So as you guys know by now I have been all over the Shadow of War bullshit for quite a while. From Lootboxes to the other drama which thankfully got resolved. And since I talked so much shit about the game without first hand knowledge, I feel like I would be hypocritical if I didn't give the game a fair shake. After all, I can't talk shit about a game I have never played and am only basically talking shit based on other people talking shit.
So now that I have put 12 hours into Shadow of War over this past weekend. Let's talk shit about Shadow of War.
First off let me get this out immediately. I have never ever liked the Lord of the Rings lore. The books were basically impossible for me to read through, the movies were long and incredibly boring, for whatever reason I can't get into LotR. So let that be a warning to you when I say that the story for Shadow of War is fucking bonkers bullshit. I guess at the end of the last game your character and his ghost buddy make a new 1 Ring, so there are two rings now. Except the very first thing that happens in Shadow of War is that Shelob steals the ring from you and gives you a vision of some town being fucked up by orcs. So you go off to fuck up some orcs. I think Shelob wants you to do this for her for some reason but I kinda zoned out so whatever, go fuck up orcs.
This is where the game begins and it becomes an orc murder party. I know people are tired of Arkham combat, which is the core of this game's combat system, but honestly it works really well here. Say what you want about it, but Arkham combat is just good. I mean sure it gets tired if every game you play has the same system but in a game here and there it is a fun system.
The first zone here basically sets up your core gameplay loop, and it is a bog standard open world. Every map has three or so towers that you capture to reveal secrets on the map. You gather the secrets and the collectibles (if you want), and then do story missions. Also on the map are a series of skulls which represent Orc Captains which are the fancy orcs you have to slay or capture (though you cannot capture any orcs in the first "act" of the game), and there are randomly generated raid missions which involve you clearing out a camp of orcs and their captain, or killing a captain before he kills another captain to rank himself up. These are cool little missions and I have to say that killing orcs is fucking fun.
What makes orc murder so fun is all the different captains. Each one has a theme and can have abilities that make you change up how you fight them. Some of them can't be stunned, others can't be executed, some you can't jump over, and so on. Even better is that these Captains can adapt on the fly. So if you jump over them too much in a fight, they will learn and block you every time you try to jump over them which makes you change up how you fight them while you fight them. It's really cool.
Each orc Captain you beat drops gear for Talion (your character), daggers, swords, bows or hammers, armor, and cloaks. The gear has mmo-like rarities, the higher rarity stuff dropping from higher rarity orcs. When you get into a fight with a captain their name will have a modifier next to it if they are a special orc (rare, epic, legendary), so that's how you'll know that you are fighting somebody cool. The equipment is a nice feature and the higher rarity items have little challenges on them that require you to do something special to unlock additional power on that gear piece. For example I got a dagger that required me to perform 3 stealth kills and once I did so it unlocked a bonus to stealth damage. Sine Captains usually can't be stealth killed outright, this provided a nice damage boost against them if you could hit them with a sneak attack first. So it's a decent loot system.
On the map, do not try and kill all the captains, or do all the little mini missions, trust me. Captains and missions are generated randomly and constantly so once you think you cleared the map, the icons will refill. I spent too long in the first area doing these things. So I was level 16 before I started doing the real story missions which made finishing Act 1 really really easy.
I continued to progress the story into act 2 so I could start dominating orcs to add to my army. Sadly I only got as far as the tutorial missions in Act 2 which teach you how to dominate orcs on the map which just make them fight in the area for you. Whatever this upcoming fortress mode thing is, I haven't unlocked it yet.
To sum up the gameplay, if you want to play a game with a fun combat system that you don't have to super pay attention too Shadow of War is actually pretty damn fun. Which makes the next part harder to have to say.
While playing Shadow of War, I couldn't help but feel like the game was holding back on me. I encountered my fair share of Rare, and even Epic orcs, but I only saw two Legendaries in conjunction with a couple of story missions. Maybe I was unlucky but that's what I encountered. Anytime you press start to access the menu, the game greets you with a highlighted marketplace and ads on weekly currency deals to buy. While it isn't as in your face as it could be, it's definitely there and obviously.
