Recent reviews by astro

The fact that such an experience was made by one person is crazy to me.

I won't say much about the game as a whole, i want to point out what makes this game so good and a unique experience.

works surprisingly great, it's the bread and butter of this game, from hearing your friend screaming for help over the walkie-talkie while a thumper is chasing him down, to hearing your friend's last words from across the room as a headworm jumps on his head and eats him. It feels real immersive, especially in wide areas of the maps, you can hear the voice of your crewmates reverbing? (idk if that's a word lol) or you can hear it echoing when inside the facility which brings me to my next point.

in this game are very well made and designed to keep you on edge, hearing a thumper or a spider while exploring the dark with no flashlight or shovel is terrifying, or having full heavy loot and trying to get back to the ship on Vow only to hear 2 giants' heavy steps or eyeless dogs growling from a distance. Another thing is how the sounds are used to enhance gameplay with the monsters, like the dogs being able to only hear, so now to the monsters.

in this game are terrifying, from the way they approach you, to the way they look, the ones that stand out to me are the bracken, the coilhead, and the jester. Starting out with the coilhead, interesting and creepy design, the way he tries to kill you sure is terrifying but it's 10x worse when you're getting chased by other monsters and he pulls up not allowing you to freely run and forces you to be on the look out. Jester, his open box design is whatever, what stands out to me is when he's charging up, you start panicking to find the exit, then you realise you are lost, the feeling of helplessness and dreadfulness is unlike anyother i experienced from other games, you hide in the corner, you hear the loud steps running towards your location, know there's nothing you can do. Bracken has a really cool design and the way he operates is just amazing, first time i played, my homie told me there's glowing eyes in the dark, told him he was tripping and that it's just random lights, it never occured to me that such a cool concept of NPC behavior would actually be introduced into a game. And his AI is very interesting as well, his moving patterns and the way he tries to sneak up behind you after the initial encounter is nothing but amazing AI design.

TLDR: Great game, great sounds, awesome monster design, makes you feel helpless unlike anyother game, lacks some content, after approximately 40hours it'll start getting repetetive, but 40hours of gameplay for 10€ is very much worth it, not to mention the game is freely moddable. 8.5/10

Picked up this game when it was on sale for 3.99€ after hearing good things about it and seeing some gameplay. It BLEW my expectations out of the water.

I want to clarify that i have yet to finish the game, i'd say i'm 30% into the story, i'll update the review if there's anything interesting worth pointing out down the line.

So now, let's start with the combat, fluid, fair, tough and challenging but not hard! what i liked about Assassin's Creed Unity's combat is how realistic and fair it is even though it felt VERY clunky at times. you're up against 2 enemmies? better be careful to not attack and leave your back open to an attack? you're against 3+ enemmies? you're probably going to get outnumbered and overwhelmed, so it's better to stealth your way to the target location, and either reduce the number of guards stealthly and fight them at smaller numbers, or assassinate your main target and leave.

It gave great importance to strategic approach so you can't just do whatever, you actually have to THINK before approaching a fight. Shadow of war adopts the same gameplay concept of AC: Unity and makes it better with the smooth gameplay, the fights against hordes of orcs while 3 captains are trying to mow you with their special moves is very challenging but not impossible! if you play well and utulise your abilities well you can win the fight, but most of the time it's too much with the Cougars (idk how it's spelled its the cat thing) and the orcs with the shields charging at you, the big guys trying to crush you and ESPECIALLY the archers.

So you either have the option of playing stealth, mix stealth with all out combat, OR just play all out combat which could be difficult but as you acquire skill points you can adapt your build to your playstyle, i'll talk about the Abilities tree later. As for the actual combat, it's fluid smooth, and very fun, attacking, then parrying an attack just to jump over a charging enemy and execute them or use an ability to blow the enemies in the area up is cinematic, absolutely beautiful combat, i can't stress this enough.

Only downside is the fact that the only weapon you can actually fight with hordes of ennemies, is your Sword (i don't consider the Glaive a weapon it's basically an ability, and the bow has limited shots so..), which is unfortunate, i would absolutely love to mow through ♥♥♥♥ ton of orcs with a mace or an axe, but the game makes up for it with other amazing features.

