I definitely thought it was. I died a few times early on when things got really out of hand and I hadn't unlocked many abilities, but I got into the rhythm of the combat pretty quickly and it kind of breaks the Nemesis system if you aren't dying/guys aren't getting away.

I have to disagree with you there completely. As I got farther into the game, a good percentage of the time when you go down against a more powerful captain, there is just a "NO CHANCE" message instead of the mini-game and you die no matter what. Also, the last chance system only allows you one shot at getting up, if you get downed again soon after that (which is likely in a difficult encounter with multiple captains) you're finished.

I think the difficulty is just right. It's hard enough where the game makes me think twice about just wading into a stronghold where there may be more than one captain hanging around, not to mention all of the standard uruks that can cause problems in groups.

@mb: See I haven't had it that way, I'm almost 100% on the game fighting P20 captains and I was downed 3 times in maybe 45 seconds , and on the 3rd down it was then that I didn't get the mini-game. I probably have only died maybe 6-7 times from Uruks twice from No Chance enemies one of which was a Warchief, I died way more to random Caragors than anything.

I guess I just had a far easier time with the game, once I was in the second area I was just knocking on the front door of every stronghold with little concern of death

Having beaten the game at this point I will say this. In the beginning (first few hours) it is cake unless you randomly get a REALLY nasty captain and they find you. It then starts to get harder and at about the halfway point of the game is at it's peak. When it is at it's worst dying is not all that uncommon, running into two or more captains at once is basically a run away or else scenario, and depending on a captains strengths and weaknesses they can be a serious threat to fight. Then you get into the later game... and suddenly you only need 5 hits for a special not 8, you stun guys by giving them a hard look, you get two moves per single combo streak, you unlock brand (brand is almost game breaking). Eventually you can even get skills that do things like giving you 30 seconds of infinite instant kill executions that will drop anything like a joke other than chiefs/captains with the combat master perk.

So it goes from easy, to just right, to maybe a little hard, to just right, to "if it isn't a caragor army or a graug I win".

The balance is pretty good I think.

Sometimes I easily get 50-80 hits in a row and on the flipside they can introduce enemy combinations that easily upset that flow. Some people are probably so good they almost never get hit but that's not me.

I beat the game today with 28 hours clocked, and died once or twice. I really feel like I missed out on a lot of what makes the nemesis system fantastic. I had no chance to make any nemeses, because I could kind of blast my way through all of the combat. I really think the better you are at the game, the less you will enjoy it, to an extent. From everything I heard about the game, I was looking forward to really coming to hate some of the Captains and Warchiefs, dying to them over and over and cursing their name in my sleep, but it never happened. I think a lot of it has to do with the way Wraith Flurry and critical strikes work. All you have to do is stun an Uruk, and you can go to town with wraith flurry criticals, resulting in x8 hit streak in a matter of 2 seconds. The dude that you have stunned will not die to your flurry unless you complete it, so you can keep doing this over and over, resulting in infinite combat executions, which you can pump into a Warchief til he dies. You can do this in the first 3 hours of the game, and it never stops working, unless you happen to get stuck with a warchief immune to combat executions, which I got once, in which case he was a one shot kill with stealth (a warchief should not be stealth killable, what the fuck?).

The rune system is sort of broken, as well. For example, I found a epic rune that restored 10 health after a successful combat drain; immediately afterwards, I found a normal rune that restored 20% of my health from a combat drain, what? You start at 100 health, which is upgradable to 200, so even at its lowest the normal rune restores double the health that the epic rune does. This is just one case, but there are multitudes of runes that trivialize the combat, thus making warchiefs a joke to kill. This is before you have access to the insane abilities you get later on, such as a combination of skills that allow you to instantly kill every non-captain or warchief in a 10 yard radius.

All of this would be fine, who doesn't love to be a war machine? The problem is that the nemesis system relies on you dying. Every time you die, captains get stronger, possibly being made warchiefs. Power struggles are resolved, with civil wars between Uruk resulting in them betraying each other, ranking up, and getting more powerful. Regular Uruks you meet could become captains after killing you, all sorts of fun nonsense. But none of this happens if you don't die, sure you could choose to advance time, but why? It works against you to let the captains and warchiefs become more powerful, and at that point you are arbitrarily hindering yourself just to see the systems unfold. You shouldn't have to do that, time should pass on its own, whether or not you are dying. This is something I would like to see in the inevitable sequel (cause god knows nobody produces a new IP for just one game nowadays), time passing while the game is running. If you are not constantly trying to hamper the Uruk hierarchy, the orcs get stronger, eventually becoming really powerful. This would create a sense of urgency for you, so that even if you aren't dying, things could get really bad for you in the future. Maybe have a difficulty setting, dictating how fast time passes? I dunno.