Shadow of war has two currencies. Silver which you earn in game from random drops on orcs, completing missions, and selling the worthless loot you find. And Gold which is the premium currency you must buy.
When you go into the marketplace, there are basically 9 total chests you can buy. Three of which can be bought from Silver. These silver chests can either have gear, orcs, or a mixture of both. However it should be noted that you CANNOT get Legendary orcs from the Silver chests. If you want more than whatever default Legendaries the game may or may not give you during normal gameplay, you will have to PAY for them. The same goes for legendary gear. While there are challenges in normal gameplay that will grant you legendary gear, extra legendary gear can only come from paid chests.
This made the game feel like it was holding out on me. I mean if you took the lootboxes and the storefront out completely, and the Legendary orcs and stuff were just rare and you only ever got a few items here and there, then it would be fine. But it's knowing that it is super rare in-game, but freely bought in the store just makes the game feel bad.
People will say that you can just ignore the store if you don't want to deal with it, but that just isn't true. The game EXPECTS you to buy chests. At least the Silver ones, because it showers you with silver. I had enough to buy 40 gear chests or 25ish orc chests by the end of the first act. The game expects you to go into that store, because buying the silver gear chests every so often is going to be the more reliable way of making sure you have decent gear for the higher and higher levels. It sucks, and you can try to ignore the store completely but eventually you will go there to get rid of your otherwise useless silver.
Lootboxes can eat dicks. At least it wouldn't be so bad if they gave you a Legendary chest every so often, or rare missions can earn you a little Gold every now and then. Maybe that comes later, but I've not seen that happening yet.
One small note about Sexy Shelob. She isn't sexy at all, and she is a only a character in the first act for the most part. You see her a grand total of like four times and then you move on from her storyline. Also you get to see her fight a bunch of ghost demons as a giant spider, so that was pretty fucking cool. Otherwise the sexy shelob thing was a non-issue, and people bitched for no reason because a character with ten minutes of screen time didn't stay a spider the whole time. Not to mention that she shows no cleavage, no skin really other that some shoulder, and a bit of leg. She isn't even sexy at all, she's just a lady. So that was a pointless argument imo.
So now that I have put 12 hours into Shadow of War over this past weekend. Let's talk shit about Shadow of War.
First off let me get this out immediately. I have never ever liked the Lord of the Rings lore. The books were basically impossible for me to read through, the movies were long and incredibly boring, for whatever reason I can't get into LotR. So let that be a warning to you when I say that the story for Shadow of War is fucking bonkers bullshit. I guess at the end of the last game your character and his ghost buddy make a new 1 Ring, so there are two rings now. Except the very first thing that happens in Shadow of War is that Shelob steals the ring from you and gives you a vision of some town being fucked up by orcs. So you go off to fuck up some orcs. I think Shelob wants you to do this for her for some reason but I kinda zoned out so whatever, go fuck up orcs.
This is where the game begins and it becomes an orc murder party. I know people are tired of Arkham combat, which is the core of this game's combat system, but honestly it works really well here. Say what you want about it, but Arkham combat is just good. I mean sure it gets tired if every game you play has the same system but in a game here and there it is a fun system.
The first zone here basically sets up your core gameplay loop, and it is a bog standard open world. Every map has three or so towers that you capture to reveal secrets on the map. You gather the secrets and the collectibles (if you want), and then do story missions. Also on the map are a series of skulls which represent Orc Captains which are the fancy orcs you have to slay or capture (though you cannot capture any orcs in the first "act" of the game), and there are randomly generated raid missions which involve you clearing out a camp of orcs and their captain, or killing a captain before he kills another captain to rank himself up. These are cool little missions and I have to say that killing orcs is fucking fun.
What makes orc murder so fun is all the different captains. Each one has a theme and can have abilities that make you change up how you fight them. Some of them can't be stunned, others can't be executed, some you can't jump over, and so on. Even better is that these Captains can adapt on the fly. So if you jump over them too much in a fight, they will learn and block you every time you try to jump over them which makes you change up how you fight them while you fight them. It's really cool.
