Skip to main content

How Good is Shadow of War?



  In this article, I'm going to give my opinion on the game Middle Earth - Shadow of War. In no way am I saying that this game is flat-out the greatest or the worst or just an average game. This is just my opinion. You all obviously have the right to agree or disagree with me. You don't have to hate or say that I don't know what I'm saying, because I know what I'm saying. I am just giving my perspective and why I like this game so much. Let's begin.

  Middle Earth - Shadow of War is a total action fighting game, and before I start talking of all the great things about it, let me just point out the few weaknesses. Shadow of War, in my opinion, would have been close to a perfect game if it wasn't for this game being super crazy long and having you to travel 1500 to 2500 feet for your next quest.

  Yes, Talion (the protagonist) can cover distance really fast when we hold down the left stick button and simultaneously hold A (X on PlayStation). Other ways to cover distance really fast are to dominate a caragor or the gigantic monster Graug. However, when you die in the game after you were close to beating the captain, war chief, or the overlord to complete the quest, you have to fight them again at their place. And when you go back to them for another fight after they had killed you the last time, they are stronger and more dangerous than the first time you fought them. Which is fine, but my thing is why do I have to cover 1500 to 2500 feet to get back to the mission point? Can we just wake back up from the death and be close to the mission area? I just wanna get back to the action and defeat the guy who killed me and forced me to repeat the quest.

  I don't mind covering that much distance on the ground every now and then. But I do mind covering all that distance right after I wake up from death (failing the last mission) or between the fights I have to do to beat and then recruit eight to ten captains and another two to four war chiefs to get my army ready to take over the fortress. I will be okay covering a decent amount of distance when I'm about to get into my first fight in a region or the last fight of a mission against an evil boss.

  Going back to the first weakness of the game. Lots of gamers including myself don't mind games that require lots of hours to complete the main story, especially when most of these games cost between $50 to $60. However, sometimes, there are too many awesome games to play. So you just wanna beat the story of the game and move onto the next game. To be honest, in Shadow of War, having lots of things to do to complete the story isn't that bad at all. I actually enjoyed this game a lot as I always looked forward to playing this game. So technically, it is not a weakness but still, I would say this game's main story is too long. It took me a total of 47 hours and 29 minutes to complete the game.


                                                     That's two full days with no breaks!

  A minor weakness that I think Shadow of War has is with its combat. Don't get me wrong, I think this game has one of the best combat-play ever. The only issue I have is when you have to fight an overlord with ten of his orcs by his side. Yes, you want to kill everybody, but the main task is to beat the overlord. At times when I want to apply some serious damage to the overlord with execution attack or with the stealth kill hit from the top of the roof, sometimes Talion just goes onto applying those hits on the overlord's orcs. Although I was aiming to hit the overlord by having my joystick focus in his direction, it still leads Tailon to attack someone else. I really hate it when my big hit goes to waste. Fighting ten or twenty people is never easy, but its fun when you get to kill all of them.

  Now all the good things from this game. Where to start? Graphics are pretty solid, not the best but solid for sure. There is so much to do. Conquer and defend fortresses. Build your army. Dominate bad guys and other sorts of creatures. Then get the bad guys and creatures to your side. Set traps, walk into traps and still act as you knew all along about the trap and you are all ready for a fight. As I said before, this game is action-packed.

  The main story of this game is to stop Sauron from taking over the Middle-Earth. Our job is to make sure Bright Lord and his army don't let Sauron, The Dark Lord, eliminate all the good and innocent people from the world.

  Talion goes on for a journey in this game with the spirit of an old man named Celebrimbor. The spirit helps Talion fight, and also guides him where to go and who to talk to as both Talion and Celebrimbor are focused on stopping Sauron. Along the way, they meet people like Shelob (the spider who can turn into a woman), Carnan, Baranor, Eltariel, Bruz, and more. My favorite character besides Tailon was Bruz. He's an orc who is super funny and it was him who guided Talion on what to do with all the recruited orcs to get them ready for Talion's fight against Sauron. Then later in the game, Bruz goes on to betray us after he somewhat helped us successfully defend the fortress against some of the Dark Lord's orcs. I said somewhat because it was Talion and other orcs who did most of the fighting. Not Bruz. Sorry for spoiling the game for those who haven't played it yet.

  Obviously, there is a lot this game offers. Of all the amazing features in this game, my top five are listed below.

  1) Having the power and choice of recruiting most of the captains, war chiefs, and overlords to our side. Well, they have to be on the same level or lower than Talion's level in order for us to recruit them. If you really want to recruit a captain or a war-chief that has a higher level than yours at the end of the fight, you will have to shame him, bring his level down, and then recruit the next time you fight him. One more thing, you don't get to recruit the captains or war-chiefs at the start of the game. You will have to complete act one first and then from act two before you get the ability to recruit them. Also remember, act one is really long. So don't get mad at me for mentioning this awesome feature that you won't have access to for a long time in the game.

