Kuuso on 5/10/2014 at 10:45

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I've been in a bit of a gaming slump lately, because all the games I've tried have been vapid and haven't held my attention for long. This is an exception. There are a few problems though (note: I haven't done the main missions much yet, some Gollum stuff and one Ratbag mission I think, but I have done side-quests a lot more):

1. Too many pop-ups/insta map-markers etc. I've turned off combat markers, which helps a bit, but the handholding is a tad annoying.
2. I don't know, if the game is supposed to get harder at some point, but as soon as you start leveling up different skills, the combat starts to become more of a "lets see how awesome combat moves I can pull off this time" instead of "oh shit I need to do create a valid strategy to survive alive from this one!". At first I felt that the game had a nice diffculty, where I did die a couple of times, when I let myself get overwhelmed or did something not-so-smart as in chilling a tad too close with those demon dogs.
3. It's a bit samey, but I hope there's going to be special occasions and different kind of enemies later on (I've encountered three orc types, normal, ranged and shield/tank, ghuls (swarm you), caragors and those big-ass animals that kill everything)
4. The captains are really easy to kill, when you know their weaknesses, because their weaknessess end usually with "can be killed instantly with X/Y/Z"

This game isn't bad though, not even close. The pros outweight the cons at this point tremendously:

1. Combat is fluid and fun. You got plenty of options to do whatever you like and using your sword skillfully is like a dance that requires thinking and some nimble finger-dexterity. Finishers et al are well done and gives one loads of pleasure to dance around your enemies and rack up the combo counter and charge up a finisher to let the heads fly. I like it a lot. Also, the game doesn't punish you for trying anything you want, so you can ride into an orc fortress with your mount and just slaughter everybody or you can sneak up and use the (quite obvious) enviromental aspects to your advantage.
2. There can be FUCKLOADS of enemies on you. This one surprised me a lot. You can literally have 50 enemies around you, which gives the combat a really hectic feel that I haven't felt in any other game really. Aside from that, they can try to swarm you and attack you from the same time, so it's not just killing one orc at a time with 49 in line. Some captains can boost this ability to swarm you, which makes it even more fun. I suspect this is one of the ways they might try to keep the difficulty, once you get more supapowers from leveling up.
3. I don't really rate LotR very high in any list, but I'm enjoying the world and the little I've seen of the main storyline. The voice-acting, if sparse, is quite excellent really. I do have a hard time placing the events I'm playing in the context of the universe though (after hobbit, pre-LotR?). Doesn't matter that much though.

PS: Nemesis system is exactly as Phatose said. Every wanker that has killed me has made me drop anything else I've been doing to hunt just that captain that got me. The system works, but not maybe in such a way they marketed it. I also do like the fact that if a normal orc number #1014 manages to kill you, he becomes a captain. It does give some feeling of structure and hierarchy to Sauron's army, which the game developers obviously aimed for.

Phatose on 6/10/2014 at 19:39

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Be sure to register for the WB online or whatever joke of a social tie-in they've got going. I'm sure it's useless, but the legendary rune you get from that for the dagger really helps - I'm pretty sure it's why brutalize was working so well for me.

henke on 7/10/2014 at 16:22

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How do you fight off Caragors when they got you pinned down? What's the buttons you're supposed to press in the QTE sequence? (on gamepad)

I missed it in the initial tutorial and neither the manual nor google is any help. I've gotten killed like 10 times by those things now because I don't know what buttons to press. Grrrr.

Muzman on 10/10/2014 at 12:57

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This game seems designed for people who enjoyed dicking around with any game with a faction system and making people/things fight each other while manipulating the outcome.
Clear Sky springs to mind. Only less bugs (I guess).

Phatose on 10/10/2014 at 20:47

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I ended up only using legendary runes by the end game, and not paying much attention to the others.

You know you can 'sell' unused runes? Gets your the resource that lets you increase your rune slots or max HP and the like.