Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Daidraco_sl said:

I turned all the warchiefs against one particular warchief because I would end up getting an alarm called on me, get swarmed and die. All because I couldnt jump over him, he had a shield, and I could only get one hit off before he turned around after rolling behind him. Just shoot him? He was immune to range too. As soon as I would get him down low, he would take off like a fucking rocket and then im trying to hop over the horde of shit around me only to not be able to slow him down because hes immune to range. For fucks sake ~ I really had no idea what to do and wasnt going to look up a spoiler.

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GeneralF_sl said:

Even if he's immune to ranged, using the ranged teleport will help to close the gap to a running captain/warchief. Also I think the combat master stuff only works against the Ranger, so using branded orcs to kill seemingly invulnerable orc is a useful tactic.

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Yea, Shadow Strike is immensely useful for chasing runners, doesn't matter if they take damage, they stop to block the attack anyway then. A lot of orcs lose some of their defense when running so sometimes I can pin them even if they still aren't taking damage, that may be a special interaction because it never was consistent or made sense.

I can't think of a game where I've enjoyed futzing around to get achievements or farm epic runes like this game. It's just satisfying to walk into a stronghold, beat down the first captain you see, death threat a warchief, and then murder him, all while swarms of orcs are alternating between charging/fleeing from you. The best moments are when the swarm starts to get a little too crazy and you have to use the environment to change the flow of battle.

I have come to really appreciate how difficulty increases in this game are not just +damage/+health. I like having my killing flow broken up by a Captain how throws of my execute and pushes me to the ground. I like having to adjust to find a way to kill that archer with the deadly 3 bolt shot. I like how some Captains don't have any telegraphs or poison you so you can't see any telegraphs at all. I like how some are immune to certain styles of attacks. I like how they can gain hate from seeing their bodyguards being hurt. I like having to plan out how to summon a Warchief them deal with him. I like Captain personalities that grow as you fight them again and graphical appearance that changes based on how you killed them before. I LOVE some of the chants you hear when Warchiefs show up.

I can cheese a lot of these but it's a lot of fun when I don't and have to adjust on the fly. Nothing like going on a 6 Captain mass murder spree to have your Nemesis deadly bolt asshole pop up and gank you... again..

The captains that can throw poison blades at you like boomerangs are real motherfuckers.

When do these captains show up that you can't just murder within 10-15 seconds with Wraith stun or jump stun -> flurry -> execute ? I just left the first area and every single captain basically was just an enemy you had to execute 3-4 times.

See, I like the nemesis system but it falls off after you max out yourself and become the doom of all orc-kind and they're just so many flies to you. I thought there were just enough open world things, I'm not sure what you want there... do you mean side missions and collectibles? There were almost too many of those.

If you mean just shit to do in the open world, there's plenty, there's just not much point once you hit max everything. I've been running around making warchiefs then death threatening and killing them trying to get some more epic runes but that's all that's left for me.

Main story is for sure a bit short. I like that most of the achievements can just happen naturally during gameplay if you're looking for chances to do them, only had to work for like 2 of them.

Really the gameplay is what sells the game. I loved the Batman games, and this just feels better to me, more varied and rewarding. It CAN be boring if you just cheese your way to victory but why even play then? You never need to cheese, game isn't hard, there's tons of ways to do shit. If you don't enjoy the gameplay there's not much the game can do to sell itself, just like AC/Batman really. AC4 was fun enough for me to do the main stuff and a few side things but not nearly fun enough to 100% it. Batman Origins/City/Asylum I pretty much 100% everything except the trials, and I did a shitton of those too.

Quineloe_sl said:

When do these captains show up that you can't just murder within 10-15 seconds with Wraith stun or jump stun -> flurry -> execute ? I just left the first area and every single captain basically was just an enemy you had to execute 3-4 times.

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They really don't. Which is the problem. The hardest part of the game is the first few captain kills. After that you have so many tools at your disposal it is fairly trivial.

