The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria™ Reviews

Hello Friends, Today I will review the game THE LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN TO MORIA. Originally, this game came out first on the Epic Game Store, but was eventually released on the steam store. This is a LOTR themed story, based on the dwarves of middle earth, and what adventures they would take. It is also a survival game to try to have the player survive and conquer the mines of moria to reclaim it for the durin's glory and to find a permanent home for the dwarfs of middle earth. While most exploration happens in the mines, there are also other surprises to find while exploring too. There are new dangers to avoid, and new minerals to extract from the mountains. Using these resources the players dig out of the ground, they can build a variety things in a safe location, but be careful, if the player is too noisy doing stuff, like mining, a great hoard of enemies will overrun the player and cause many issues. The game is sadly lacking in content. Hopefully, the developers will continue working on this game and continue to add more things to build and maybe a new area later. If not, it is still a great game to play with friends players have on steam. The fact when doing certain things together is a great feat among when players are working together and helping each other out in the game is quite something to see for yourself. Anyways, here is my PROS and CONS lists: PROS: - A lord of the rings series game, from the perspective of a Dwarf found in the JR Tolkein world. - A survival game where the player must build essential items to survive in a harsh location. - A story campaign mode and a sandbox mode. - Customizable dwarf characters. - A different map seed every time, so each game locations may be different than last game was played, similar to how Minecraft worlds are randomized. This means a location in one world may not be the same in another world playthrough. This means a entrance could be a higher location, or a lower location. - Too many noises and a player will cause a hoard of enemies to attack them. The noise indicator in the bottom right corner is good to use if the player wants to prevent this from happening. - The characters can find clues about the fellowship in the game while exploring locations such as the MINES OF MORIA, and ancient fabled dwarven cities. - Lots of building and as you expect from dwarves, lots and lots of digging. - The ability to play with others co-op online. The players can invite 4 or more dwarves to their game to play as they see fit. - Different biomes and different enemies to fight. - Compatible with Windows 11 OS. - The game works with most controllers for pc. I used a Zen Pro switch controller. CONS: - Alot of the furniture in the game is only cosmetic and have no functions. I would love to see the ability of the characters in the game able to sit down in chairs, or even interact with the furniture in different ways, such as looking at it, or even just using it as is. - I would personally love to see more dlc, more content with this game, such as more things to build, a dlc with another story such as continuation after the main story, or even more locations to explore and find. - Sounds issues sometimes effected me where the sound cut in and out. Strangely, this bug eventually went away on it's own. It was possibly a bug with the windows 11 os system. - The dot wall issue when playing with other players. Basically this shows loading locations in the game when areas are separated. - The maps sometimes superimpose over each other. For example, if there is a higher or lower floor on same location on the map, the map will not show this. It will show it as one static map, without distinguishing the different floors in a section. Do i recommend this game? Yes, but it could use more improvements, such as functional furniture, and maybe some dlc that adds more story or at least adds another area for players to explore. A great co-op game you can play online with others in your friend's list on steam. Quite fun to play with multiple players working towards a goal in the story to build certain things, or just go explore and see what is around the next bend on the map. I have to say this game is more fun with other players, but a individual can also play solo, which i have mostly done. Still, the game even by yourself is quite fun.

Not sure what I expected, but not that. There is no open world and not much base building either. I dropped it when I understood that it won't be about building yourself a new home, but rather about going from start to finish with the occasional crafting.

It feels like early access like no man sky. Not updated No man sky but day one. i wanted to like this game but it runs poorly and feels clunky to the point it gets in the way of having fun. There are better games that do everything this game does but better. i wouldn't play this even if it was on sale. The game is hard capped at 60fps. The controls are clunky, you have to double tap to equip items leading to crap moments when you get into fights and you didn't equip the item you selected from the hot bar. hit right trigger to go to the sword and hovered over it to equip oops you have it twice guess you'll eat all your food instead The lighting engine is either way to bright or so dark you can't see. the game stutters and has frame rate drops constantly. This is on a 3080 with a 12 gen i9. The quest get complete but don't leave your hub. Ex take the secret tunnel. Cool did that and 2 hrs later the objective is still there. The hot and cold/ darkness systems are poorly made. You can hold a torch or an item that lights up the room and start taking damage from dread from darkness from being in the dark to long even the the room is fully lit. Enemies randomly spawn and can teleport to you. they spawn in-front of you making it zero fun. You clear out an area too bad here are four bears you aren't safe now. It's a worse version of stalker 2 spawning. The inventory is far to small you have huge spaces to explore and items to find and collect. There is not enough inventory for the backpack vs the loot that can be found the base building doesn't work and there are no defenses. goblins teleport to your base and inside it destroying everything with no way of defending it without holding agro for all of them. weapons and armor have no stats so there is no way to know attack damage to speed to compare dps or defenses.