I really liked the game, I just wish it wasn't so reliant on personal skill and RNG for the nemesis system to really shine.

It was a bit easy early on which is why i didn't really add any of the upgrades/abilities to make it even easier. Once you get into the different enemy variations it'll get harder but the more you add upgrades/abilities the easier it'll get, and likely ruin the challenge, if you're looking for that kind of thing.

Not always. I had a captain who was immune to combat, stealth, ranged and beasts. Along with a host of other strengths. His only weakness was a fear of fire, and most of the half a dozen times I fought him there weren't any nearby fire sources (his ranged immunity meant fire arrows wouldn't work). I met him fairly early and he inevitably got promoted to Warchief and reached level 20. I felt I had to ignore him for a while, and eventually came back and formulated a plan to take him out.

I'd say the game sways in both directions in difficulty. I've had instances where I'd be killed in 1-2 hits, and not be given a last stand opportunity. It felt as though you'd be easily annihilating most of the enemies in the game, until you get a bit greedy, or overwhelmed and fall really quickly.

I've been giving the difficulty of Mordor some more thought. It occurred to me that the way this game balances difficulty is in the number of enemies it throws at you, and how those groups are comprised. For instance, one Captain, almost regardless of his strengths and weaknesses, is no problem for me. I can keep him stun locked or dodge his attacks with ease and whittle his health down without too much difficulty, normally not taking any damage. However, add in a few guards or a surprise roaming Captain and things can get dicey in a heartbeat. A similar dynamic is present when fighting groups of regular enemies; 5 or even 10 Uruks can typically be sliced up like a hot knife through butter, but increase that number to 20 or 25 and sprinkle in some archers and victory becomes a lot less certain.

I think that's part of what I really like about Shadow of Mordor. If I approach each encounter carefully and consider ahead of time what I need to do to win, things usually go much better than if I just run headfirst into the fray and hope for the best. Most of the time my deaths have been because I didn't notice that there was a third or fourth captain in the area and I got overwhelmed...if I had scoped out the area beforehand, I probably could have seen the additional captains and possibly reconsidered my strategy and come out on top.

It really does seem just right, at least to me.

Slightly off topic, but can anyone playing the console versions speak to how many enemies you've seen on screen at once? It's not something I have seen discussed in reviews when talking about the differences between the console & PC versions.

It was really hard for the first few hours, but after that, it just became easy. I could kill anything by the time I reached the second region, so the nemesis system really did nothing for me from then on. If by chance a captain would kill me, I would just go find them and kill them straight away to get revenge.

It's a shame, I was forced to finish the game because I had no reason to play around with the nemesis system. The upgrades I picked were apparently too powerful and the runes I got were also apparently too powerful? for instance, I got a rune early on that gave me health for killing an enemy.

I know people will say to not use that rune or don't unlock the double finisher skill, but that's a fault of the game if me playing the way I wanted to ruined any sense of the difficulty. At that point I'm deliberating handicapping myself and if I'm having to come up with ways to make the game interesting myself, then something has gone wrong there. I want to play the game again so that I can go back to before I upgraded myself but the tedious and terrible campaign missions (aka 19 tutorial missions and then the final boss mission) just remove any desire for me to play.

Well, I am getting a bit bored of it already to be honest. I managed to actually die once because I messed up. The guy was promoted and increased his level. I went back to him and killed him along with another Captain more easily than the first encounter.

Their Power level seems to not matter at all. I think the Nemesis system is a really cool idea, but so far it seems like it doesn't matter that it's in here. I bet the last gen titles are totally playable. They should give the same experience I'm having right now. I'm continuing the story now, but after that I guess I'm already done with it. There isn't a lot of interesting stuff in here besides that Nemesis system.

I'm actually really surprised at the 5 star review right now. Without that Nemesis system the game is not that great, and like I said: the Nemesis system being there in the first place doesn't do much.