Shadow of War offers versitility in the way you play the game, you can put all your skill points into the combat category and be an absolute beast in combat, or you can invest in stealth abilities to sneak around orcs and stealthily take them out, i don't know if the "Necromancer" build is that viable, but sometimes you are forced to enter combat, so i'd say the best way to enjoy the game is to max out combat and stealth categories then branch out slowly to the other abilities in the subcategories and choose the ones that look fun to play with, don't force yourself into playing a specific build.

As for the gameplay, the abilities are so fun play with, from upgrading the elven smash the ground thing to produce fire on the explosion to the chain stealth kills, the abilities are so well made and there's always something new to play with so you don't get bored with the same attacks/abilities from the start of the game.

The might bar: is very interesting, rewarding, and at the same time punishing, if you get hit you lose the might bar and you'll have a hard time charging it up and winning the fight, but if you pull it off the abilities do alot, and it gives you alot of options, you can either use an execution on a captain to try and kill him quickly, or use the elven smash the ground thing to clear out orcs and 1v1 the captain, or drain an enemy, heal and have him fight with you, the options are many and it's so hard to get bored when there is so much versitility and actual strategic planning in fights.

As for Elven Rage there is not much to say, once you stack it, it's so satisfying and fun to use, makes you feels so powerful, without being TOO broken.

In Shadow of War, there are the normal orcs, orcs with a specific class (shield orc, archer exct), then there's Captain orcs, which are Orcs with a class on steroids with unique names, looks, abilites, and weaknesses.

Once an Enemy captain is broken, you can either Dominate him or kill him, if you kill him, he drops loot depending on his class, level, and nemesis points, if you dominate the captain, you can either Recruit him, or Shame him, shaming him will decrease his level which will allow you to recruit him in the future if he's too high level, it also makes him weaker.

Other orcs that are not that important are The treasure orcs, they drop the ingame currency to buy army and gear upgrades, then there are the Slave orcs, which from my experience they don't do anything except for pissing their pants and running away when they spot you.

There is also another type of Orcs, Worms which are Orcs with information on captains, once dominated, you can extract information on a certain captain to know his weaknesses and what his powers are, which makes them easier to fight as you know how to approach the fight.

What i find fascinating about captain orcs is how everyone of them is unique, be it their looks, voice, name, abilities, or personality, listening to the captains talk to you in a stand off when you engage them is always amusing cause everyone has something unique to say, and once recruited you can hear more voice lines from them.

And i haven't even TALKED about how an orc will remember you and make comments about it if they survive the fight with you or if they kill you and you come back, there's also the fact that These captains can ambush you at random times, be it at the start of a fight, when you're sneaking around, or when fighting other captains! I'll talk more about the Captain Behaviors in the Nemesis System section.

So much effort went into making the game not repetetive and making it feel like it's a dynamic non scripted experience which i greatly appreciate, not alot of games put so much emphasis on small details like this nowadays.

In this game, Orc captains in different regions have different rankings, i'll list them in order there's the Grunts, the generic orcs, Captains, which can be found in their camps or fortresses, Warchiefs, they have to be baited out by killing a captain that is associated with the warchief, then you unlock a quest which gives you an objective to do to bait out the warchief, these missions take place in the fortress of the region, then theres the Overlord's, the highest ranking Orc that rules the region, he can be fought once you attack and raid the fortress after building your army.

There's also the fact that Captain orcs will be fighting/raiding/ambushing/assassinating eachother as a background event, the cool thing is you can join the fight and ambush them yourself. You can also send one of YOUR Captain orcs to kill an enemy orc and you can assist them in their task.

This system is so fun and allows for a more engaging experience by making the story as you go, Middle-earth is known for executing this system better than anyone else

You have the main story which mainly revolves around saving Gondor, then there's the sidequests which include random sidequests, return to the past quests, collectables quests, and Orc Captain quests.

Most of the quests are interesting but frankly i enjoyed the Orc Captain quests the most, but the other sidequests are okay, as for the story i don't want to rush it so i can't say much about it, but for now i've been enjoying it.

Trakenzi with majitel max would recommend 10/10

adventures with pegi very chabr

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