The last few weeks, I've finally dived into Middle-Earth: Shadow of War. I was a huge fan of the first game, but I passed up Shadow of War when it initially released because at the time I was trying to avoid buying games at full price.
Patience pays though, and eventually, I managed to snag this through the PS4 Plus or whatever that is. I finally got to sit down and start playing it just after my daughter was born. Late nights holding a sleeping baby make for a great bit of time to do some casual gaming.
One of my favorite parts of the first game was dominating orcs and pitting them against each other, and this game certainly has kept that feature and expanded upon it nicely! I can't count the number of pit fights I've watched in the last 6 weeks!
A couple of good ones I used the PS4 to capture the last of are:
I'm pretty sure both these victorious orcs are long dead now, but that's the nature of orcs in Shadow of War. Life is cheap, and enslaving new orcs is stupid easy, so I chew through a lot of them.
Now, while pit fights are my very favorite feature of this game, there's a TON of features I really like in this sequel.
We have a total of I think 5 locations to conquer in SoW, and each has it's own unique style and dominant tribe of orcs. Each location is also really well designed and quite unique, so it's easy to not get bored too quickly. Boiling it down to the base, the game provides an Urban map, Jungle map, Ice map, Fire map, and a largely Cavernous map.
The story takes you through conquering each map before confronting the Witch King (I assume, I'm only at 65% completed right now), and provides plenty of fun quests to tackle while doing so. The Vendetta system has been significantly improved from the first game in my opinion, which also keeps things entertaining.
Edit: Because @pusen reminded me of this feature in his comment, I thought I'd update the post to also mention that you can take your dominated orcs and command them to infiltrate orc strongholds. They'll be assigned as bodyguards to warchiefs and commanders, or even become commanders themselves - so when you go to bring down a fortress they'll help you from the inside and it can make some battles MUCH easier.
Plus, infiltration forces a pit battle to prove their loyalty, which is another bonus!
In addition, there is now an improved online vendetta and conquest mode - which lets you enter other player's worlds and slay the orc captains that killed them for valuable loot... or to pit your army against theirs and try to take over their captured territory.
I personally like trying to dominate orcs from other player's worlds as it drops them into my garrison for deployment in any region I want, which can be super handy!
Overall, I'm loving this play-through. It's been a lot of fun collecting different types of orcs and conquering Mordor in a bloody swath of death and destruction.
If you haven't already played this, I definitely recommend it!
Great series. Though, I enjoyed Shadow of Mordor a lot more :)
I find that very interesting! What drew you to Shadow of Mordor more than Shadow of War? Is it just that SoM's story is written better and has a tighter narrative? Or was there mechanics that appealed to you more in SoM? I'd love to hear your reasoning as I also loved SoM!
It was definitely the story, which I felt is missing badly in shadow of war. Of course, the graphics has improved but not all the gamers are looking after nice looking games.
That definitely makes sense! This second one's story is definitely of lower quality. The storyline in the first one was so well thought out and everything drove you forward towards The Tower. This one is looser and relies on 'oh no, the poor Gondorians!' which isn't as compelling for sure. Thanks for the reply!
Have fun! I started the first game a long time ago but never finished. I somehow managed to get stuck on one of the officers from dying to much to him. I just gave it up eventually. I do remember the general gameplay being plenty of fun though. I've contemplated getting them on Steam during a couple of the sales that's come and gone but I've never pulled the trigger.
Have fun!
I had that issue too! I solved being stuck on the guy by taking 4 of my orcs and sending them to kill him for me. Having them gank him really helped. I think two of my orcs died in the battle but they weren't chosen to survive haha.
I also similarly got stuck on a particularly nasty Warlord, so what I ended up doing was getting 3 of my Epic orcs assigned to 'bodyguard' the warlord, by sending them to infiltrate on him... so when I got into the throne-room to fight him, my 3 dudes turned on him and helped me wreck his face!
Sometimes ya just have to change the conditions of the battle to be in your favor!
OH wow, I can't remember that being a thing. It's been a couple of years though. This made me want to go back and play it again. I might just have to pick them up the next time they're on sale.
It's WELL worth dropping some time into for a bit of fun casual gaming!
I played the original but felt it lacked progression. You would kill one Orc and another would take his place on that roster. Am I missing something?
That's still the basic idea. The roster generally remains full of either your orcs or enemy orcs. They are... fodder. A means to an end. It's not really about killing them so much as it is about using them to conquer the map you're in, or pitting them against other orcs.
I'm a big fan of dominating a captain and then at random picking some other captain and telling my orc to kill the other one, and then just seeing how it'll play out.
I guess for me the draw is probably similar to whatever drew the ancient Romans to gladiator battles. I love being able to just sit back and watch a contest to the death when I know there's nobody actually being hurt.
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