I still have to get to the second area, but I think I'll fall on the side of people who say it will only get easier rather than harder.

It's way to easy to get overpowered. That infinite arrow power and a rune that makes it recharge super quick. Just spam fire arrows. One hit kill, no charge time. In that "Defeat your nemesis" thing near the end where you bring your branded captains no one even got near me because I could just one shot everyone with the bow. It just made the whole build up feel like a waste of time.

I think these kinds of games are generally too easy. Batman, Assassin's Creed etc. The combat system with a counter button gets pretty easy. It did make me feel like a bad ass for the first 5 hours or so I guess. You can pull off some nice combos and the finishers are well implemented.

The couple of times I died it was usually because a captain had 3 shots crossbow with extra damage. That seemed to just down me in one blast. And then I died to the Graugs a couple of times.

Generally too many of the skills make you too powerful. Like the lower combat finisher threshold combined with the faster combo charge.

The Nemesis system is a good idea, but it relies too much on you dying to the Captains. It bothers me that there are no difficulty options. It's the same with Assassin's Creed. Just make everyone hit harder, or give me less health.

Oh and the boss fights are a fucking joke.

The captains are relatively simple to kill pretty much through the entire game. I started to have more fun with it once I unlocked the that "death threat" ability and just went around making threats to all the captains so they level up and start rolling with an entourage.

Still once you get those high level abilities killing dudes is trivial unless you get ambushed by 2-3 captains (which is happening an awful lot now when I'm 20 hours into the game and finished with the main story).

I am finding it moderately difficult. It spikes every now and then. Quick question for those in the know: When trying to counter guys with shields (the button is space on PC) is it enough to hit the button or do you need to hit a direction aswell? I find the timing on that tough.

The game has pretty much a bell curve difficulty imo. It starts out quite easy, then when you start running into 30 man fights with more then one captain, archers, shield dudes, berzerkers and maybe a nasty captain combo or two, it can get going a bit rough for a bit. Then later on as you get your dude upgraded it becomes progressively easier, until your are powered up to such a degree that there are about half a dozen completely overpowered ways to do any fight slaughtering everyone while not being under any threat, you're kind of godlike eventually.

At that point the only thing that can throw a curve ball your way is a Vendetta captain (which limits your options) with full stealth/ranged/combat invulnerability, super ranged damage (3 shots you), no last chance and his only fear being ghouls and graugs, while he is standing in a cave that a graug can't get to (and you can't bring one anyway since you get out of mission area), during the day when ghouls don't spawn. Then your only hope is to try kite him out and try to get dominated orcs to kill him. Yeah that happened.

Flipping over them is definitely the best option. This becomes much more useful when you unlock Vault Stun. Between Vault Stun and the regular stun, you can keep almost any enemy in the game in a perma-stun state.

The other handy way to deal with defenders is the shoulder charge thing which will break their shields. I think that one was unlocked through a story mission, I don't remember now.

I really wish there was an upper tier of end game legendary captains or war chiefs that would really put all those over powered abilities to the test. Just give em almost all strengths in the game + a couple really broken abilities like constantly summons uruks, captains or caragors, enraged by the grave walker, etc. Put in only one weakness: can only be hurt by fellow uruks. Then you would have to set up a great squad of high level killer orcs and protect them while the fight the boss. All gameplay systems coming together in an end game challenge akin to the legendary ships in AC4 or those optional bosses in final fantasy games.

@lunnington: I couldn't disagree more, the game starts off easy and gets easier for every combo ability buff you pick up. As if that wasn't enough, dying is trivial as there are no penalties, which combined with the easy combat, dispells any feeling of tension.

Think what you want about Destiny, if you don't need to look at the screen in the middle of combat something isn't right.

@schnoo: I made that comment before beating the game. Unlocking domination pretty much guaranteed that I'll never lose a fight ever again.

That said, the middle of the game was still difficult. That amount of time when they were introducing new enemies and you didn't have everything unlocked yet.

I felt like it was but I've since chalked that up to one of my first captains. Probably about 2-3 hours into the game I kept coming across a captain that had

-Invulnerable to Stealth

-Invulnerable to Ranged

-Combat Master

-Monster Slayer

-Ambusher

-Deadly

Assuming that this was a run of the mill captain, I really disliked the game until I finally knocked him off and have thankfully never seen him since. But because of all those encounters, everything else has seemed relatively trivial. I think it's a good balance for a game that doesn't let you select a difficulty.

