Middle-earth: Shadow of War Review (Larson)
The game that's so incredibly good that even I, Mr Larson, the man who never replays games even played it again some years later after I initially finished around the release date.
Obviously what carries this game through and through is the nemesis system and all the games various orcs. When game companies try to market their games as multiple choice and that it is YOUR own unique adventure, it usually just boils down to making a few choices here and there that's scripted, however here in shadow of war you truly make your own unscripted decisions ALL the time. You get your own personal stories and relationships with all these different types of orcs ( except for a few story scripted ones ). You hunt and roam the lands and try to find the best and coolest looking orcs that you like the most. You'll get rivals that manage to kill you and everytime you fight them they talk about your latest battles, it is truly a great, living and immersive world.
The combat is a bit like the Batman games, but I think it is way different enough here though. You truly feel like a god in this game at times, you are EXTREMELY powerful, however the orcs can be extremely powerful as well. You can kill thousands of orcs on your own, however, one single orc can kill you as well if you don't pay attention. I heavily recommend playing this game on BRUTAL difficulty. In this mode you won't meet a lot of bullet sponges ( i guess in this case sword sponges ) and you'll do a lot of damage, but you gotta remember that you can get two hit by a lot of orcs as well, even one hit at times, but you will automatically start with a perk that lets you survive one death, you can upgrade it later to being able to survive twice, however some orcs just say fuck you and completely ignore that perk. (It's an ingame feature.)
The story is really awesome as well, I have never really been super interested in the lord of the rings universe, I watched the movies as a kid but not much more, but I really think that the lore and world in this game is amazing and interesting. You play as Talion who's binded with an elven spirit, the bright lord who try to claim back Mordor from the dark lord. More then that I won't say but it's a great story which will keep you hooked. I also appreciate that you can get some cutscenes only by getting some collectibles, never have I seen better collectibles. Usually I feel like collectibles in games are always quite useless and are just there to push lore they were too lazy to include in the main story, however I do not think that applies here.
If they were to make another game I'd say there are some issues that they would have to fix.
1. Online battles are pure jokes. All orcs you're going to fight from other bases or avenging are just going to be max leveld and all of them have been made in a lab (aka made in cheatengine) and you won't be able to best them, all of your orcs are probably just going to die in a battle.
2. The meta with all orcs is just that you will have to try to make them immune to everything and have them get enraged to everything. I think there's way more interesting stuff that you could use for orcs to make them unique rather then just having them be completely resistant to fire for example even though that orc has NO armor on him and he is just naturally resistant to it which makes no sense.
3.There should be more voices on orcs and more variety. The more you play you will soon realize that there are about... I'd say maybe 15 different types of orcs who all just wear different kinds of armor. It's also extremely immersion breaking when you meet an orc and kill him for example, and then in the next fort you go to you find the exact same orc but under a different name. Same armor, same voice, same build, same everything but just a different voice. They should really add more of a variety factor on it.
4. The fact that Nazgul are WAY too easy. Nazgul in this game are supposed to be the controllers of orcs and shown to be extremely powerful in cutscenes and lore. However, when you fight them time literally slows down when you have to counter them, they're a damn joke in actual combat and it sucks because then it becomes this classical thing of actual gameplay being totally different to the cinematics. A random commander orc with a bow who has the right stats is more powerful then the dark lord himself which makes no damn sense and it's quite funny yet sad when you think about it.
All in all though even with those problems I think this is a super great game with a good story, combat, systems and general gameplay. 9/10.