Middle-earth™: Shadow of Mordor™ Reviews

Here's the deal: Shadow of Mordor is like Assassin’s Creed had a wild night with Arkham combat, and the result was an orc-smashing power trip in Middle-earth. The Nemesis System is the real MVP—turning random Uruks into your personal arch-nemeses (or unwilling minions). The combat? Satisfyingly brutal. The parkour? Surprisingly smooth. The story? Well… it's there, but let’s be honest, you're mostly in it for the epic revenge arcs and stylish decapitations.

Got this game during the Steam Spring Sale (2025) and I thought it was gonna be lame, I am pleasantly surprised. If you're playing with M&K controls, its a bit funky at first but it gets easier. Luckily you can remap the key bindings, but I promise, its good the way it is. It's very satisfying to play. There's a decent amount of side missions. I highly recommend this game from someone who doesn't play these types of games. The movement if fluid and easy to grasp but still challenging at times. I've sank 15 hrs in this game and im only 38% done.

Good graphics, mechanics and story line

I recommend it for people who love the lord of the rings and its world. I don't recommend it for people like me, who don't care about it. It's too easy, it's too tedious, I find it very uninteresting all around. However.. the game does succeed at making you feel like a badass (I cannot deny that it's funny you can one-man-army a bunch of gooners in their stronghold), and the stealth can be fun (again, strongholds make for funny places). I unfortunately couldn't care about anything else, I did not want to play through the story, I did not want to do any sidequests for characters or saving slaves, that's fine, it just means the game wasn't for me, I had my bit of fun playing it, but weirdly I felt like I was wasting my time, when I could've played something else that I trust I WOULD ENJOY, but hey, I bought the game, the least I can do is give the game a fair shot.

[h1]Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor[/h1] [h3][Overview][/h3] Shadow of Mordor is an open world action/stealth game inspired by similar games such as Batman: Arkham and Assassin's Creed. The story takes place between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. You play as Talion, a Gondorian Ranger whose family is sacrificed by the Black Hand of Sauron in order to summon the wraith of the Elf Lord Celebrimbor. Talion's life is saved by Celebrimbor and they set off to seek revenge against Sauron and the Black Hand. Throughout the game Talion is able to utilize Celebrimbor's wraith powers in order to give him various advantages and abilities, even the ability to cheat death. Shadow of Mordor is most notable for it's gameplay mechanic known as the Nemesis system. This mechanic introduces a hierarchy of rival Captain and Warchief ranked Orcs that have dynamic names, titles, traits, power levels, abilities, classes, strengths, and weaknesses. They have a memory of general events related to them (such as them killing the player, the player killing their guards or mounted caragor/graugs, the player finding them after they successfully flee, etc.) and will reference these events in dialogue. This system was widely praised for making Talion's enemies incredibly dynamic and immersive. [h3][Positives][/h3] - Good gameplay. It takes a lot of influence from games like Batman: Arkham and classic Assassin’s Creed. - Great graphics and art style. - Good soundtrack. - The Nemesis system is really cool. It’s not quite as advanced as it is in Shadow of War, but it’s still a lot of fun and really impressive. - Good upgrades/skills. The skills you unlock make a huge difference in how you play the game. - Decent story. It’s fairly minimal, but it has a much more grounded tone compared to Shadow of War which is nice. The writing and dialogue is much better in this game, far less ironic and campy. - There are a very reasonable amount of collectibles, it’s not spammy or excessive like in other similar games. Getting in-game 100% completion is very realistic. [h3][Mixed][/h3] - The controls and the camera can be pretty awkward and buggy, but it’s not completely terrible. - The two story DLCs are lazy, mediocre, short, and overpriced. They re-use the base game maps (no new locations), barely have any actual missions, can be beaten in two hours each, and aren’t really that fun. The only main positive is that the Bright Lord DLC has a much better final boss than the base game which makes it worth playing at least once. [h3][Negatives][/h3] - Online servers were shutdown in 2020 making the online missions and features no longer available. - The game uses pre-rendered cutscenes which is disappointing. In-engine cutscenes would’ve looked great. - A lot of story missions involve sections of slowly following a companion while listening to dialogue. It’s a real waste of this games time given that there are only 20 story missions for the entire game and some of them are fairly short. - Some of the best gameplay mechanics are introduced far too late into the game. For instance, by the time you unlock the ability to dominate Captains, there are only four story missions left in the game. - The final boss is absolute garbage. It’s a lazy QTE sequence instead of an actual fight. The later parts of the story feel pretty rushed as well. - Failing a side mission doesn’t give you a retry button, instead making you go all the way back to the mission marker to retry. This can get pretty frustrating, especially during the more difficult side missions. - Weapon runes feel lackluster. It’s all RNG which runes you get by killing Captains/Warchiefs, some runes are great, some are kinda useless. You’ll usually end up equipping whatever just kinda works instead of worrying about truly optimizing them. - Some slight technical complaints. The only anti-aliasing options on PC are FXAA or super-sampling. The frame rate is capped at 100 FPS, it’s possible to disable this limit through tweaks, but it causes a bug in one of the story missions. [h3][Conclusion][/h3] Shadow of Mordor is easily one of the best Lord of the Rings games out there. It’s like if Ubisoft were capable of making a quality game. The gameplay is solid and the Nemesis system makes the world feel alive, dynamic, and replayable. 8/10

Good game. Nothing revolutionary, but if you enjoy Ubisoft-like open world games, you will enjoy this as well. Gameplay is fun with a lot of approaches possible. The abilities are all fun to use and kill orcs. I liked the enemy systems that they created for the game. Story wise it's okay. Nothing groundbreaking, but not bad as well. Graphics is okay as well. 7/10

even tho i have not watch a single thing of lord of the rings this game is still amazing to play love the combat feel like in the batman arkham series

Good combat system that fleshes out pretty well during progression. Obvious star of the show has to be the nemesis system that will never ever be used again because Warner Bros is a comically evil corporation that hates fun and whimsy. Talion and Celebrimbor are good characters but literally every other npc is so forgettable to the point I was remembering my randomly generated orc follower names before the dedicated story npc names. Other than that this game and its' sequel are steals I 100% recommend

Amazing game, so many quests and things to do, once you get a hold of it you can't stop playing. I finished the game entirely, the story and the DLC's with 100% of achievements. It was really hard but also fun to achieve. I recommend getting the game because it is really worth it.

I will NEVER forgive Warner Bros. for owning the patent to the Nemesis system and then never doing anything with it ever again beyond these games. Absolutely phenomenal games that I can't recommend enough!