Overall, great game. I really enjoyed playing through the 'story' as it were. However, the real focus of the game is around the building aspect where you can quite literally, rebuild Moria. There are either some issues with my PC or the game in terms of Optimisation. I've tried the absolute highest settings and absolute lowest; the game stutters. Definitely not enough of an issue to warrant a bad review. If you're a Lord of The Rings fan this is a no brainer. If you enjoy mining, crafting and exploring I would definitely reccomend!

The building systems get a lot of hate, but imo most flaws really only show when trying to go to like a grand scale. I really liked most of the building at the base/equipment level. Overall the story/extra lore was great and the combat is passable, great environments and music too

If you enjoy survival games, LotR, or just fantasy in general, give this one a try! It's a unique twist on the survival genre, featuring Dwarf folk from Tolkien's world of Middle Earth. But yes, you still have to punch some things to craft your very first torch. (At this point I'm starting to think that it's an unwritten law that all survival games have to start with punching things to make a light source...) Are there bugs? [strike]Well, spiders at least...[/strike] Is there jank? You bet, just like most survival games Is Return to Moria a fun game? YES (with Gandalf-made fireworks in the background) Return to Moria feels more like an Early Access game, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It gives me the same vibe as Valheim and Nightingale: A solid, creative and fun foundation with a ton of room to grow. So far my experience with the community has been pleasant and it's clear they're passionate about the game. The building system is enjoyable, but there's some frustrating things. The graphics/art design are gorgeous, and fit comfortably within the LotR world (fun fact the actor who played Gimli in the movies voices Gimli in this game! \o/) The game has two main modes. Campaign is a more linear, guided story mode with a clear beginning and end. I recommend this for new players, but you can adjust the difficulty on the fly. Sandbox is less linear and more randomly generated, like a...well...sandbox! XD There's character customization that you can do any time, as well as a transmog option to change the look of your armor. I could ramble on but the TL;DR that you're here for is that Return to Moria is a very enjoyable survival game with a ton of potential. It feels more like an early access game in terms of polish, however the devs have been updating/overhauling a ton of things since it released, and they're adding dedicated servers soon! Side note: the modding potential for this game is CRAZY, on the same level as Conan Exiles or Valheim!

Reading the description of this game I thought it would be more focused on RECLAIMING Moria. Instead the game is about ESCAPING Moria after accidentally falling into a hole. I think I was expecting more of a base-building game where you were given missions by Gloin to explore, claim, and conquer Moria one step at a time, expanding dwarven control, until the Orcs were driven out and Moria was reclaimed. I expected survival-crafting elements, but thought they would exist to support a larger, grander framework. What this game actually IS is a classic survival-crafting game. Except instead of being stuck on a deserted island, you're stuck in dwarven tunnels. Since it's randomly generated there's no real attempt to recreate a logical Dwarven city - you can look online for maps of the Mines of Moria. This is a shame because I wanted the feeling of exploring an actual LOTR location, an actual city with districts and purpose, and the Endless Stair, and Kazad-Dum, and so on. As it is, each individual screenshot superficially looks like it was taken from a genuine LOTR location, it doesn't fit together into a logical whole. This doesn't feel like an ancient dwarven city that was once thriving and has fallen into ruin, it feels like a playground for a video game player to build, craft, and smack some orcs. I'm not saying there's no value in what it IS, but once I realize what it ISN'T I can't help but notice it everywhere. Why would an old neighborhood include a wall of dirt with a coal deposit? Did the old dwarves not bother mining it? My favorite part in the Hobbit movies was seeing the inside of the Mountain and the forges and imagining dwarves living and working there in its heyday. As silly as the scene was with the dwarves running and hiding from Smaug, the setting was fantastic. I wanted that feeling of seeing an ancient ruin fallen from glory and waiting to be reconstructed by a civilization of dwarves. Instead I'm just skulking down a hallway looking for the next bit of ore so I can make a slightly better weapon so maybe I can escape. In general I think the map generation could have been more interesting as a hybrid handcrafted/procedural style. The core of the map could have been the classic Mines of Moria map, with the side districts, mines, and obstacles and enemies all prodedurally generated. ESCAPE? While Orcs befoul the halls of my ancestors? So pathetic, creeping around like a cockroach instead of claiming my ancestral birthright and scattering the Orcs to the winds. I don't like downvoting a game because I don't like the genre. I don't like pure survival crating games, but that's on me, I shouldn't downvote a game because it's just not my jam. (I have a particular hated for durability mechanics. I went through the trouble of finding the resources and crafting the item, don't punish me for actually using it!) But after some thought I am going to downvote this game, not because of my dislike for the genre, because it squandered its potential. There is room for a much grander and cooler game in the Mines of Moria than a generic survival-crafting game. Imagine watching dwarven civilization spread as you clear one district after another of the foul Orcs, letting Gloin and the colonizers reclaim their homeland! Would it not be grand to conquer Moria, instead of desperately trying to escape?

