The follow-up to Shadow of Mordor, Shadow of War is something I thoroughly enjoyed as much as the first one, thankfully. While Shadow of War is much more polished than the first game and improves on it some ways, it also is much too flawed to be a significant improvement.

Shadow of War's story is good at best, fine at worst. Shadow of Mordor's short mission style is still a thing in this game, but now it is fragmented across several different characters in a GTA-like mission structure. Each character has their own set of main story quests that can be completed. Shadow of War seems more open-ended and you can go about much of the meat of the game in any order you'd like. The writing of this story has a bittersweet and awesome payoff but as a complete package, the mission structure does make it a slight downgrade from Shadow of Mordor overall, but only very slightly.

If you enjoyed Shadow of Mordor's gameplay you'll like Shadow of War's as well. The Skill system is a bit more interesting and allows you to pick and choose, shaping your build for Talion to however you wish. I wasn't a fan of the hardcore shift to the tired loot system that so many AAA action games love to do for no explicit reason (looking at you God of War), but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. What I do miss is inserting Runes into your weapons and armor, as opposed to just having a single Gem with a stat boost in this game. It removes depth from a system that was a little more interesting, in my opinion.

I think the major flaw holding this game back is enemy design. With the way Orcs roll their passive effects and immunities, it makes every boss encounter feel really unique and interesting! Most of the time. There are times, mostly towards the end of the game, where you're just kinda at a loss of how to beat a really spongy enemy if you don't have intel. I mean, what am I supposed to do against an enemy that's immune to executions and ranged attacks who is holding a shield and also immune to vaulting? A lot of later game enemy encounters are just exhausting to deal with, especially when Talion is surrounded. It makes the Shadow Wars epilogue in particular pretty difficult.

It is most noticeable when fighting Overlords. In the boss room, Talion is vastly outnumbered while fighting a pretty strong boss. Since the minions constantly respawn in this enclosed space, the boss is really difficult to deal with on the fly. And it's where another issue with the combat shows itself - there's no reliable way to heal. I mean, jeez, even Dark Souls isn't afraid to give you a way to heal yourself mid-combat. Draining enemies is fine, but since you can get interrupted while draining or have to expend a finisher to do so, Talion doesn't have a reliable healing method. This makes many of the more difficult encounters very grueling to handle, especially when there isn't anyone to drain. I summoned allies in some of these just to drain them because I didn't have anyone to drain! I know you can put lifesteal on Talion's weapon - but this goes to my problem with the change away from runes for gems instead. Having only 1 gem per weapon means I'd have to sacrifice damage on my sword for lifesteal. Which isn't reliable in itself either.

These though, are very nitipicky. Shadow of War excels at doing the Ubisoft formula better than Ubisoft by making its open-world not feel exhausting to delve into. I managed to grab all the collectables and didn't feel like I wasted too much time doing it. I was actually surprised I had finished them when the game said I did. And no, I don't care that it messes with the canon of Middle-Earth. Who cares? We still enjoy Star Wars games that are no longer canon, don't we, like KOTOR or The Force Unleashed? So why can't Shadow of Mordor/War do the same?

I came away from Shadow of War feeling satisfied as much as I did with Shadow of Mordor. A "wow that was awesome" but nothing really blew me away. It was more polished Shadow of Mordor, and that's cool, but it makes only marginally better as a sequel, and the new war mechanics aren't in-depth or interesting enough to really make it a significant upgrade. Nonetheless, Shadow of War is a hugely underrated game.

Score: 90

Muito melhor que o primeiro em MUITOS aspectos, mas peca no mesmo ponto
REPETIÇÃO

Chegando na metade do jogo eu não aguentava mais ficar indo pro lado e pro outro dominar orcs e fazer guerra.

Mas foi bem divertido, final surpreendente.

Like numerous WB games, there's a LOT to be said about it. Not just from the content, but also the press surrounding it, how it went in heavily on microtransactions and even has a Orc Merchant character who smirks and cheers whenever you spend money to get random Orcs in these lootboxes.

This has been changed and gutted, but it's clear that this game was built with that in mind from the very beginning as all Orcs and Equipment have a rarity value that plays exactly like mobile games and MMOs (Commons, rares, epics, legendaries being the highest) making it a fact that cannot be ignored as it permeates every part of this game. That said, let's talk about the gameplay.

All I really have to say about storyline and gameplay is that if you enjoyed the first game, then you'll certainly enjoy this one. Especially in it's current state and not how it used to be prevalent with micro-transaction filth. Now it's a far better game, though flaws have been cleaned up too. However you also still have things like daily challenges and ect that remind you of it's failed attempt to be a full-priced game that was lousy with Micro-transactions.

The story essentially continuing the fight and battle from the first game, but then getting wiped out by the Dark Lord and having to start over. Interesting idea, however the only issue I have with this is you don't start with the ability to dominate Orcs and we all know that's one of the most fun bits of this game is dominating and controlling legions of Orcs. There's even a mechanic later of bringing them back from the dead to be zombies that are under your control!

With many side-missions to keep you entertained for hours, one of the things I hated using was the fighting pit. You have no control over your Orc as they fight a different orc and even if yours is a Legendary that you've leveled up, improved their abilities and more, they can still be defeated by a Common at half it's level making you curse the fighting pits and just getting on with the far more interesting side-missions like collecting artefacts, uncovering the past or finding Shelob's fragments that are scattered throughout the world and give you a look in her role for the rise of the dark lord.

Shelob has the ability to turn into a sexy woman, because, it's not like that's been done a billion times before! Though I admit she did have the voice of the very sexy Claudia Black so I also would like to give it a pass too. You get an ability to summon spiders if you find all of them, but it's a shame that the spiders come in only one size catagory and you can't, for example, have a Caragor-sized spider to charge around on, but that's a minor thing and it's especially fun when you're hunting a captain who is terrified of spiders so you immediately break him.

Without giving spoilers, the ending is certainly an interesting one and gives you a reason to come back and keep playing it and in a way that fits the narrative of the story, even giving you new powers and abilities to try out.

The game currently comes on sale quite often so if you're interested in more Shadow of Mordor, then certainly go ahead. If you want a fun action game then this is certainly fun and worth the price it often is on sale. Especially if you can get all the DLC to mess with extra characters and stories.

As of now I am quite unfamiliar with the lord of the rings universe hence why the story might not have grabbed me however I do believe the delivery here is not on point.

I truly believe that this game simply does not leave you the time to actually figure anything out, it throws you in an open world telling you all these things, dumping numerous mechanics and characters on you. I felt like I truly did not have the space to appreciate anything I was doing.

The disconnect between me and the game's world has not ceased to grow since my rising disappointment in the initial hours. A certain jankiness is also present that never really ceased to make itself noticed in any aspect of the gameplay be it movement, stealth or combat.

Props deserve to be given to the fun Nemesis system yet everything surrounding it from story to gameplay just failed to make me further interested.

I love and hate this game in equal parts. On one hand, it improves on a lot of the mechanics and abilities from the first game. On the other, this game is full of bugs that impact combat like getting stuck in walls/objects, enemy attack indicators not showing up for no reason, enemies falling through the ground or being unable to attack, and more. Also the 1st is guilty of this too but it gets really repetitive. Every region is the same loop of activities with a 50/50 mix of engaging and boring story missions tossed in. The story is cool, the combat (when working as intended) is fluid and rich with cool abilities, and the environments are amazing. But, those little issues can really sour your enjoyment.