I just beat the game. Good game but like most said hopefully they add depth with more iterations. I was left wanting for a more refined combat system, harder enemies and more risk. I'd also like some indoor missions a-la Arkham Asylum instead of fully open world which, for the most part, was just cheesing by going around the outskirts of the stronghold to kill everyone.

Since captain abilities seem random you could believably go through the entire game without having to fight a difficult one. I think one problem is that there isn't a minimum level for orcs to raise through the ranks. Every single war chief should be level 20 and every bodyguard 15+ but no, at one point I had a level 10 war chief.

Even though Im a fan of the game - You guys point out some very glaring issues with it. The difficulty of the game is just not there by a large majority. The game suffers from trying to be a "story" game (story mode, duh) and then the story being able to be summed up in a paragraph. I liked the story, but it was short.

Power gains from one rank to the other should be larger, like Lenas said, but honestly, by the time I was around halfway through the second map - I couldnt tell the difference between a 20 power Orc Warchief and a 10 power Warchief. The abilities are really what made them more difficult, so the power system just didnt carry any weight. It may be how it works, but if I designed the game, an Orc would gain a trait every other power level and the traits would be ranked between a difficult trait to a Fear of Cargos type trait - with the hardest traits RNG becoming much more common once they get promoted to tier 3 of 5. Just the Nemesis system does what they say it would, but they over sold it in interviews.

If you took away the mandatory missions like (Brand 5 Warchiefs), it feels like you could complete the game in a couple hours. I guess I do kind of retract the game of the year assessment, but I still stand firm that it is a good damn game.

The biggest problem is that the player is forced to artificially inflate the game's difficulty in order to see the nemesis system in effect. That essentially means playing without equipping any new abilities or attributes. At first, it was thrilling to strategize and infiltrate strongholds, but after a few hours I felt nearly invincible and that was before unlocking some of the more ridiculous abilities like double execution.

The nemesis system is the game's cornerstone feature and it was touted as the best thing since sliced bread, but it ultimately feels like a pog collection.

Daidraco_sl said:

Power gains from one rank to the other should be larger, like Lenas said, but honestly, by the time I was around halfway through the second map - I couldnt tell the difference between a 20 power Orc Warchief and a 10 power Warchief. The abilities are really what made them more difficult, so the power system just didnt carry any weight.

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But doesn't power level directly correlate to how many traits they've got? Lower level captains only had 2-3, level 20 orcs fill the screen up with traits. I agree the hard traits should be way more common after say level 10.

I didn't ever give a rats fuck about traits. I would walk up to the captain, hit him with my sword a bunch of times until he's green then interrogate/command/death threat him and repeat. They should have done more to make it so that brute force "I'm gunna kill you" strategy didn't work regardless of traits. I would have also loved it if captains could basically one-shot you so you had to exploit weaknesses. Again much of my complaints about the game come down to how easy it was to just run into a pack, get 5x, double brand, repeat. Even in Batman AA/AC on Hard mode you had to really consider each fight because if a trash mobile hit you it did like a quarter of your HP. And that was with much, much tighter counter windows and with less forgiving hit streaking.

Lenas_sl said:

Since captain abilities seem random you could believably go through the entire game without having to fight a difficult one. I think one problem is that there isn't a minimum level for orcs to raise through the ranks. Every single war chief should be level 20 and every bodyguard 15+ but no, at one point I had a level 10 war chief.

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Can't you just pass time a few dozen times for the orcs to level up?

Warchiefs won't level up because none of them ever have events for you to ignore. That works for captains though, sure. I did that to farm up levels to set the stage for getting a level 25 rune for the achievement.

This game could really use a NG+ mode. Replayability is pretty low, given the first half of the game is full of tutorials that just slow the game down when you already know how the game works. A common disease with modern single player games....

A pretty large DLC would do wonders for this game, Im sure.

What a sucker. Dush started off as a warchief for me. No work involved. I was pretty surprised when I heard the chant.

Amazon sale: LotR Bluray trilogy set + ps4/xbone game for $54.98

Amazon.com: The Lord of the Rings Gold Box Deal of the Day: Movies TV

Holy shit! I got the game, but I just ordered the Blu-ray set at $29.99.