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Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor |OT| One Title to rule them all

I finally 100% completed the game last night. It took me around 33 hours to do every single thing (excl. some trophies) and I can honestly say it was my best experience on the PS4 thus far.

It kind of lost its honeymoon status after 25 hours but the Nemesis system is the one true savior of this game.

There is nothing quite like it on this market and I hope it will get implemented in future titles with some improvements here and there.

Ending was quite abysmal, though. That was anticlimactic as fuck.

I can honestly say that I am done with this title. I will not be coming back to it.

Do not get me wrong, it was an amazing ride but I absolutely seen everything that was possible and there is a certain range on what fun you can get out of the nemesis system.
 

RVinP

Unconfirmed Member
Does completing the Ithildin wall, put the game in perpetual moonlight weather?

Because its been in my game like that ever since I finished the wall.
(but I haven't progressed the story missions after completing the above)

Edit: Found out what the cause was, it was one of the dagger side quests which kept triggering it.
 
This is my new favourite game. So much fun and I've barely started it...
Finishing moves are brutal.

2014-10-2322_00_07fbk1o.gif
 
I have a captain who's a monster slayer, immune to all forms of ranged/combat damage. No fears to exploit.

And can only be wounded by explosions....how....how!!!!
 
I have a captain who's a monster slayer, immune to all forms of ranged/combat damage. No fears to exploit.

And can only be wounded by explosions....how....how!!!!

Immune to steath as well? If so, brand everyone around him (uruks ignore some of these immunities). The silver bullet with all these guys is using wraith stun/wraith flash but not completing the combo to the end - stun, slash, stun, slash, stun slash. Luring him to a ledge beforehand can also help because sometimes the shuffling in combat sometimes sends him to his death.
 
Immune to steath as well? If so, brand everyone around him (uruks ignore some of these immunities). The silver bullet with all these guys is using wraith stun/wraith flash but not completing the combo to the end - stun, slash, stun, slash, stun slash. Luring him to a ledge beforehand can also help because sometimes the shuffling in combat sometimes sends him to his death.

Immune to stealth
Wraith Sun and stopping combo halfway does nothing

Might go for the ledge...
Or a shed load of Uruks

As I just can't get a good supply of explosions
 
I don't believe it is a 1:1 correlation at this point (unlike what early comments by the developers suggested), but it is a significant increase in the likelihood of perma-death, yes.

Oh, that kinda sucks since decapitations are seemingly random.

I was wondering why some guys would come back after I killed them once already. Now it makes sense. thanks.
 

Skux

Member

sogood.gif

I love how you can end up quite attached to these ugly fuckers, watching them start out as captains, and raising them through all their trials into the baddest warchief in town... before slicing their head off when they've served their purpose.

I'll try this with one of the poet uruks... or maybe the creepy one who only makes slimy breathy sounds.
 

ubiblu

Member
I have to be in the minority here, but I'm just not enjoying this game. I rushed out to buy it and just can't bring myself to grind through the boring combat and empty open world beyond the first couple hours. Does it open up significantly more later on, or just more of the same? The whole thing just strikes me as a sub-par (yet beautiful) AC clone with less to do and see. The nemesis system seems really cool, but the execution of it seems boring when you can steamroll anything from the beginning.

Not trolling, just genuinely bummed I paid full retail price for this and just find it too repetitive / boring :(
 
Yo this game is my goddamn GOTY right now, and I don't think anything is topping it.

I put like 10 hours in with the first goddamn map. And then Branding happened.

It's no contest. The Nemesis System + this goddamn combat where you are an absolute wrecking ball destroys basically everything I've played so far. I thought I ran into a wall when I was running out of people to destroy in the first map. And then it's a new map, with all new people, all way more powerful than before. All new everything.

I had something happen now where I had my branded bodyguard betray his Warchief, so I fought the chief while the bodyguards fought...And then another chief rolled in. With HIS dudes. One of which kept kicking my ass with his damn crossbow.
 

alterno69

Banned
I'm so fucking confused everytime i play this game. I'm trying to get to my next mission but there's fights everywhere and i end up fighting hordes of bad dudes, getting killed and sent back to where i started. Don't get me wrong, it is a lot of fun but do the fights ever slow down? It's a bit overwhelming at times.
 

ukas

Member
I have to be in the minority here, but I'm just not enjoying this game. I rushed out to buy it and just can't bring myself to grind through the boring combat and empty open world beyond the first couple hours. Does it open up significantly more later on, or just more of the same? The whole thing just strikes me as a sub-par (yet beautiful) AC clone with less to do and see. The nemesis system seems really cool, but the execution of it seems boring when you can steamroll anything from the beginning.