I really wanted to like this game. I LOVE Middle Earth and enjoy survival/crafting games so I was willing to let the game ride the IPs coattails in all honest but... it sucks. It barely functions and had an extreme amount of lag when I tried to play it. Cutscenes were nigh unwatchable and every few steps I took the entire world would freeze. The IP can only carry the game so far unfortunately, and when the game just doesn't run then the game just doesn't run.

I would strong [b]recommend against[/b] anyone purchasing this game right now until they release either: a) information on server status and/or uptimes b) provide any evidence of server uptimes There are countless threads on reddit and many other sites of people only being able to play 1-2 days a week before the servers crapped themselves. 1.5 hours in and now I, nor any of my 4 other friends, are able to host or connect to a game. There is no information in the game to advise whether this is for scheduled maintenance, an outage, or something else. For the hour that I managed to play before the servers died, it seemed cool - but for a game that you'd end up waiting to play rather than playing, there are other games more worth your time and money.

First things first, I am recommending this game purely from the perspective of a LotR mega-fan. If I wasn't one, I unfortunately wouldn't recommend it to a general audience. My thumbs up is as a mega-fan, to other mega-fans. The devs clearly care about the universe, and I think future games could be genuinely good. This is the reason I felt the need to write this review- the Very Positive rating (at the time this was written) could be misleading to a general survival game audience. With that caveat out of the way, onto the actual review. The core idea of this game is fantastic! Unfortunately, the execution was sloppy due to the developers focusing too much on current trends in the genre, instead of building something that actually fits in with LotR. What I mean by this is the game is basically a mediocre survival-crafter at best, with a LotR paint job slapped on top of it. The paint job can be cool and shiny in some places (almost exclusively related to the lore/world building), and truly repulsive at it's worst (procedural generation of the map, progression, building, art style, combat, wait isn't that literally every aspect of a game?!?). As I write everything out, it is making me more begrudgingly give that thumbs up. I think my opinion of this game is a great example of how new media related to old and beloved IP's can really ride the coattails of the wonderful lore it was originally built upon. And that's my point with the caveat above, if this was some random new IP in a previously unknown universe, I would be telling you all to avoid this game like the plague. It was those little snippets of: actually standing in a massively significant location from the lore, conversing with the legendary Gimli son of Gloin, uncovering secrets about the Dark Lords and the long-lasting impacts of their actions on Middle Earth. Those hidden gems scratched that itch of learning something new about my favorite fantasy universe enough to recommend this game to others that have the same itch as me. With the positives out of the way (yikes, that's it?), I will address my issues with this game as a gamer, not a LotR fan. As a reference point it took me 47 hours to beat the main story line on normal difficulty, entirely alone. I didn't use any guides or videos except one because I couldn't for the life of me figure out where to find rubies. Didn't do any farming or brewing, my dwarf survived entirely on mushroom stew, salted meat, and abakhs through the whole playthrough (take that how you will). This is pretty much spoiler free. 1. Procedural World Generation: this is the biggest gripe I had with the game. Why the devs decided to hop on board with this trend I will never understand. Procedural generation, at its core, is used to make exploration more exciting and encourage subsequent play-throughs. The system in this game is so janky it completely misses in both of those areas. I lost interest in exploration by the fourth zone (from then on I just rushed through to find the items I needed to continue to the next one), and I am confident there is nothing new I could see or experience in a second play-through. Some of the transitions between zones or even areas within the same zone are downright jarring, and make zero sense from a lore perspective. The in-game map is nearly useless, you pretty