A few years ago, I played the Shadow of Mordor video game to completion, and it was so compelling that I attribute it, in part, for reawakening my interest in Tolkien's world. Along with Battle for Balin's Tomb, it taught me how to play in Middle Earth. I recently decided to try the sequel game, Shadow of War and, now that I've played 80+ hours, this is my review of it.
The short review is this: For me, Shadows of War has a messier storyline, added complexity, and not many new player options. It's an OK game, but Shadows of Mordor feels tidier.
I have to admit that I don't think I ever really knew what the storyline of the first game (Shadow of Mordor) actually was. The impressions I walked away from it are: Talion is a wraith whose ectoplasm got mixed up with Celebrimbor somehow, so they run around Middle Earth (or Middle-earth™ or Middle-Earth™ or whatever's appropriate to whatever license this game uses) killing orcs in an attempt to soften Sauron up. In many ways, it worked for me because it was highly compatible with the canon. Who's to say Sauron's forces weren't weakened by random acts of sabotage and slaughter during the years before Frodo's quest succeeds? It made sense to me, and I appreciated how the writers of the game found a safe corner of the sandbox for me to play in.
After reading the Wikipedia article about the first game, I realised that the final battle with the Black Hand involved Sauron possessing the Black Hand's body so that you got to "kill" Sauron. I don't remember that, and I'm even convinced I realised it happened at the time (I was probably too busy mashing buttons to pay attention to details like the story.) It seems unnecessary to me, but apparently it was also easy to ignore.
Unlike the first game, the story of Shadow of War asks you to ignore everything you know about Tolkien's world. In this game, Talion and Celebrimbor forge a Ring of Power of their own. Celembrimbor is captured by Shelob, but she frees him when Talion gives her their new Ring of Power in exchange. Don't worry, you eventually get the ring back, so I'm not really sure what the point of Shelob is.
The Shelob plot detour is bizarre in every conceivable way. Shelob is, as you may know from the book and movie, is a giant spider. Except in Shadow of War Shelob is a human woman, a sort of queen of spiders, I guess. Don't get me wrong, I'm generally on board with a sexy femme fatale. It's a trope I will always enjoy. But Shelob as a human woman slinking around Talion and whispering demands to tickle his earsmakes no sense. It's an affront to Shelob. Shelob, as writetn, is already perfect, and there's no need for improvement. Shelob is a giant spider. And spiders are perfect. In fact, spiders naturally rival a sexy femme fatale in grace. It would be easy to make Shelob, in her appropriate and canonical spider form, seem dangerously alluring. That's what spiders are anyway, in real life.
Anyway, Talion goes to a Gondorian city called Minas Ithil, which happens to be the location of a Palantír. The Witch-king of Angmar gets hold of the Palantir despite your efforts to protect it, and the city falls and is renamed Minas Morgul. This ought to have been the main story line, and I guess in a way it is. Talion decides that he wants to protect Minas Ithil, and failing that he decides to help city guards Idril and Baranor as they sabotage Sauron's armies and rescue Gondorian survivors.
There are lots of subplots, including a nature spirit called Carnan who must defeat a Balrog, a necromancer named Zog, an assassin dispatched by Galadriel called Eltariel, an encounter with Isildur (as a Nazgûl), and finally wielding the One Ring until Sauron and Celebrimbor merge and Talion gets consumed by Sauron's corruption. To get through all of this plot, you mostly focus on killing orc after re-spawning orc, amassing an army of orc traitors that can theoretically go and conquer warlords and strongholds for you, until you basically dominate all of Mordor, except that you never really do because Sauron obviously can't possibly be destroyed before the very well-known canonical events of Lord of the Rings.
Dominating orcs in the first game was a pretty good mechanic, although dominated orcs seemed a lot more fragile than non-dominated orcs. In this one, the dominated orcs feel pretty tough, but they don't really last. You can dominate a whole encampment of orcs, but if you leave and come back all your minions are gone. The solution for this is a mass battle system that lets you conquer an entire stronghold, which is then permanently yours (unless Sauron's orcs take it back.)
