Middle-earth: Shadow of War

Middle-earth: Shadow of War arrived in 2017 as the sequel to one of that generation’s genuine surprises. Shadow of Mordor had introduced the Nemesis System, a mechanic that turned every orc encounter into a potentially memorable rivalry, and players loved it. The sequel promised more of everything: more orcs, more regions, more powers, a full army under your command, and massive fortress sieges. Monolith Productions delivered on that promise in the most literal sense. Whether all that additional scale actually improved the experience is where player opinion starts to fracture.

Community sentiment across Steam, forums, and discussion boards tells a consistent story. The Nemesis System remains the star, and its expansion into army management and fortress warfare adds a genuine strategic layer. The combat stays fast and satisfying. But Shadow of War’s reach exceeds its grasp in several areas, and the result is a game that players tend to describe as brilliant in pieces but exhausting as a whole. The loot box controversy at launch has been fully resolved since 2018, and the endgame has been reworked, making the current version a meaningfully different product from what shipped originally.

The Nemesis System Unleashed

The expanded Nemesis System is the reason Shadow of War exists, and it’s the reason most players stick with it. Monolith took the orc hierarchy from the first game and layered on tribes, advanced classes, and an enormous pool of personality traits, strengths, and weaknesses. The result is a system that generates distinct, memorable adversaries. One captain might be terrified of fire but immune to ranged attacks. Another might ambush you mid-fight with a rival captain, turning a manageable encounter into chaos. These moments feel organic rather than scripted, and players still point to them years later as the game’s defining strength.

Fortress sieges represent the biggest new addition, and they land hard. Assaulting an enemy stronghold with your personally recruited army of orc captains, each leading different unit types, creates battles that feel appropriately massive. You pick your assault leaders, choose upgrades for their forces, then fight through walls, courtyards, and throne rooms alongside hundreds of combatants. The tactical layer of matching your captains’ strengths against the fortress overlord’s defenses adds real decision-making to what could have been a simple hack-and-slash spectacle.

Combat builds on the already solid foundation from Shadow of Mordor. The skill tree is deeper, offering multiple paths for stealth, ranged, and melee playstyles, and the new elemental abilities open up creative approaches to fights. The sheer number of tools available to Talion means combat stays fresh longer than in most action games. Building up your hit streak to unleash executions and dominations on tougher enemies gives fights a satisfying rhythm, even dozens of hours in.

Where Shadow of War Wears You Down

Story is the game’s most consistent point of criticism. Shadow of War takes significant liberties with Tolkien’s established lore, and the results range from questionable to actively frustrating. The transformation of Shelob from a giant spider into a human woman drew particular ire from the fanbase, and the broader narrative suffers from what many players describe as “rings upon rings” of plot escalation that loses coherence as it goes. The dialogue often feels functional rather than inspired, and story missions struggle to match the energy of the emergent Nemesis encounters happening around them.

Repetition is the other major complaint, and it’s one that grows louder the longer you play. Shadow of War’s five regions offer a lot of content, but much of that content follows the same loop: find captains, exploit weaknesses, dominate or kill them, take the fortress, repeat. Early on, the variety of orc personalities and the novelty of sieges mask the repetitive structure. By the time you’re conquering your fourth fortress, the pattern is harder to ignore. Players who came for the Nemesis System’s emergent moments often find that the game buries them under busywork.

Act Four earned the harshest criticism at launch. Originally called Shadow Wars, it required players to defend their conquered fortresses through wave after wave of sieges. It was widely seen as padding designed to push players toward the now-removed microtransactions. Monolith overhauled this section into a shorter Epilogue with new narration, which improved things considerably. But even in its current form, the final stretch of the game asks for more time than most players feel the story has earned.

Mordor itself suffers from scale without enough variety. Five regions sounds impressive on paper, but they share similar visual palettes and activity types. The game gives you too much to do without enough distinction between those activities. Collectibles, side missions, and random encounters fill the map, but the quantity can feel more like noise than meaningful content. Players frequently recommend playing in shorter sessions rather than marathon runs, which is telling about the game’s pacing.

The Loot Box Shadow

Shadow of War’s launch was overshadowed by its microtransaction system. Loot boxes allowed players to purchase orc followers and gear with real money, and the original endgame’s grind seemed designed to incentivize those purchases. The backlash was severe and sustained. In July 2018, Monolith removed all microtransactions entirely and rebalanced the economy. The market, the premium currency, and the loot boxes are all gone from the current version. This matters because the game available today is fundamentally different from what launched in 2017. Drop rates, currency earnings, and the endgame structure were all reworked. Players who bounced off the original release may find the current Definitive Edition worth a second look, though the underlying repetition issues predate the loot boxes and remain.

Should You Play Middle-earth: Shadow of War?

If you loved Shadow of Mordor and want a bigger version of that experience, Shadow of War delivers. The Nemesis System’s expansion into army building and fortress warfare adds layers that the first game lacked, and the combat improvements make the moment-to-moment action more satisfying. Fans of open-world action games who enjoy creating their own stories through emergent gameplay will find dozens of hours of entertainment here. The game is also in a much better state now than at launch, with the microtransactions removed and the endgame streamlined.

Skip it if you’re primarily interested in a strong Tolkien narrative. The story takes enough liberties with the source material to alienate lore purists, and the writing doesn’t hold up on its own merits well enough to compensate. Also think twice if open-world fatigue is already something you deal with. Shadow of War doesn’t solve the genre’s repetition problems. It amplifies them.

The Verdict on Middle-earth: Shadow of War

Shadow of War is a game pulling in two directions at once. Its best feature, the Nemesis System, generates personal stories that no other action game can match, and the fortress sieges give those stories a satisfying payoff. But the bloated world, weak narrative, and repetitive structure work against the very system that makes the game special. Monolith built something truly innovative and then buried it under too much content and too little variety. The post-launch improvements helped, but they couldn’t fix the fundamental tension at the game’s core. What’s left is a flawed but frequently thrilling experience that’s easy to recommend in doses and hard to recommend as a marathon.