izigame.me

Honestly I had hard time deciding whether to write positive or negative recomendation, because some aspects of this game are amazing while others are awful.
Taking everything into consideration the game is not worth the full price but you should definitely get it on 90% discount.
The main game
So this is the same engine That was used in Shadow of Mordor which isn't necessarly a problem but it means that a lot of abilities and basic game mechanics look and feel the same.
There are difficulty settings which greatly impact the game more so than it leads you to believe. (don't play on gravewalker difficulty, I played the whole game on it and can confidently say that its not worth it)
The combat is enjoyable, basically the same as the previous game.
The great thing about this game is the nemesis system its amazing, the random encounters, the orc diversity, the voice lines, the fact that what you do and how you play actually changes the voice lines the orcs have different this is one of the 2 best things this game has.
The other things is the orcs themselves, each has strengths and weaknesses, that's amazing on so many levels and opens a ton of possibilities.
Also its great that you can command your followers and it actually feels like menaging them and you commanding them is making a difference and it actually helps you achieve what you want, that is realy cool but at the same time there are a lot of limmitations, and it takes a lot of time which are detriments to this system.
These were the good things now onto the bad ones
There are 5 maps and each of them are their own, so to say on each of these maps you are starting 0, this becomes very tedious and it feels more like a chore than anything.
!!! Rant with spoilers below !!!

The story gave me a lot of mixed feelings varying from fine to wtf am I watching,
The prologue is so fucking stupid its impossible to put into words how fucking stupid it is, like its starts good with Celembrinbor and Talion forging the ring and then it quickly becomes braindead. It just leaves the person thinking how many various ways there were to introduce Shelob, but for some reason we are presented with this dogshit.
Shelobe is then heavily involved with Talion for the entire act 1, to then dissapear and only be involved in the last cutscene of the game. That is so fucking stupid, wow, she has litearly 1 of 2 collectables section dedicated for her memories, and when you die she constantly talks to you but she is barely involved in the story and how she was involved in the first place was so forced. Any other character talking to Talion when dead after act 1 would have been better.

End of rant
The story has a very good premise but it suffers from a lot of continuity errors, as well as what feels like a need from authors for everything to have a happy ending, these endings feel very out of place and tame for the word that is created. (the only substory that felt natural and had adequate ending to the word that was in was bruz's story)
To sum up the main game: great gameplay, not a bad story, bad storytelling
most systems are very enjoyable to engage with while others are tedious
Elathrel DLC
So this DLC is trash
There are new skills to use, all the new skills use this element and 80% of enemies are resistant to this element, making any of these new skills useless and unusable.
This dlc also has a side quests which are awful because all of them put you in a fight vs a captain who is immune to 7 types of dmg which leaves only 1 specific option to deal dmg making all sidequests dogshit.
The story is retconing some of the story from the main game while not adding anything interesting.
Only thing that is good about this dlc is the addition of the new orcs.
BUT for some reason these orcs are unlocked in main story AFTER completing the dlc which is supposed to be a sequel ??
This DLC is trash, has a lot of problems, is unenjoyable and the only good thing about it is small and brings confusion.
Baranor DLC
This DLC is surprisingly fun, not too long or short, the new abilities make the game different from the main game while still keeping the speed of the game and combat fun, honestly even more so than the main game.
This DLC is enjoyable on all fronts.
The only thing that I could find in this DLC to be mildly inconvenient was how the main character acts nonchalantly at the start of it.
This DLC is great, the story is good, the gameplay is engaging, its very enjoyable experience on all fronts.