Heh, no wonder the game has been easy so far. I've been exploring the world and killing captains without doing much of the story missions. I guess the difficulty opens up as you progress through the main story?

How do you even deal with that? Was he afraid of something? Because unless you could get him in a terrified state I don't know how you even damage him aside from throwing other uruks at him.

Speaking as someone who has never played a second of the batman games (although that will change given the ps+ offerings this month), I found this game very difficult early on and I found myself constantly need if to run away to avoid dying and powering up the captains. Once I learned the controls and got some of the more advanced abilities (eg reduced hit streak threshold), things got a lot easier. I'm still only about 2/3 of the way through it though.

This video is basically how I feel, just less angry/satirical/trolly about it. I'm still having a bunch of fun with the game, but I'm about 6-7 hours in, and the only time I've died was to the first random caragor I fought in the first 30 minutes because the dodge window on their attack is much smaller than any of the other enemies, so it was just an unexpected death that I immediately learned from. The fact that you can counter in the middle of any animation (unlike Batman) and that you're invulnerable during executions (also unlike Batman, I think?) makes the combat a joke. I've killed probably at least 20 captains already and a few warchiefs, and at no point have I ever felt threatened, even when fighting a warchief plus bodyguards. I've also only run from a single fight, again within the first 30 minutes, because I found myself in a stronghold and I assumed I wasn't powerful enough yet to take on enemies there. Guess I was wrong.

The combat is still pretty fun and enjoyable, and it makes you feel powerful because you can mow through any group of orcs without issue, but it's not challenging nor rewarding to 'master,' and the nemesis system has done absolutely nothing for me because I haven't been dying. I was looking for a difficulty slider after the first couple hours, and was sad to find out that there wasn't one (turning off counter indicators isn't my idea of a 'fun' harder difficulty, which is why I really didn't enjoy Batman on hard, either). I'm thinking (once I can finally get my hands on a fucking GTX 980 since they keep being out of stock) that I'll play through it again and advance time every time I kill a captain or finish a mission; maybe that'll provide some level of interesting challenge.

short answer yes and no. yes because most uruks are easy to kill no because if they swarm you you either have to fight your way out or fight your way to survive. and some warchiefs have almost insta killed me and i got my health fully upgraded.

@pyrodactyl: I had to get him to throw a feast and poison him twice and believe it or not, the wraith stun does a *tiny* bit of damage if you stun him into a wall, so I stunned him into a wall over and over for about two minutes.

Yes, the game's way too easy. It was just right at the beginning, where dieing was an actual possibility, and you didn't have OP abilities to get ez combos (triple daggers). Plus, X5 special attacks, triple daggers, and 2 special attacks for the price of one should not exist as shit you can get simultaneously. This game would've benefitted WAY MORE from a "pick 1 talent from this tree". Seriously, even Orcs immune to ranged meant nothing because you can easily spam daggers at their minions (of which none are immune, yet another mistake) and then spam finishers on the Captain. Oh and even if the Captain's immune to daggers, they still interupt his attacks. If you want Mordor to stay SOMEWHAT challenging, don't spec daggers.

I guess if there was a Captain immune to stealth, ranged, regular melee attacks, all stuns, and finishers then he would have been harder in the endgame. But then again fire, caragors, or branded allies dispelled his immunities so it made the strengths all all pointless, as their were too few weaknesses. Even if you don't know their weaknesses, there's only 3 possibilities to scare them so....nemesis system was too simple.

I felt like I was playing Prototype at the end. With runes making daggers either proc knockdown or a massive shockwave of stuns (giving you tons of +hits), and branding being an ez 30% heal the branding subgame felt pointless as I could easily kill everything myself.

They really should've kept the difficulty similar to the early game. Or remove daggers. Or at least make them a limited resource. Everything else is, so daggers are just like turning nfinite ammo cheats on.

The daggers (with the rune) can even stun a monster you fight in a main quest, where you're supposed to make him charge at you to make him get stunned. Insane. I don't think that was intended :P

Lol at the Youtube video. Going in I thought the game would be harder then Assassin's Creed because Brad died a few times in the QL, but yeah, lol.

