Let me get this straight, I really enjoyed the first game. The nemesis system felt fun the first time around, the combat was solid and it never felt bloated.

This game is not a properly curated experience, resulting in it feeling like a big grindy sandbox. It doesn't feel like you're a ranger trying to survive/get vengeance in Mordor, you're just confused as to why you're even there in the first place. Whole map(s) are littered with icons guiding you to repetitive tasks and clashes between various orc captains who are nothing more than evil Disney caricatures of their former selves. They're all comically "menacing" and it ultimately feels like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ Marvel movie, not a game set in the Lord of the Rings universe.

Combat was solid in Shadow of Mordor, it was pretty much copy-pasted Arkham style, but it did have a certain flow and weight to it. Somehow they managed to completely ruin it. There's no flow to it now, and you're constantly interrupted by a barrage of colorful icons telling you to dodge, stun or parry while there's barely any time to actually land an attack yourself between all of these QTEs pretending to be a combat system. And when you do land a hit, your strikes feel weightless and lack any sort of impact, like you're swinging a blade made of rubber. Sure, executions look nice, but you can no longer build up a combo meter to perform them, now there's a bar you have to fill which feels a little clunky and unintuitive. While in the first game I was certain that I could perform a special move at x5/x10 combo, now it takes up to 15-30 hits to fill the damn bar, unless you take a specific talent which makes it fill slightly faster.

Talking about talents and skill points - it almost seems like core parts of the toolset were gutted and padded out throughout the story to give an artificial feeling of progress that would have been lacking otherwise. Whereas in the first game you could have several upgrades to a certain skill at the same time, now you can only choose one. Why? Like why can't we have both dominate and a way to refill our arrows mid-combat? So either every orc you brand dies instantly or you're forced to run around the area looking for ammo like a fool, after just a couple of shots. Even the climbing/parkour system was destroyed in favor of making it faster, now you just teleport to the top of every structure in two leaps.

As a game bearing the Middle-earth title, it should have some memorable vistas and great environments right? Wrong. The only decent looking zone is actually the one most hated by the community, which is Minas Ithil/Morgul where the tutorial takes place. Every other area is just an empty field with some sparse ruins and a big citadel sitting in a corner. The world does not look dark or grim and the "upgraded" lighting system makes everything look flat and bland.

Having a good story in a videogame is an important aspect as they give meaning and purpose, they immerse you into doing what you're supposed to be doing. There is no good story here, however, as both Talion and Celebrimbor feel like completely different characters when compared to the original.

In the end everything revolves around playing Pokémon(Pokeorc?)with your orcs. If that's your thing - be my guest. But you would be much better off playing the first game in that case, because it is a much more refined and guided experience, way more polished and never outstays it's welcome. Shadow of War just feels like a soulless and disappointing sequel that ultimately killed the franchise. More of the same doesn't always mean better, especially when the quality decreases significantly as a result.

I made a lot of notes while playing this, and I'm just going to spit them out. Spoilers ahead and all that.

Immediately during the tutorial, you're made to upgrade to a new sword. I get this is what we're doing now, but I never gel well with "numbers go up" progression, it's very rare I find it's done correct and this isn't one of those rare moments. Also, it's thematically insensitive. Talion has a cloak made from his wife, the dagger of his son's broken sword, Celebrimbor's bow, and his own sword. These have sentimental value to Talion, you as the player will have done a bunch of side missions in SoM (Shadow of Mordor) to upgrade them, and now they're just discarded? What the ♥♥♥♥? Bigger doesn't always mean better, and I fear this game is such a good example of this.

I don't think the combat is conducive to this games idea of having these big battles. Talion somehow feels weaker than he does in SoM, with your special attacks taking longer to charge, and more orcs on screen than ever, it just makes the fights feel like you're rarely in control of what's going on. Most big fights had me going "oh ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hell" rather than "oh hell yeah!"

In my SoM review I mentioned how the movement was a bit off, Talion would fling himself to somewhere I didn't want or get stuck. I'm glad to report that this was NOT fixed, and they somehow made it even worse. Talion's double jump (while cool in concept) more often than not landed me in the ♥♥♥♥, and Talion more often than ever would get stuck on a ledge looking down while a legion of Mordor's finest was barrelling down on me. This game seems to be more janky than the previous, even to it's smallest design quirks. You can't see the mission objectives in the main map screen, and you have to hold ZOOM to see your army from the map, which just zooms you to the fort. Everything felt worse to navigate, and I wasn't a fan.

Once again, to call back to SoM, when we enter Nurn Lithariel and Queen Marwen are mentioned of what happened to them, and Celebrimbor just replies "This will be different". Nice, just lampshade me.

During the Tar Goroth balrog fight, I thought it was initially cool. You see the full scale and size of a Balrog and the power it wields. However, you eventually just climb on the graug's back and it becomes rock-em sock-em robots. All the sense of scale is gone and this giant creature just becomes something your size, if you get my drift. Also that fight is odd as the Balrog's running away animation is just a bit off, it scuttles away like it just heard the ice cream van.

The nemesis system is what people remember the most about these games, but man I wish these orcs would shut up. I see three captains approach and I get three separate speeches, it makes fights feel so disorientating and it could've been toned down. Towards the end I wondered how much of my play time was listening to these speeches.

The graphics, mainly the lighting, is also a bit grim. I know it was a PS4 era game, but Gorgoroth looks disgusting, very washed out with all the orange and it's just not pleasant.
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HOWEVER, here are some good things.

The arena fight at the start of the game in Minas Ithil is a great set piece. When Celebrimbor yells he's coming for Sauron, that's a good performance. The shot where Shelob gives Talion the ring is also very good, very dramatic and broody.

One of the Gondorian artifacts you find is a furniture assembly manual. Talion comments how he enjoys the idea of building furniture and building with his hands, and Celebrimbor replies "Talion the craftsman, that I would have liked to see." in a rather earnest tone, and I thought it was a lovely moment of kinship between the two.
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In conclusion, this game is repetitive as sin and it's not fun enough to warrant that.

the devs made this game, so rng based. the higher level captain and army dont matter. u spend a bunch of time upgrading ur army, for an enemy army half the power level; to ravage your ass cheeks. what use to be a fun mechanic is now a rng event.