Unlike Eltariel and Talion, Baranor has no super-human abilities and death in-game resets the story progress. We follow the Gondorian Baranor, who is trying to cause havoc for the orcs. The same can also be said for the second DLC. It presents several new combat skills as Talion’s wraith abilities are replaced with Eltariel’s power of the light of Galadriel, which is a nice switch-up, but overall it does nothing to surpass or improve upon the base experience. The DLC has us encountering two ‘rogue’ Nazgûl who seek to dominate Middle Earth and new factions of Orcs that we must recruit in order to defend fortresses in the various regions. She is commanded by Galadriel to recover the ring that Celebrimbor and Talion made and to continue hunting the Nazgûl – the reason she was sent to Mordor to begin with.
The Blade of Galadriel follows Eltariel after the final battle in the base game. Both are relatively small with a few hours of new content. Shadow of War has two DLCs: The Blade of Galadriel and the Desolation of Mordor. The Blade of Galadriel DLC offers some interesting new characters and combat abilities but does not expand on its central character Talion’s growing mistrust is encouraged by the new character of Eltariel, but these moments are so few and far between that by the game’s closing hours it feels hard to care for anyone or anything. The game does have a few good story beats, with Talion’s emerging conflict with Celebrimbor being one of them. It feels more like the developers had a check-list of the most famous characters in Middle Earth and tried to shoe-horn them into the game no matter whether it made any sense to do so. We face off against all nine of the Nazgûl and a Balrog on multiple occasions in scenes which feel out of place and have little connective tissue with the main narrative. In attempts to provide bigger enemies to fight, the game over-indulges and accidently makes a mockery of these supposedly ‘tough’ enemies. Whilst this should be acknowledged, it does create new problems. It should be noted that the game draws heavily from Tolkien’s Legendarium but makes no attempt to portray itself as canonical. The game’s poor start only slightly improves afterwards as we leave the relative safety of Gondor’s walls and venture into the wilds of Mordor. The first does not set up a strong start, as Talion and Celebrimbor get caught up in the defence of a Gondorian city against raiding orcs and then caught in the web of the spider Shelob. Shadow of War’s story is the weakest component of this experience. This ending is key to understanding one of the DLCs and so does not feel like an option but rather a requirement.Ĭombat is weighty and rewards skillfull play but does devolve into chaos at certain moments (Image: Stefans02 via Flickr with license) What was initially a cool and novel feature becomes a chore as you need to continue raiding fortresses to unlock the game’s ‘true ending’. You may have to raid the same four fortresses more than five times each throughout your adventure and this becomes tedious very quickly. This was heavily featured in the game’s marketing but it’s doubtful that anyone truly expected how central a pillar this system would be to the core game. This is also true of the new mechanic of raiding fortresses. It is fun for the first half of the game, but it soon begins to wear off its welcome. However, in large scale battles (which often take place in the endgame) combat devolves into button smashing with too many enemies attacking you at once with you being left with few ways to defend yourselves.
The game’s combat is fast with a hack-and-slash feel, with various skills being unlocked through perks which add further ways to approach a target. It is incredibly rewarding to watch this system revolve around your decisions and creates some of the game’s best moments. Turn your back on your supposed ally and you might have a mutiny on your hands. Recruit all of a Warchief’s Captains, and suddenly you have the means to take that Warchief’s fort from under his very nose. Kill an Captain’s bodyguard and that orc’s blood-brother might ambush you in the wild.
The system creates an intricate web of orcs, each with their own strengths, weaknesses and relationships to each other and who will react to decisions you make. The game’s ‘Nemesis System’ remains its true highlight. They journey to different regions of Mordor to recruit Orcs with each region being distinctly different from each other. Shadow of War plays much like its predecessor: Talion, alongside Celebrimbor, fight their way through hordes of Orcs, Uruks, Olog-hai and drakes to build themselves an army to rival the Dark Lord’s. Much of what was loved before remains but its new systems are too few to demand such a high level of grind in later levels (Image: Stefans02 via Flickr with license)
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