@mcfart: Yeah, the game did get too easy towards the end. Actually past the halfway point I'd say it was entirely too easy for me...and I never even used daggers a single time. Almost every captain could either be killed with a Shadow Strike, or I could cheese them with stuns and combat finishers until they went down. I only ran into one captain the entire game that was invulnerable to combat, but then I just used my bow power and cheesed him down with a bunch of flame arrows.

Haha, I didn't use Shadow Strike until near the end of the game when I had too many points and "mite as well see how useful lethal shadow strike is". It uses Arrows of which I never leveled so I avoided it (can only use it twice with 4 arrows). Whereas daggers are unlimited and lead to ez executes :)

One thing with that youtube video: there were no berserkers for some reason (that I saw) and whenever I go melee the shield or berserkers break my combo, so daggers are safer.

@mcfart: Shadow Strike is also very OP. I had everything leveled up, plus some good runes, so I could Shadow Strike my way all the way across the map into an area and chain kill 7 enemies in a row before any of them knew what hit them. And then the regular combat would start.

For anyone that doesn't have the upgraded Shadow Strike, you just hold in the direction of the next enemy you want to kill and tap X when you see the icon above his head, and you warp to that dude and insta-kill him, too. It's overpowered as all hell but quite satisfying, especially since you can warp up to higher levels and take out archers as well. One of the most fun things is Shadow Strike warping around and taking out every elevated archer in a stronghold, which you can do sometimes if they're positioned within sight of one another.

Yeah lol, altho I had nonlethal shadow strike, I usually crossbowed or actually climbed up to archers :P

In retrospect kinda sad lol, since 2 missions basically said "MOVE FAST WITH THIS!"

@mcfart: Was Shadow Mount part of the story mission skills you get, or did you miss that one too? Pretty fun to be able to mount any caragor or graug you see at any range and insta-dominate it.

The more I talk about this game the more I realize how broken it is. Still tons of fun, I just wish it was more difficult.

@mcfart: a lot of your problems with the difficulty seem to stem from your need to invest in the upgrade system. I've found, especially in RPGs, that it's better to horde your skill points and spend them when you need them, where you need them, so you're forced to at least attempt something tactically first and use upgrades/ skill points to counter your frustrations as they come. I think what they have is a smart way to handle a dynamic difficulty system but i think they should better communicate that if you're spending heavily on the runes/upgrades you're building up to "easy mode" and if you want a challenge they should emphasize that NOT upgrading is also a viable option.

You're right about the nemesis system lacking the depth that it could have had, though. It would have benefited from making the weaknesses a chained condition, like you could only get a one shot ranged kill, or stealth kill, if you were first able to trigger their fear or have some captains invulnerable to all attacks until you met a certain condition. That lack of depth made the manipulation (branding) of the hierarchy, pretty irrelevant, which was unfortunate.

That said, i finished the game after avoiding using upgrades,abilities, and runes and still found the game to be somewhat easy, there were instances where captains could one-shot me, but for the most part if you played it smart enough, a repetitive hit and run strategy worked on most. I still had a lot of fun with the game i just hope the nemesis system is expanded on regardless of what developer expands on it.

Nope I still don't have ranged dominate, and I have to do a quicktime event to get Caragors.

And ya the nemises system is a good tech demo (like AC1 was) so I hope we get our "AC2" of the Nemisis system from a game (prob not Monolith as they JUST finished Mordor).

Yep, I completely agree with this. I'm over halfway now and I have died twice. Once because I intentionally committed suicide to see what happens to the Captains when I die and once because I messed up. I have to say this is the first review on GB that I heavily disagree with. If it was given four stars, I'd say: 'that seems a little high to me, but okay'. Five is just crazy. The entire point of the game is the Nemesis system and that system is build around you dying. The game is way too easy to support it. I can see how it would be theoretically awesome, but it just doesn't happen in practice in this game. I am curious to see another game use it properly though.

The only thing the Nemesis system does for me now, is actually make the game worse. I liked going after the Captains, but once you get close to killing all of them, the game just repopulates them, contrary to how they explained it would only repopulate after you die or time passes. I once killed only 4 Captains over the course of a couple of hours. They were still dead by the time I stopped playing. Another time I killed like 12 in 40 minutes. They repopulated half of them immediately.

