izigame.me

Great game from the Lord of the Rings universe! We play as Talion, captain of Gondor rangers, who is serving as a punishment on the Black Gate. His peaceful days with his family end when Sauron returns in all his glory. Black Hand of Sauron then takes the lives of all men stationed there, even of Talion's family. In his last dying moments Celebrimbor's wraith bonds with him and offers him means to exact his revenge! But Celebrimbor isn't doing it just out of the love and seeks his own goals through Talion's body.
Shadow of Mordor offers a great gameplay of stealth approach mixed with action. We have at our disposal three weapons - sword, dagger and bow, which can be further enhanced by runes. Leveling up and opening new skills is a matter of course. As we are no heavy armored guardian it's better to use the full potential of our stealth abilities, but if we find ourselves in a tight spot we can wreak havoc among enemies as Talion is a skilled swordsman, just beware of being surrounded! Both of these elements, stealth and direct fight, are pretty well done and bring a lot of fun! The principle of the never ending army of Uruks and their constant leveling up through ranks brings another level of immersion as our fight truly never ends. In the army sheet we see the strength or weaknesses of the Captains and we can then help them rise to the Warchief rank or instead dominate them and get an intel on the other Captains, issue a death threat or even initiate a riot. There is really a lot of options to pick from.
We don't have to do more than what's needed for a story progression. Truth is, we can easily get stuck in an infinite loop of Uruk hunting and can burn out a little (happened to me and the result was a few years break from the game). The story line is pretty much straightforward with a few sidequests on the way, but we can be quickly done with the main quest. There are no choices for us as we are just passive bystanders. Best characters (except Talion and Celebrimbor) are Torvin, a dwarven master hunter, and well known Gollum.
Between the main story and side quests we can save human prisoners from Uruk's grasp or search for collectibles that uncover insights about this world and memories of its varied inhabitants. We can also master each of our weapons and gain higher skills with them. Even though there is a lot to do around the wastes, it's still the same old song and it can turn rather repetitive.
After we are done with the main game we can continue in two additional campaigns - Lord of the Hunt and Bright Lord. In the Lord of the Hunt we are gonna help Torvin to stop Sauron's forces using dangerous beasts in their armies. There are new enemies and skills waiting for us. Nothing extra though, still the same map and the enemies are not so different. But riding Wretched Graug and vomiting on the Uruks was a quite fun. On the contrary, Bright Lord is a pain in the back… the premise is fine, we are playing as Celebrimbor on a quest to turn Sauron's Warchiefs against him and ultimately defeat him. The execution is horrible though. We have less health and less skills than Talion. We also don't have our most crucial passive skill - focus, which makes our life a lot easier in the main game. There are hundreds of Uruks around us and there is basically no safe spot without them (except for Towers). We also can't give orders to dominated Uruks, which also sucks. The campaign is challenging, okay I get that, but it's not as much fun as with Talion.
And if we still have not enough we can test our skills in challenges with different conditions of winning. Some are pretty hard and require many tries to master… my heart suffered a lot through the ordeal. X)
So, I have really enjoyed it and can recommend it wholeheartedly to everyone. Also I think that all of the content bring the best experience and I have really loved how are the Captains and Warchiefs introduced with cheers (felt like I am in a ring with them), but truth is that it's pretty much stupid how they made a lot of separate DLC's. All they offer are new types of Captains with a squad and also a rune… so nothing much as you are quickly done with them and don't even notice they are something extra in the heat of a battle. This should have been a part of the game right from the beginning. Except for the Lord of the Hunt and Bright Lord DLC's they bring nothing new to the story (although we can argue about it even with those two). That's the only negative point about Shadow of Mordor. Oh and that stupid fact that the animated cheers are not disabled in the timed challenges and they instead count towards your total time! Super frustrating.