much just have to rely on memory at a certain point. In my opinion, the map should have been handcrafted start to finish and I will die on that hill. 2. Progression: it was hard to decide if this should be #1 or #2. I went with #2 because an awesome map that is fun to explore will still give you the motivation to push through a not-so-awesome progression system (sadly this game had neither). The progression is bad. It is super repetitive... the formula is almost exactly the same in each zone: enter new zone > current gear is weak against enemies which are a slight variation on the previous zone's enemies > find new gear recipes by rebuilding statues while avoiding enemies at all cost > mine new ore needed in those recipes while avoiding enemies at all cost > sometimes find special forge to craft new gear, or just craft at base > become unstoppable once you have upgraded weapons > faceroll the zone and orc stronghold > complete main quest objective > move on to next zone. Rinse and repeat. It's all the same, the strongholds are all identical, rebuilding the forges is all the same, the zones look different but there's nothing unique about progressing through them, the few actual boss fights (not warchiefs) are decent but few and far between. Mining basically one node of each new material was enough for me to get fully kitted out, the hardest part was finding the recipes in the first place. Lastly, you quickly realize there is almost no incentive to building multiple bases, it is purely a waste of time progression-wise and not fun at all due to a bad building system (will get into that next). With the current progression system, you are much better off getting firmly dug in to one location and expanding as you progress. Just always bring materials to make a campfire, a map stone, and a repair smithy wherever you go and you're set. It just shouldn't be that way, it should feel like you're actually clearing out Khazad-dûm, and establishing your own strongholds as you go. 3. Building: building just straight up sucks. There are two key reasons for this in my opinion. First, you can't really "clean up" or rebuild areas completely. Oh, you like this area and want to build a base here? Sure, you can, but you're going to have to deal with these ruins that you can't clear for... reasons, and they will make your base look like a decrepit hovel no matter how much work you put into it. There are so many areas where you just... can't destroy or repair things... WHY? Second issue is the grid system. It sucks, it's super limiting, and the worst part is it doesn't even line up with the existing structures sometimes... again... WHY?? You can't put anything on an angle, so if you wanted to build in a cool area that isn't aligned with the grid- well that's too damn bad, find somewhere else or deal with everything you build looking horrifically out of place. 4. Art style/graphics : I'll keep this one short, my review is turning into a LotR novel of its own. Art style was a miss for me overall. The game looks okay-ish here and there, but in general just... bleh. Really starts to weigh on you by the last couple zones. A lot of lighting issues, textures just look off, feels like a game from the Xbox 360/PS3 era. I was running the game on a 4070 Super. 5. Combat: in comparison to other survival games, combat is pretty much on par. The spots where it stands out negatively are the lack of diversity and enemy AI. Long story short combat is basically bonk everything until it dies- there is very little variation needed in strategy. While there are different weapon types, they are all pretty much the same each tier. I played around with all the different types early on and found that it was best to just get whatever one you unlocked first in the next tier, put the extra orc damage rune on it, and move on. Once you get the crossbow it replaces the bow, end of story for ranged combat. Enemy AI is decent sometimes but also pretty janky. They just spawn out of thin air a lot- I don't mean when they come out of the ground or jump from the ceiling, I mean like straight up out of thin air in front of you. I cheesed every single warchief because their AI was so bad with pathing, I also found that you can easily cheese hordes. I know I chose to do that and exploit the weak AI, but I only did it because combat became such a slog towards the end of the game I wanted to avoid it as much as possible. If you made it this far, I hope my review was insightful in some way. Thanks for taking the time to read through it!