This obviously makes sense because the game revolves around it. I understand that I shouldn't be able to kill everyone of them in an hour and be victorious, but the shitty thing is that it were the exact same Captains that I killed in the past 40 minutes, with the exact same weaknesses and strengths. The game was basically saying: 'Oh dude, you can't kill the Captains that fast. I'm just going to pretend you didn't actually do that and put the same ones back in action'.

Fuck that. I like the ideas of this game, but the execution is just downright bad.

I don't want to say I'm disappointed because I had no expectations of the game, but hearing the bombcrew react to it is disappointing to me. There is nothing in here that will actually result in something interesting because it's too easy to get to that point.

If you are smart about it and work your way up everytime it is easy, and once you get some of the later abilities it also gets a lot easier.
IT is only how hard as you want it.

Here's my Talons fight from almost 3am. As you can see I was really roped into the stun/flurry/execute cycle because it's just so effective. Once I triggered my sword ultimate, that was all she wrote.

So...pretty easy considering this was the first time I had ever tried this fight, and I was dead tired at 3am. Don't watch if you want to be surprised about bosses at the end of the game.

Once you're recruiting people it can get easy. But you cant play like an idiot, even mid-game I would occasionally get killed by level 1 soldiers just out of sheer numbers. I wouldn't say that makes it hard, it just makes it a game where you're rewarded for playing a little more intelligently. Its stealthy in the way that you can get overwhelmed by numbers, but similarly if you set a fight up right the same thing can happen to the enemy. But once you figure out the thing that works, which is basically get yourself a warchief then have him challenge other guys cus he'll bring his bodyguards and its basically 3 or 4 against 1, then jump in and bind him once he goes green. It gets super easy. I went back after binding the chiefs in the 2nd world and did it to the first, maybe took an hour to take the whole thing over. But a lot of the simple aspects in the AI can be excused by the fact that they're orcs (uruk whatever) so it would be pretty dissonant for really sophisticated espionage to be in here. Maybe if the sequel had you dispensing with Haradrim or something they could make the spy stuff more complex.

Many people complaining about the game being "too easy" do not understand the game, statements along the lines of "I killed 8 captains and haven't died!" make this very clear, because the game is not about "killing all the orcs without dying".

In all actuality you want to die to certain orc captains, so they level up and get the "revenge" trait, which boosts the level of the rune they drop by +1, same deal with the death threat that also boosts the orcs level and gives the rune he drops +1. The actual goal of the game being to get high level orcs, with the right kind of vulnerabilities because killing the orc with his vulnerability guarantees you a rune of certain type. You can even select which orc becomes a captain, just die to any "regular orc" and you get a new captain of his type.

It's kind of an mixture between a pet training game (the orcs being your pets) and a loot hoarder (training your pets so they drop better loot). In endless mode i try to die to every orc once, give him a death treat, get him to a high level and brand him, usually i end up with around 10+ orcs with guaranteed level 25/26 rune drops. Can't die/death threat them all, sometimes they die to each other, sometimes an unnamed orc from the fray will kill you and reshuffle your board:

I got all the epic runes by now, they are really fun because they are actually ability modifiers just like runes from Diablo 3! My throwing daggers for example, they have a chance for AoE explosions/stun/setting orcs on fire, really fun! The game is a complete power fantasy, killing orcs is supposed to be easy most of the time, you are supposed to be all powerful, what you do with that power, that's what matters. Because you can also use your power to grow your perfect nemesis, an orc captain which is really hard to kill. Like shield guys immune to vaulting, high damage/tracker crossbow guys and so on.

Next I'm gonna try to farm for high level bow runes, for that i need a ton of orcs with ranged vulnerability at level 20 with revenge/death threat.

No offense dude, but this is a really poor excuse.

The game is too easy. You are admitting it yourself; you say you should probably try to die to some Captains so they level up. Issue being that they cannot defeat you themselves and you actually have to commit suicide in a sense to get them to be able to defeat you. Once they level up, you can still defeat them easily.