  2) Conquering and defending all four fortresses' quests. We have been watching medieval wars in movies and shows for the longest time. We have even read about them in history books and fantasy-world stories. In Shadow of War, you get to play the role of the captain who leads the charge to conquer a fortress. Also as the captain, you go out there and put your body on the line to defend one of your fortresses against Sauron's army. To conquer a fortress, you have to capture at least three victory points before you go inside the overlord's palace to fight him. Once the overlord is defeated, the fortress is all yours.


  3) Mounting a Graug. Oh boy, this is the best thing that could happen to anyone playing Shadow of War. When a Graug is beaten up and it says 'broken' on top of his head, quickly dominate him and get him on your side. He will get you to your next quest area super fast and along the way, he will help you smash orcs, archers, and captains in a very painful way. When you get to smash all the orcs with Graug, it kinda feels like Hulk smashing the bad guys in a Marvel movie. It feels so powerful and just badass. You won't understand how good it feels to mount a Graug and direct him to fight for you until you get the opportunity in the game.

  4) Dialogue. The promises, the threats, the sarcasm, and all the conversations you get to have with the captains, the war chiefs, and the overlords in the game is just super awesome. Sometimes, it is really fun. The way the captains mock Talion and guarantee their victory over him makes you smirk and get you all excited for the fight. Yes, getting killed by a captain, war chief, and especially the overlord is never fun. However, when you get killed by a captain and he meets you again as you go back to him to avenge your defeat the last time around, he remembers that he had killed you before and mocks you for coming back to him to die again. After he tells you that he's going to kill you again when you are already upset about how you got killed by him in the last meeting and you have to fight the same character again, you really really wanna beat him down and destroy him to pieces.

  There is an orc in this game (I totally forgot his name) who just says three words no matter what. The words are 'I KNEW IT!' First, it would sound lame, but as you fight him or fight with him when he is on your side, you will smile and maybe laugh every time you hear him say I knew it. When he hits, he says I knew it. When you hit him, he says I knew it (in pain). You tell him to join the side of the bright lord, he will nod and say I knew it. When he is crying out for help and needs you to heal him, he will say I knew it. That orc is my favorite.

  5) The element of surprise. Most of the great games surprise you with the unexpected every now and then. Shadow of War gives you good, bad, and sometimes extremely necessary surprises that would just wow you. I have pretty much spoiled the game for all those who haven't played it yet, and I already mentioned about Bruz's betrayal in the game, I'm just not going to spoil all the other surprises from this game. You have to see and experience the unexpected for yourself.

  There you have it. My top five things from Shadow of War. The game is super fun, action-packed, and has a long journey that you would love to complete. Once you complete the main story of Middle-Earth - Shadow of War, you will be all exhausted. However, it would be like you just earned something truly special. If you love to fight and constantly keep your hands moving, Middle Earth - Shadow of War is your game. I really enjoyed playing this game on my Xbox One S and then on my Xbox One X. It is my top three game of all time!


Next up, God of War 2018. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Will Xbox Ever Beat PlayStation In Sales?

  We all have our favorites. Favorite food, favorite city, favorite movie, favorite band, favorite game, and favorite console (of course there is more stuff but I was just giving you some examples). I love video games. To be more specific, I love pure action adult games with excellent looking graphics. I apologize to all those who love indie games and or games that look cartoonish, but that's just not my thing. To be honest, I don't understand how so many of twenty-plus-year-old play games like Cuphead, Zelda, Mario games, Untitled Goose, and more. Not saying they are bad games and don't have challenging missions, but the graphics of those games and how the characters appear and behave makes them look very kiddish. I bought myself 'The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild' because I needed to know why this game is considered a masterpiece and one of the best games on Nintendo Switch. Not gonna lie, I was very excited as the game was loading and about to start. Th...

This Year's PlayStation Showcase Was Just Okay..

     Yesterday's show wasn't that bad. If you care about games in general and not just about exclusives, then yesterday's PlayStation Showcase was really good. However, it doesn't matter what we care about. The purpose of the showcase was for PlayStation to show off the games their first-party studios were working on. That's what we saw in their last showcase in 2021, which was excellent. Since last week, when it was announced that PlayStation would be doing a showcase this week, our excitement went through the roof and we all started making predictions. Before I talk about all the games we were expecting to see last night, let's touch on some of the games and some extra stuff that we all got to see.      One game that caught the attention of many gamers was Phantom Blade Zero. Those who know me would tell you that I like nothing more than a third-person action-adventure game with sword combat. I buy such games instantly. What I saw from the gameplay reveal...

Xbox Game Pass Can Be Very Controversial On Twitter.

     There are some things in this world that are hard to explain. These days people attempt to do weird and stupid things to catch attention. If you post something nice and educational on the internet, chances are you will get 10 to 40 likes if you have 1000 followers on Twitter or Instagram. If you post something controversial, you could get 10K likes and a whole lot of engagement in the comment section like no problem. In the gaming community, unless you are a popular streamer, when you post an excellent gameplay clip or anything positive related to gaming, you get a few cool gamers liking your post and maybe retweeting it. You might get a few bots on Twitter retweeting your post as well. If you post anything negative or anything to devalue one platform, your tweet will get retweeted by so many people with whom you never even interacted on the internet. Half of them will be applauding you and the other half will call you a clown. Either way, you get the attention. ...