Oh the books are trash a lot. A ton of repetition.. i finally stopped after the second Neverwinter tie in. However, the middle earth combat games would be well suited for the IP. And movies would do well if done correctly. Those 20 circular books are at least a trilogy of films. Icewind dale, underdark prequel, taking the mithril halls as the ending. Have sailing movies and calimsham movies if they want to keep going.
I didn't heed the warnings. I picked this up for last-gen (360). What an ugly, buggy, texture-poppy pile of shit. It looks like a mid-gen PS2 game.
I was in the middle of a huge battle that had been raging for close to 10 minutes. I attempted to stealth ledge kill an archer, and ended up clipping through the parapet he was standing on. Fun!
With all that being said... I'm still loving the shit out of this game. Way too easy, but still a boatload of fun.
Tips on how to beat a combat master that literally loses no health no matter what I do? Even regular attacks don't do anything. Eventually I'll get him by scaring him with a Caragor, but seriously no other options?
He's level 20, and has a poison blade and hits like a truck. I've killed him before, but since hitting 20 it seems his regen is through the roof.
He's weak to near all the different monsters. So bugs, ghuls, and caragores, so that's how I have to beat him. I was just hoping to beat him with melee, and it was pretty difficult, since his health really wasn't moving, and he's a combat master so he's immune to flurry finishers, and executes.
I'd beat him before by jumping over him to stun him, then getting 2 hits in, and then jumping again before he does a massive melee swing. Repeat. However, those 2 hits I'd get in are not doing any damage to him anymore. lol
No big deal, as he's in the first area, and I'm onto the second, but let's be real, I'll go back for revenge riding a Caragor, and just get him that way.
Something that works on basically all Captains/warchiefs is dominated orcs. They ignore immunities so if you just charm like his whole army they'll swarm him down eventually.
So before I get in too deep are there certain things I should know about spending ability points? Are some moves trash? Do you get enough points to unlock everything or do you have to be strategic in your spending?
You can unlock everything, if you wish, doing all the side quests so don't worry too much where you spend skill points. And you can go back and do side quests after you beat the game also. You'll get the majority of skills just completing the story line.
I have the DLC on the PC version. The hunt is a few hours long and deals more with the dwarf hunter and dominating beasts (duh), which was not a part of the game I particularly enjoyed but I cleared it anyway. The Bright Lord DLC is basically one of the maps reskinned a little bit with more story and objectives and slightly different powers. I haven't beaten it yet but it's kind of more of the same of the main game but different enough where there's some novelty.
I'm not sure the DLC is worth $20 though. I got the season pass for like... $10 or something pre-ordered. Seems like a more fair price.
I've playedLord of the Huntand will probably playThe Bright Lordpretty soon. InLord of the Huntyou get a new roster of Orc Captains, a bit if flavor story from the dwarf, more creatures that can be branded, and some mounted stealth options. I got an extra 10 hours out of it completing the story forLord of the Hunt. Since I haven't playedThe Bright Lordyet I can't really comment on it. Both DLC come with some sort of timed trials that I haven't messed with. Basically if you liked the gameplay and story it's more of both.
So, as a fan of waiting for the inevitable GOTY bundle, I just started playing this.
Any abilities I should shoot for early on? It seems like the best would be anything that speeds up finishers, since it takes about 9000 regular hits to down an orc unless you actually have time to pull of a ground finisher.
Stealth kills, arrow kills, anything to widdle down the enemy before the 50 million hits it takes to kill in melee. (ground finisher? sorry, interrupted)
The finishers are nice, so pick a tree and finishing it help. Extra health & energy are ideal as well. Probably gonna pick up the GoTY upgrade really soon.
Just finished this game, loved it. The nemesis system is novel (afaik) and an incredible idea. I'd love to see future open world RPGs like TES incorporate it.
I had one challenging nemesis and I'm curious to see how common a problem this is. One of the first named orcs I ran into was a crossbowman that was immune to melee (combat master) and also an ambusher. I don't think I ever sought him out, but he'd ambush me constantly. One particularly long fight with some other orcs he literally showed up three times. Luckily he'd never kill me. He'd just show up when I was fighting another named, one-shot me with his crossbow, talk some shit and then bug out. Because this was still early on and I was learning the mechanics he defeated me so many times he shot up to level 20 while I was still working on the first tier of talents.
I initially tried to kill him out-right, but I just didn't have the tools or knowledge of the game to do it, so I basically ignored him (and by ignore him I endured getting ambush-one-shot every few minutes during a tough battle), boosted my talent tier access by doing captain-quests and learned the game. Eventually he ambushed me while I was doing a captain ghoul-hunt quest, and he had a weakness to ghouls. This meant that he just ran away and I had a somewhat anti-climactic but still gratifying time demolishing him.
I liked seeing him show up at the end, it was a nice touch even if he didn't have his immunity to melee damage
After I killed him, the rest of the game was basically a disappointing cake-walk. I quickly saw the game getting easier as I got runes/abilities that synergized together and made me an unstoppable killing machine, so I just tried to finish it as quickly as possible and ignored all side-quests because I knew I'd get bored within a few hours. Being able to jump into a massive group of orcs, hit one a couple times to get a 6pt hit streak, then dominate two, go into bullet freeze mode and fire off a quiver of arrows and then rince/repeat made the entire thing unfair, and there was basically no counter to it.
At first I was surprised there wasn't a DLC that truly extended the game (I got the celebrimbor DLC as part of a goty edition, but hate flashbacks so I didn't play it), but after reading up on the new game, Shadow of War, I can see why. Like Sulrn says this game was more of a tech demo of their nemesis system (and an open world game engine), so if they have enough capital they'll want to start from the ground up.
As much as I enjoyed Shadow of Mordor I can't help but feel like Shadow of War, while objectively better, will be less fun for me than SoM. In SoM I was attracted to the idea of being a cursed ranger, abandoned far beyond enemy lines in the heart of a hostile enemy territory. I was kind of put off by the second act where I seemed to have been transported to every other RPG I've ever played where I hang out with a stereotypical dwarf (albiet, one in the universe that helped create the stereotype) and some elven (??) bitch my guy thirsted after (for no good reason). I didn't even like the existence of the other ranger and his crew in the first act.
It seems like War of Mordor is going to create a fully fleshed out open world RPG, and given that I couldn't get through Witcher3 (and DA:I) because I feel like I've done it all before, I doubt I'll really enjoy WoM that much.
