Games I Love: Middle-Earth Shadow of War

As a big fan of the original how could I not love it's sequel which seems to dial everything up to eleven. I initially avoided it due to it's use of micro-transactions, which in a game as pricey as Shadow of War was more than a little dubious to me so I waited for the so called definitive edition and got it will all it's DLC's so, patience can indeed be a virtue! I'll apologise in advance for the screenshots, not many good action shots I'm afraid nor even shots of the interface.

I will do my best to avoid any story spoilers where possible but there may be one or two that creep in that I can't avoid. So, what is Middle-Earth: Shadow of War? It's an action game with RPG elements set in Tolkien's fabled Lord of the Rings setting. You take on the role of Talion, a ranger from Gondor stuck between the world of the living and the dead, as for why well, spoilers I don't want to give for those whom haven't played the first game. Personally I love the interpretation these games have on the setting so I found the story compelling enough to keep wanting to see what happened next but no spoilers!

Obligatory epic shot!

If you have played Assassins Creed or any of the Batman games you will feel pretty at home with the combat system here. There's just a lot more to it given the extra abilities Talion has access to this time around. There is something very satisfying about the combat system when you start getting access to more abilities and evading an Olog's club only to drop into slow motion and head-shot that archer before countering the dual wielding savage with a swift knee to the gut before using chain-drain to recover all your health and turn a ten against one into a five on five brawl.

There is even a more RPG like gear system in place now giving you not only different bonuses but sets and their bonuses too. Each piece of gear can also be slotted with one of three colours of gems doing  variety of things such as increasing damage, giving you life-steal or giving orcs you recruit a bit of a level bump. It's basic but I still found it enjoyable to get a nice new sword with a fun special effect or a new piece of armour which stopped me getting stomped on so much.

This was my end game Talion.

Much like a lot of things from the first game the so called Nemesis system makes a return dialed up to eleven as well. The orc captains return as a core feature to fight against or dominate and turn to fight for you, it's this feature which so many people have their own stories to tell about including myself. They can ambush you out of no-where, cheat death and return whether due to you killing them or them dying in your service, they can betray you, they'll remember if you ran away or burned, poisoned or even cursed them. I had one orc who was I believe a tank but also a spear throwing hunter with one of the nastiest perks imagined called 'no chance'. Basically when you get dropped to zero life you get a chance to fight back if you time your counter attack right. No chance removes that meaning if they drop you to zero you are gone.

Now this orc even followed me to different regions always showing up at the worst times and jamming a cursed spear into uncomfortable places. Not only that he always seemed to cheat death and return despite burning him, poisoning him even cleaving him in half cross-ways, he just returned and returned, more of him replaced by crude orcish metal each time. Of course him killing me kept powering him up. I even sent 3 of my own captains to ambush him and helped them but he ended up killing 2 of them and then taking me out until he was basically a boss fight in his own right.

I find the sieges to be a lot of fun, so much so that I think I must've done nearly two dozen online ones.

The forts and sieges are one of the new features of the sequel which sees you forming your orc captains into assault leaders in order to take over each of the five regions forts. Each fort has an overlord and anywhere up to six warchiefs (and their bodyguards) defending it. The warchiefs maintaining so called siege upgrades making it more challenging to attack so you usually have to do a bit of preparing ahead of time. Be it outright killing the warchiefs, dominating them to your side or infiltrating your own captains and turning their own bodyguards against them. There's nothing quite so satisfying as watching your orcs leading their former warchief into an ambush and pulling his head off. I find attacking to be a little more fun than defending for the most part which is unusual for me, the forts themselves are pretty impressive and have a style based on the overlords tribe.

The overlord fight is for all intents and purposes a boss fight, all your captains save your bodyguard and any turned bodyguards of the overlords remain outside meaning you better be sure you can take him. Ologs (basically war trolls) are a personal nemesis of mine as they need a very different approach to defeat.

After taking a fort you assign warchiefs and an overlord to defend it, purchase your own siege upgrades which you also purchase on attack as well and they all have counters and uses depending on various things. Spiked walls is likely by favourite on defence as it means enemies can't climb over the walls anywhere near as easily.

The pseudo online aspect also returns in the form of vendetta's and conquests. The former is basically you avenging another player who died to a certain captain which gives both some rewards and is back from the first game. The conquests however are new and see you attacking a copy of other players forts which makes the whole capture and upgrading of forts take on a whole new meaning as these are a fantastic way to get gear for yourself and training orders to improve your captains.

Like even the greatest of games it is not without it's faults and some of them can be pretty trying at times. Just a few flaws and gripes I ran into whilst playing:

• The movement and targeting system: For the most part movement is more than fine but more than a few times Talion got stuck on a ledge and refused to jump off and took a bit more than an arrow to the knee for it which can be punishing on the harder difficulty settings. Also there's no sure fire way to lock a target so that execute you just saved your might for might miss that captain and just snuff out one of his grunts instead. 
• Difficulty settings are a bit out of whack: This is more a gripe than a flaw, initially I mostly played on Nemesis as I found it the most balanced overall. Gravewalker makes it far too punishing and captains far too spongy to be fun. Brutal is a nice mix of ensuring you and the orcs both do a lot of damage but the rate at which captains can level up and the 1 turn timer on nemesis missions can leave you unable to recruit orcs if you aren't careful.
• Gear system is a bit basic: Again more of a gripe but the gear system could have been fleshed out so much more as it stands you end up scrapping most gear for currency in the end.
• Hands Off Pit Fights: Personally I think it would have been more fun if you got to control your orc captains and overlords when you sent them into pitfights, as it stands its more of a dice roll and even your legendary orc can lose to a lower level regular one if their traits hard counter each other. 

If you loved Shadow of Mordor then Shadow of War is basically that ramped up to crazy levels with lots of extra stuff. Personally I think it's a good game even if the install size made me wince (some 110GB.) I found myself playing at one point just to find the best orc captains to recruit or just roaming through a camp stomping, stabbing and arrow flinging just for the spectacle.

Obligatory shot of Mount Doom.