Each orc Captain you beat drops gear for Talion (your character), daggers, swords, bows or hammers, armor, and cloaks. The gear has mmo-like rarities, the higher rarity stuff dropping from higher rarity orcs. When you get into a fight with a captain their name will have a modifier next to it if they are a special orc (rare, epic, legendary), so that's how you'll know that you are fighting somebody cool. The equipment is a nice feature and the higher rarity items have little challenges on them that require you to do something special to unlock additional power on that gear piece. For example I got a dagger that required me to perform 3 stealth kills and once I did so it unlocked a bonus to stealth damage. Sine Captains usually can't be stealth killed outright, this provided a nice damage boost against them if you could hit them with a sneak attack first. So it's a decent loot system.
On the map, do not try and kill all the captains, or do all the little mini missions, trust me. Captains and missions are generated randomly and constantly so once you think you cleared the map, the icons will refill. I spent too long in the first area doing these things. So I was level 16 before I started doing the real story missions which made finishing Act 1 really really easy.
I continued to progress the story into act 2 so I could start dominating orcs to add to my army. Sadly I only got as far as the tutorial missions in Act 2 which teach you how to dominate orcs on the map which just make them fight in the area for you. Whatever this upcoming fortress mode thing is, I haven't unlocked it yet.
To sum up the gameplay, if you want to play a game with a fun combat system that you don't have to super pay attention too Shadow of War is actually pretty damn fun. Which makes the next part harder to have to say.
While playing Shadow of War, I couldn't help but feel like the game was holding back on me. I encountered my fair share of Rare, and even Epic orcs, but I only saw two Legendaries in conjunction with a couple of story missions. Maybe I was unlucky but that's what I encountered. Anytime you press start to access the menu, the game greets you with a highlighted marketplace and ads on weekly currency deals to buy. While it isn't as in your face as it could be, it's definitely there and obviously.
Shadow of war has two currencies. Silver which you earn in game from random drops on orcs, completing missions, and selling the worthless loot you find. And Gold which is the premium currency you must buy.
When you go into the marketplace, there are basically 9 total chests you can buy. Three of which can be bought from Silver. These silver chests can either have gear, orcs, or a mixture of both. However it should be noted that you CANNOT get Legendary orcs from the Silver chests. If you want more than whatever default Legendaries the game may or may not give you during normal gameplay, you will have to PAY for them. The same goes for legendary gear. While there are challenges in normal gameplay that will grant you legendary gear, extra legendary gear can only come from paid chests.
This made the game feel like it was holding out on me. I mean if you took the lootboxes and the storefront out completely, and the Legendary orcs and stuff were just rare and you only ever got a few items here and there, then it would be fine. But it's knowing that it is super rare in-game, but freely bought in the store just makes the game feel bad.
People will say that you can just ignore the store if you don't want to deal with it, but that just isn't true. The game EXPECTS you to buy chests. At least the Silver ones, because it showers you with silver. I had enough to buy 40 gear chests or 25ish orc chests by the end of the first act. The game expects you to go into that store, because buying the silver gear chests every so often is going to be the more reliable way of making sure you have decent gear for the higher and higher levels. It sucks, and you can try to ignore the store completely but eventually you will go there to get rid of your otherwise useless silver.
Lootboxes can eat dicks. At least it wouldn't be so bad if they gave you a Legendary chest every so often, or rare missions can earn you a little Gold every now and then. Maybe that comes later, but I've not seen that happening yet.
One small note about Sexy Shelob. She isn't sexy at all, and she is a only a character in the first act for the most part. You see her a grand total of like four times and then you move on from her storyline. Also you get to see her fight a bunch of ghost demons as a giant spider, so that was pretty fucking cool. Otherwise the sexy shelob thing was a non-issue, and people bitched for no reason because a character with ten minutes of screen time didn't stay a spider the whole time. Not to mention that she shows no cleavage, no skin really other that some shoulder, and a bit of leg. She isn't even sexy at all, she's just a lady. So that was a pointless argument imo.
