killing them. Fine. So in this Gorgoroth siege, the capturing went well enough. Each siege though, has a final arena where you go inside the castle to fight the Overlord. All the rest of them were piss easy, no problems. But this Gorgoroth overlord battle was just fucking broken. It gave me this guy who is immune to virtually every sort of attack, he blocks every attack, I cant jump behind him, I cant assassinate him, I cant freeze...almost nothing. But to make things more insane, he also fully heals his entire health bar every 10 seconds or so. What the fuck!? Ontop of that, the arena also spawns infinite enemies chasing you around. In utter confusion I ran around trying to wittle this guys health down for 15 minutes, only for him to fully heal over and over. Extremely. frustrating. But then I realized how this game works. You know how it works? So the Captains aren't manually handcrafted. They just have randomly generated abilities and stats. For example, I looked up this same Siege on YouTube and they had an entirely different boss, with entirely different abilities. This means the game just happened to randomly generate a boss fight for me which is nearly impossible, and I just happened to land on health-regen ontop of it. Just terrible. Fucking garbage. Why waste my time like this? This is why hand crafted bosses are way better. I eventually slammed my head against the wall and got past him, mostly because I noticed I could summon an ally to help me.

Then you do the last mission "The Bright Lord" which is just a straight bridge, a gauntlet of your army VS a bunch of random enemy Chiefs. Easy enough. Funny how the last mission is way easier than this stupid RNG generated Siege boss I had. Then you do a few boss battles against a Nazgul guy, then finally you fight Sauron himself, first as this humanoid elf, then at half health he goes into his metallic armor demon form. Hes...pretty easy. Once again, for the last boss, all you do is mash X like an idiot, wait for the button prompt "A to leap over!" and rinse repeat. Literally all I did for like 5+ minutes straight is tap X twice, press A for leap, repeat. It looks so lame and broken and stupid. Once in awhile he will do this ground slam whch makes a circle you have to jump over or you get stunned and take a bit of damage..but thats about it. So I defeat Sauron, cutscenes play about how I've been betrayed by my Ghost friend guy and this other woman, then the game ends, right? Well, sort of? Not really. The campaign is over. There are no more story missions. But the end credits dont play!

The game now introduces this "Shadow war" end-game system. What this is, is essentially a giant slog of a grind about doing various siege missions over and over, probably for a dozen hours, to complete Shadow stages, after so many sieges or so many Shadow stages, you get the final cutscene and end credits. But look, I decided I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it! I finished the campaign missions, there is nothing left but copy paste repetitive grinding just to see one more cutscene. I tried to do one, I got 75% through a defense siege and then failed, and it took 15 minutes, and I uninstalled the fucking game. I beat it, OK? and infact, I looked up Longplays on youtube, and yeah everyone just calls it finished after The Bright Lord, no one does these Shadow Sieges as party of a longplay. Why didnt they put the end credits after The Bright Lord mission? You know whats even funnier and stupid? Initially at the games release, during this Shadow Siege part, they had fucking microtransactions! and it was 10x longer and took HUNDREDS of hours to finish! You could PAY to speed up progression here! But apparently in 2018 they released a patch which removed the microtransactions and shortened this Shadow War segment, but still, I'm not doing it. I'm already sick of the game. You know what, the game was about a 6/10 before this bullshit cropped up. But now its 5/10 because they expect me to sit here and do a boring grind just to see the real end cutscene+credits. No thanks. I've already played 14 hours up to this point, I'm not playing another 14 hours of zero campaign missions. Its not happening.

So thats Shadow of War, a game only kept entertaining by its cutscenes, dialogue, characters and premise, and its unique but underutilized army system, but the actual combat is just shitty. I can't really remember if I had these same complaints about the former game, but I'm sure if I replayed it nowadays these same issues would crop back it, The two games are basically the same, just more content. Unfortunately, the gameplay just doesnt do it for me. And that bullshit Shadow Wars really crippled my enthusiasm for the game.

5/10