Taking a stronghold is pretty cool the first few times, but ultimately I found the system over-complex. To conquer a stronghold, you must assign dominated orcs to your garrison, but you can also assign orcs as warlords for a region, but controlling a region doesn't mean you control a stronghold. You have to decide how to use the orc chiefs you dominate, but the Nemesis system keeps your dominated orc chiefs rotating out pretty frequently. I found the system tedious and just overwhelming enough to discourage me from engaging with it. To make matters worse, one story line wants you to go over to one region for a quest, while the Nemesis system wants you to go somewhere else to challenge an orc chief, and the main plot wants you to go somewhere else, and Celembrimbor wants you somewhere else, and Talion just wants to stay in Gondor and defend it. There are so many choices of things to pursue, and no indication of what actually matters to the end of the game. The story left me feeling like I could never conquer Mordor, and even if I did, I can't kill Sauron anyway, so what's the point?
All I really wanted to do was defend Minas Ithil, because in the narrative of the game that was the most interesting plot for me. If I could magically change the game, I'd change Minas Ithil to some non-canon city within Gondor, and make the plot about defending it, and helping Idril and Baranor. Keep it simple, and avoid treading on canon as much as possible, especially when there's no need for it.
I don't think all of the game mechanics are actually the same as the first game, but it feels that way. There are lots of tricks you learn as you play the game, which feels weird because many of them you certainly learned in the last game. Why has Talion forgotten how to dominate orcs quickly during combat, or attack from above or below, or ride a Caragor, or poison ale, and so on? I know, in real life, it ensures that a player knows how to use all the many skills available, but in-world it doesn't make sense. Maybe the main characters shouldn't have been Talion and Celebrimbor? The game might have worked just as well, or better, had the main character been Eltariel, maybe granted special powers by Galadriel.
To me, Shadow of Mordor felt like Far Cry, and I think that's where Shadow of War falters. I think it would have been a great game had it just given us a new character to play, with a new goal safely outside of the canon, and stuck to the loop of killing orcs and accomplishing mission goals to secure a region. The mass battle system and intricate plot doesn't work for me. What does work, and what kept me playing for at least 40 of the 80 hours, was killing orcs and fighting whatever nemesis especially annoyed me.
Only half the game can be killing orcs, though. After several hours of killing orcs, you're reminded that the orcs respawn, and that your efforts are all for naught. A good story goal tempers that realisation, and Shadow of War doesn't seem to have a single story. I wanted to play the Gondor quests, but eventually I seemed to run out of quests, and I didn't know what the game wanted me to do to progress the plot. I think it was waiting for me to conquer a specific stronghold, but that felt like it was asking me to play a different game. I didn't enjoy conquering strongholds. I wanted to help Gondor (and I'd already suffered through the Shelob story, so I felt I'd paid my dues.)
Eventually, I stopped playing before finishing the game. I didn't stop playing out of anger or frustration, I just felt like I'd had all the fun I was going to have. I enjoyed my time in Gondor, I enjoyed finding artefacts and hearing Idril's narration of what they were and why they were significant to Gondorian culture, and I killed a lot of orcs. It was fun while it lasted. I have no regrets, and I'm not mad at the game.
For me, the Shadow of games are enjoyable largely because they let me spend time in Middle Earth. I get to uncover runes and artefacts and the in-world stories of everyday soldiers and civilians. It's total immersion, and I love it.
I found most artefacts in the game, and listened to the story of each one. I found a bunch of runes and solved the riddles that opened secret doors. I got to explore the sister city of Minas Tirith, before it fell. The music is great, the sound effects are great, the video game itself is beautiful. Despite my complaints about the story and structure of the game, it was fun and I may well play it again. There is a whole mode of the game, apparently, where you can play as Eltariel, after all.
Shadow of War is a good game, even though I found it a little unwieldy at times.
If you want to sneak into Middle Earth and explore, then this (like Shadow of War) is a great game.
If you want to explore Gondor, then this is the game for it.
If you want a coherent story, then you should play Shadow of Mordor instead.
In other words, Shadow of War is a good game as long as you know how to use it. Because Shadow of Mordor exists, however, it's not an essential Lord of the Rings game.
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