Not trolling, just genuinely bummed I paid full retail price for this and just find it too repetitive / boring :(

On the other hand I finished the game about fifteen minutes ago with %100. Time clocked in right at thirty hours. Loved every minute of it.
 
I'm so fucking confused everytime i play this game. I'm trying to get to my next mission but there's fights everywhere and i end up fighting hordes of bad dudes, getting killed and sent back to where i started. Don't get me wrong, it is a lot of fun but do the fights ever slow down? It's a bit overwhelming at times.
Before you start a mission, scout out the area 1st in Wraith mode. Look for Captains and Warchiefs.
Although, was doing one of the free slave missions inside a fortress and I got hammered by 5 captains during my visit. Some will sneak up on you.
 
Talion mocking the head he just removed... :p

15610658981_d0a2ac7198_b.jpg


On another note, I was messing around, riding a Graug into some strongholds and was pretty impressed with the detail in what the chiefs said.

One said something like, 'Ranger what are you doing on a Graug? That's not fair!' and another 'A Graug? Are your legs tired? Let me cut them off for you' lol
 
I have to be in the minority here, but I'm just not enjoying this game. I rushed out to buy it and just can't bring myself to grind through the boring combat and empty open world beyond the first couple hours. Does it open up significantly more later on, or just more of the same? The whole thing just strikes me as a sub-par (yet beautiful) AC clone with less to do and see. The nemesis system seems really cool, but the execution of it seems boring when you can steamroll anything from the beginning.

Not trolling, just genuinely bummed I paid full retail price for this and just find it too repetitive / boring :(

It does open up, especially with the Nemesis System (too little, too late, in my opinion), but at the end of the day, yes, the combat is fundamentally quite shallow.

You'll unlock the full suite of ways to decapitate orcs and have fun with it for an hour, but once the boredom begins to set in and you realise that the mechanics are only 1 or 2 tiers above QTEs, you'll struggle to go back to it. It's just not that satisfying to play once you've sunk 20 hours in.

It's a good game, to be sure, but it's definitely a one-time-through affair.
 

Kuraudo

Banned
Finished last night (100%). Really great experience, but I think the difficulty needed some serious tweeking. I died a few times early on, but after the fifth or sixth hour I didn't die once, and I feel I missed out on the true value of the Nemesis system because of that. The main problem is that each upgrade makes you increasingly overpowered, while the uruks never really seem to get any tougher. It really needed level scaling, if not a harder difficulty level.

Overall, great game. It looks phenomenal, was constantly fun to play, and was reasonably lengthy without outstaying its welcome.
 

Camp Lo

Banned
I have to be in the minority here, but I'm just not enjoying this game. I rushed out to buy it and just can't bring myself to grind through the boring combat and empty open world beyond the first couple hours. Does it open up significantly more later on, or just more of the same? The whole thing just strikes me as a sub-par (yet beautiful) AC clone with less to do and see. The nemesis system seems really cool, but the execution of it seems boring when you can steamroll anything from the beginning.

Not trolling, just genuinely bummed I paid full retail price for this and just find it too repetitive / boring :(

I loved the shit out of this game... but my expectations were at an all time low.
 
I don't believe it is a 1:1 correlation at this point (unlike what early comments by the developers suggested), but it is a significant increase in the likelihood of perma-death, yes.

Killed Humgrat the Gutless several times now....

He just won't die!!!
 

nOoblet16

Member
I am about 12 hours in the game and I like it but I think it's way too hard for me to enjoy it a lot.

I can play hard games mind you but I do not like the fact that this game puts you amongst 20-30 enemies and gives you fuck all for crowd control outside of combo abilities, it takes way too many hits to kill someone even on the easiest difficulty. Atleast in Batman you had gadgets and bombs and stuff. You could be fighting two or more captains at once and have a warchief with them too. Plus there is always someone running to call the reinforcements.

All these coupled up with the fact that you have to do challenges such as killing 20 orcs in 2 minutes and do things that basically requires you to attract attention makes it hard. Also the low health and the scarcity of health herbs takes the challenge up a notch too. The strength and weakness is pretty redundant for example having weakness to ranged attacks just means the dude is not invulnerable to it and it takes a small chunk of his health. Having a weakness to stealth takedown just means you can knock some health off but doing the finisher but that's about it. In short the weakness isn't really a weakness but rather a lack of invulnerability.