Also, what is the point of dying on purpose to make the rune they drop stronger? The game is easy enough as it is. The runes make it even easier. It's a completely pointless strategy. The game is completely about killing Captains and Warchiefs. You need 0 runes to accomplish this task with one hand tied behind your back. Let alone the strength of them. The combat system is broken. There is no skill or timing involved. As a result, the Nemesis system is moot. It matters not. And as such, the most interesting aspect of the game is squandered.

@zevvion: You are not getting the point, if you think the game is only about "beating the story", then you are missing out on it's biggest addition to the gaming world: The nemesis system

Making sure your "favorite orcs" survive trough ambushes/duels/executions/recruitment missions or beast hunts (at higher levels these include packs of 6 caragors or horned graugs), without him dying, him noticing you or somebody stealing "the kill on you" from that orc, that's what actually matters. You also do not do this to merely "make it more challenging", but to get better loot. Fabricating the situation where orcs will level up, that's the real challenge because you can't just run in there and willy nilly execute every orc, because that's the easy approach which yields worse rewards.

The game gives you all the tools to make choices in regard "difficulty vs reward", it's not the games fault people ignore these tools and settle with worse rewards, other people take up the challenge as they are out for better rewards.

If you just finish the story missions, kill all the orcs without minding their levels/vulnerabilities, you might as well just have finished Diablo 2 at normal and declare "I finished Diablo 2!", when in all actuality you only scratched the surface of the game.

Stronger runes give you the ability to socket different types of them, without having to stack the ones of the similar types (as that cuts down on your total available rune slots), it's about customizing your abilities to your playstyle, they are the perks of Shadow of Mordor and it's great fun to min/max rune setups or play around with the different effects they give.


The game rewards careful plotting of which enemies you take down and which ones you nurture, what missions you beat, at what point you die to an orc. All of these are actual choices that matter as they influence what missions will pop up and how power shuffles trough the orc hierarchy, when you just run in there "to kill them all" then you are willingly ignoring large parts of the games systems and features.


In that regard SoM ends up being pretty much the perfect stealth game to date, with the right kind of planing you can clear a whole board of orcs without killing any of them yourself, just intrigue them into killing each other while you watch from the shadows.

@nethlem: We are in complete disagreement.

You argue that I should not kill those who the game wants me to kill. The objective: kill the Warchiefs. It's plain and simple. Yet, you say: 'you aren't getting the game if you think it is about that'. It is about that. And doing that is really easy. Again, what is the point of better runes that I do not need to complete the objective? You keep talking about 'worse' and 'better' rewards. Rewards should reward you. I do not need any of them. Why should I try to get them exactly? It doesn't make the game more fun, it makes it easier. Which is the opposite of what I want.

I'll say again I think you lay out an extremely poor excuse. That's an excuse that can always be made. To make the Nemesis system interesting is to role-play and act as if a certain Captain defeated you and then act as if it somehow becomes harder to kill him later (which is doesn't). It's like saying Destiny has a ton of content because it takes a long time to get to level 30. Destiny should have made the journey to 30 more enjoyable, just like Shadow of Mordor should have made the Nemesis system work without having the player to find a way to make it work.

If you play Shadow of Mordor as it is designed to be played, it is too easy and the Nemesis system will not see the light of day.

This game is definitely too easy. I'm in serious favour of some sort of hardcore difficulty system being implemented as part of DLC or something.

The best part of the game for me was definitely those first few hours where i had to fight hard to survive and play smart - sometimes that wasn't enough. After that it was dead orc captains everywhere, it felt like i leveled up waaay to fast, couple that with the fact there are very very few story missions in this game and I feel like the whole thing passed me by without ever getting quite as compelling as I expected. Maybe I picked a good upgrade path? Maybe I got lucky on runes? I dunno.

The unfortunate part of that is that it never gets any harder because all the new captains are generally weak as hell. After reading some other people experiences with the game I definitely feel like some people have had much more enjoyment with the nemesis system for the reasons of finding the game more challenging and dying more often, or feeling more accomplished when finally taking a high level guy down.

I feel like it took forever to get to the point where I could actually do anything interesting with the captains (as far as commanding them) and that never really ended up giving any sort of weight or strategic edge anyway when it finally came because I was ruining dudes on my own.

This would make sense if i'd like completed all the side mission first or something and power levelled, but ive only done 50 percent of them and I completed them less of them than the story missions, of which I only have one left. I was thinking about completing the rest of the side missions before finishing the story, but given how it's gone i'm worried if I do that the final boss will probably melt into a puddle when i look at him.

