If you liked Shadow of Mordor, you’re going to LOVE the sequel. I’ve been playing it all night and it is amazing. I’m playing on hard (Nemesis) and let me tell you, they are NOT kidding. I’ve died… I don’t know about 20 times or so in the 1st level passed the tutorial. There’s a profound sense of satisfaction when you kill a captain. Gathering intel is no longer an optional thing, you will gather intel if you want to stand a chance against a captain.
Basically, if you felt like Aragorn in the first game, in this one you feel like Boromir. After he had two arrows in him.
Maybe on easy or normal it isn’t so crazy, but I’m loving it on Nemesis. I’m determined to get good enough to be able to survive on that difficulty level. Great game though, well worth every penny.
I’m so early in the game I can’t really say. From everything I’ve read if you just blast through the game then the 4th act will be really hard. If you play it, let’s say normally, apparently you should have plenty of loot and in game currency. It feels to me, and again I’m very early, that buying loot is basically but the “privilege” to not play the game, if that makes sense.
The only bug I’ve experienced so far is some of the cutscenes don’t play properly.
I’m slowly getting better at the game. I think an issue I was having is a lack of gear meant I was seriously underpowered, which resulted in me getting killed, which results in the orcs levelling up, which means I’m more underpowered. Now that I’m getting some gear I’m able to hold my own a bit better, although it is still very hard. It might make sense to start on normal, get some gear and then put it on Nemesis difficulty.
The improved Nemesis system is great. Now, when an orc completes their mission, they despawn (they don’t just disappear, but they simply leave unless you’re actively fighting them in which case they may keep fighting or in some cases having accomplished their mission they flee. The whole thing is VERY cool) and respawn elsewhere. So when it says “Kill them before they can do X” you really do need to kill them before they do X. Regular orcs are hard enough now that if a captain flees, sometimes there’s just nothing you can do about because you’re just too overwhelmed to chase after him, which in my mind is great. It creates a lot of stories.
Overall, I’m loving it. I’m just about to finish the first zone and I think that’s when the game proper begins.
Oh also, they’ve changed the final chance system. It used to be you had to move your cursor into a circle and press a button. Now, you simply have to time it. If you press too soon or too late you fail. That’s why I was dying a lot. I was pressing it too soon and dying.
Oh and finally, intel is REALLY important. You can now enrage captains if you do the “wrong” thing. Like if you try a stealth attack and it enrages them, they become even more of a beast. So not only do you need intel to kill them efficiently, you need to intel to not die.
Supposedly, if you concentrate on only defending a couple of your forts, you can let the others get taken and farm re-taking them for the epic orcs and loot that you need. Try to max out the defense of all your forts, and you’d probably have to reach for your wallet.
I never played Shadow of Mordor at all - somehow it slipped past my radar - and so all the reviews I’ve seen of the new game are hard to follow (since a lot of them seem to assume knowledge of the first game). Anybody willing to: (1) give me a quick and simple description of the nature of the game; and (2) tell me whether I should play the first one before jumping into this one?
Did you play any of the Batman: Arkham ____ games? It’s not dissimilar.
Except instead of fixed bosses, they get randomly generated with various strengths, weaknesses, and can occasionally come back from the dead or otherwise level up with new strengths to ambush you.
You probably don’t need to play the first one if you know anything about Tolkien (though they’re playing pretty fast & loose with the lore)…but it’s a good game, and gets heavily discounted during Steam sales, so you could probably drop $5 on it at some point.
The first one was worth the $30 I spent for it. I still enjoy playing it. I will get this new one but I am waiting for more players to hit the wall where either you have to grind or pay.
It can be at times. But it’s generally pretty easy to jump in, kill the orc(s) that are carrying loot/the captain/grab the worm & run away, if you want to. And you occasionally have a lot of people on your side.
The biggest slog I’ve run into so far is actually killing the captains. Decapitations are rare now, so they have a decided tendency to come back from the dead over and over.
I find it much rarer to have such massive amounts of orcs. I’d say large groups are usually closer to 10-12. A captain and his guard is usually the captain + 6-8 orcs. I like that alarms now don’t seem to just generate orcs (maybe a few I’m not 100% sure) but rather then just attract everything in range. I had an alarm last night and killed everything that came at me and that was it. Nothing else came and the alarm was still going. It was a brutally hectic fight with, I don’t know maybe 20-30 orcs all told with a peak of about 15 or so attacking at one time with more running in, but it does seem like they’ve got rid of the endless spawn. I really like that because the endless spawn was silly.
I’m getting better at the game and can hold my own to some degree on Nemesis. Holy crap the captain battles can be epic on Nemesis. Absolutely epic. I briefly went down to Normal difficulty, and there’s a very big difference in aggression. Plus, it might be my imagination but I think you have much less time to react for counters.
A guy wearing the Tower’s armor (from the first game) who is so terrified of the MC, that he instantly runs away every…single…time, even from his own ambushes. He’s only level 3 or so, but I haven’t been able to pin him down yet. He randomly died on his own once, but came back from the dead in order to run away some more.
One who fancied himself a bard. And brought a lute to a swordfight. And sang. He did not end well.
And one of the higher level ones in the starting town is a tracker, so he follows me around town, is immune to pretty much everything, and is “Enraged by Everything” (that’s actually what it says on his statblock.) I suspect he’s going to be around for a long, long time.
Holy crap on a cracker. Enraged by everything would be terrifying.
My best nemesis so far kept defeating me but choosing humiliation. When I finally beat hi on he said something like I gave you a second chance I bet you don’t have the guts to do the same. So I let him go.
So, on a basic level, what is this game? What’s the basic gameplay loop? Everything I can find online assumes that I already understand the basics of the game. I need, like, a complete idiot’s guide to whether or not I want to spend $60 on this.
It is s 3rd person action rpg. There’s missions in an open world that usually involve killing orcs. There’s a mix of combat and stealth mechanics. It is very similar to the Batman games. Also less so but somewhat the Assassins Creed games. I’d maybe check out some gameplay videos.
I got Shadows of Mordor when it was on sale for $5. I guess I don’t have the reflexes anymore, if I ever did, because combat against 50 orcs is really really hard. How are you supposed to handle the “get dropped in a pit and fight 50 orcs” missions?
Obviously it makes sense that you shouldn’t stand and fight 50 orcs, and that you should die if you try it. But they have missions for it, which seems to indicate that the designers thought you should be able to do it.
Also, if an orc boss is immune to ranged, and immune to stealth attacks, well, that’s about all I’ve got. I did eventually get one boss that had both, after quite a while, by literally running around the tower behind him, getting in one non-stealth hit from behind, then running around the tower the other direction, hitting him again, all the while having to kill endless waves to newly spawned orcs. What a pain.
The new version has 3 difficulty modes: easy, normal and nemesis. I’m not saying you should get the game, because I can definitely understand what you’re saying, but maybe the easy difficulty might be an enjoyable experience. But it is a pretty expensive gamble (I guess you could return it if you play it for less than 2 hours).
After he had two arrows in him.