Even with the fast execution ability, Talion takes way too long to execute which means it is easy for it to get interrupted. Same for interrogation, the wraith would take too long to start speaking his elven phrase to interrogate and even then there is no invulnerability frames to that, more often than not you would just want to weaken the captain quickly and interrogate him for intel so that the goons can leave you alone but if there are like 7-10 enemies on screen that you can be assured that it will never happen and you will need to adopt a strategy of run, hide and ambush. All my missions have been just this really and I've rarely ever finished an encounter by killing everyone like in Batman.

Also you can't just decide to kill everyone using stealth and ranged to clear out the stronghold and then approach your target as enemies seem to reappear. Overall I find that this would have been an amazing game if it didn't ask me to be repetitive because of the difficulty from the very start of the game.
 

Nabs

Member
If you're 12 hours into the game and think it's too hard, there's a good chance you've been spending to much time on side stuff.
 

Thrakier

Member
Finished the game. I guess I'm in the minority then I say I liked the ending, albeit the final fight was indeed unerwhelming. Story was ok, but, typical for open world games, has massive pacing issues. Obviously.

I couldn't be bothered to do all the challenges and stuff. Why? The rewards weren't too interesting and the gameplay, essentially, always the same. Just playing through the story made you doing the same three things over and over and over again. Why bother doing the same shit in very arbitrary challenges again? I guess I killed thousands of Orks...

Oh, I cut Kaka his fucking head off before finishing the game.
 

neorej

ERMYGERD!
It's so rewarding when you are strong enough to walk into a fortress by the front door and wreak havoc.

Hehehe, yeah, did that last night. Went back to the first area to collect the collectables, some were located in strongholds. Walked up to the first orc, beat his ass up, the second tried something funny, so I took him out as well, and the third was heading for the alarm. And I let him. Waves of Orc came at me and I was branding and executing all over the place. Killed the first wave by hitting the grog-barrels with an arrow, killed the remaining lot with fire-arrows.
While my mini-army was wreaking havoc, I noticed an archer, climbed up, branded him, crossed the gap towards another archer, branded him as well. While they were busy, I got out and grabbed the collectables.
 
My personal GOTY so far. Picked this game up since launch because I like Arkham free-flow mechanic and AC parkour mechanic, and IMO the game combine those 2 mechanics very well.

I don't care about the main story at all but the nemesis system kinda makes up for it. There was one time when I got killed by the same uruk 3 times and when I finally killed him, it was satisfying as hell.

Animation and sound design is fantastic as well. Killing uruks feels satisfying thanks to the awesome death animations and the sound design is so meaty and visceral.

30+ hours into the game and I'm going to play this game at least until DA:I coming out.
 
I was racing through the Endless Challenge (kill 5 warchiefs + 20 captains in 60 minutes) and kept running into Prâk the Humiliator. This guy was a spear thrower with immunities up the wazoo who kept nuking my health as I engaged his bodyguards. To make matters worse, he was one of those guys who never land a kill blow but just laugh in your face while you're on your knees.

I ended up branding his contingent of bodyguards so I could get to him. He looked positively surprised at the outcome.

1024x576.resizedimage


Afterwards, I popped the heads off his guards and completed the challenge with a few minutes to spare. Nice knowing you, Prâk.
 

Althane

Member
Finished the game last night. Pretty damn awesome, although the last fight I felt could have been done better.

Still, loved this game. Looking forward to coming back with more of the DLC released, and seeing how badly I can mess things up. Going from a fairly strong ranger to a pretty damn near invincible god of DEATH TO URUKS was fairly awesome.
 
Talion mocking the head he just removed... :p

15610658981_d0a2ac7198_b.jpg


On another note, I was messing around, riding a Graug into some strongholds and was pretty impressed with the detail in what the chiefs said.

One said something like, 'Ranger what are you doing on a Graug? That's not fair!' and another 'A Graug? Are your legs tired? Let me cut them off for you' lol

Talion needs to go see a dentist. Jesus.
 

Chris_C

Member
30 hours in and I'm quite close to 100% on this game. It's probably the first game I've completed 100% of in about 5 years. Feels good, I've only got hunting, survival, 3 story missions and brand 5 warchief bodyguards left. Already done the latter, just haven't activated them yet :)
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Just started playing and would appreciate a couple of pointers..

For getting Intel by interrogating enemies, is there any limit, or can you just do it to everyone you come across? Want to make sure I'm not too in the dark but also not 'doing it wrong'.

And when Intel is marked on the map, once it was something on a table, but often it is attached to enemies. But if I kill them it disappears. Am I supposed to do R1+X? And if so, what's the difference between that and interrogating normal enemies?
 
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