My enthusiasm is definitely a little curbed to finish this game in the face of this, I mean i had a blast, don't get me wrong this is a great game and i've had some fun times - but i think at this point i'm craving something from this game that it doesn't seemed to have delivered due to the fact it was too easy.

I'm psyched to see what they can do with a sequel in expanding this AI and character driven stuff, it would be great if you could command your own small groups across the map for example.

@nethlem

Sorry guy, but the idea that "feeding" yourself to the enemy is some sort of required gameplay element and that the actual point of the game is to collect all the runes or something isn't in my mind the point to this game. I mean more power to you if that's how you want to play it and your enjoying that, but i won't accept that i'm not playing the game correctly because it's not what i'm doing. I feel it was definitely put into the game as something interesting that is intended to be more incidental.

If they make a DLC taking the Orc level up to say 30 or 35 I think they need to make it so certain orcs are immune to certain persuasions based on their demeanor. Like some orcs have a loyalty trait and will never challenge their master, coward orcs would never challenge an orc with more power than them, brave orcs would never challenge an orc with less power than them, traditional orcs would never use subterfuge (ambush, etc.), caniving orcs would only use subterfuge (never duel), etc. etc. Similarly, certain traits would make the fail rate of certain tactics very high, like perceptive orcs would have a high probability of thwarting ambushes, poisoned rum, and might even notice if their bodyguard turned on them. What if you showed up for a riot and the war chief instead launched into a speech about subterfuge aimed at one of his bodyguards, and suddenly everyone turns on your secret ally. Stuff like that could really mix it up. As it is every trick works on every orc. And not all of these traits should be something you can get intel on, some can only be revealed through actually trying something to them that activates the trait.

My play style is actually very careful and early on I always went for the stealth option, so the way I do things is essentially incredibly very slow so if ever you do go for the stealth route it does seem a lot easier. Also I always go into "wraith-vision" when I notice there are big packs of enemies or if I'm in a stronghold to actively know where the captain's are. Due to that, I've never got into a situation again where a bunch of guys AND captain's all of a sudden ganged up on me. The other way I'd do it if its tough to stealth a bunch of guys in successions is to stealth kill as much as I can and at the very last guy that is about to go on alert, I brutalize him and make the other orcs flee.

That was how I played for most of the game...until I got the shadow strike chain, combat brand and the other last tier of ranger skills (e.g. extra special move, x3 critical hit) plus the epic rune that costs shadow strike kills only one arrow. I'm virtually unstoppable now in combat.

Even then, you'll get a skill that'll allow you to shadow mount caragors and graugs so you definitely CAN take on an army of caragors and graugs...BY MAKING THEM YOUR OWN (said in the Wraith voice).

@nethlem@zevvion I can see both of the points you guys make and actually both arguments you guys present are actually pretty valid in their own way. Like Zevvion said, playing in a certain play style can make the game easier but it doesn't make the game any worse, it just makes it easier. I'm at a point where I actually want to get epic runes by making death threats, commanding branded captains to murder other captains only to brand said captains or to make them betray warchiefs, etc. though in the grand scheme of things, my play style and all the skills I've already unlocked would have been more than enough to get the job done anyway and like Zevvion said, the runes does in a way make the game a bit easier though at the same time, getting an epic rune in itself is also a form of reward to certain players. However, there is no need to get your character killed just to make an orc/uruk stronger but at the same time if that is how you want to manipulate the system in order to get a better rune, etc. than so be it.

Despite the complaints that the game's difficulty curve does go down once you're in the late game with advanced skills unlocked, I'm still enjoying the heck out of it. I don't find it brainlessly easy, to me its just right and since I adapted to the games systems by taking advantage of the skills/tools available to me, I was able to make it easier to play and not die a lot. If people find it to be too easy, that's just fine. We all have different preferences, skill sets, etc. so its bound to happen. I wouldn't call the game, mediocre or bad though just because I found it to be easier than most people.

The balance is fucked. You're effectively invincible for the last ~ third of the game unless you're deliberately playing badly. This kinda works thematically as you're basically a superhero, but not so much from a gameplay perspective.

The only time it really got tricky was in the middle third if you went and picked a fight in a stronghold and refused to run away.