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[Rakonas]

I actually believe it 100%. PC and his family are sacrificed in vague dark sorcery (definitely the way to go) to bind the wraith, an ancient elf involved in ringlore, to a hand of Sauron. Wraith is instead bound to the PC because fuck you sauron for making me like this. The whole motivation of the wraith and PC is really to die. Wraith wants to be released and get to Valinor obviously, PC hopes that when he dies he can see his family again (with the wraith even saying that nobody can see beyond the doom of men).

[Malus]

The difficulty is pretty intense early on, and that was also where I had most of my fun. Once you get a few of the health upgrades and the later skills, the combat stops being much of a challenge, but I guess that's the point of leveling up. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed the entire game, which is more than I can say for most AAA releases these days. I picked up the season pass too, because I definitely wouldn't mind playing some more when they release DLC. If there's a sequel in the pipeline I can't even imagine how much better it's going to be if they continue to expand on these mechanics and flesh them out even more.

The world's the perfect size -- I actually gathered every collectible, which is something I never, ever do in open-world games (who wants to nab 200 feathers?), but the relatively small size meant it wasn't particularly difficult to find them, and there weren't even that many. I have basically zero complaints; it's without a doubt the best AAA game I've played this year, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested in open-world action games.

Oh yeah, and the game ran flawlessly on my 780GTX at 2560x1440, all settings maxed (no ultra textures though, I only have 3GB of VRAM anyway). It's really good looking, and I didn't encounter any bugs or framerate issues, or other signs of a bad port.

Spoiler: Ending spoilers (click to show/hide)

When your "nemesis" shows up for a final showdown, it's awesome. Mine was a guy who'd killed me in the first zone about a dozen times before I'd mastered the combat, but I'd forgotten about him once I moved on to the next area. In the next area, I dominated almost every captain and warchief without much trouble, but seeing the face of the guy who'd terrorized me for my first 5 hours was surprisingly entertaining.

When you're fighting the Talons of the Hand, I'm not sure if everyone's experience is the same as mine, but my dominated warchiefs slaughtered them all without any real intervention on my part (I dominated a few of the arches around the outside). That, too, was quite rewarding -- I spent a fair while leveling them all up and making sure they were up to snuff.

[Neyvn]

you unlock some powers through main missions without any real explanation as to why you couldn't use them earlier, like you just instantly know that it's a power you have out of the blue.

Actually there is explination. Its the old "amneisa styled" trope though. The lore side is along the fact that the Wraith has been inactive and lost in the between untill he was summoned at the start of the game. I think the fact the main is attached was accident on bigbads part. As you do the treasure hunt missio s with "presious" you u lock the wraiths past which causes him to become more powerful I  the knowi g who you really are is power I  itself thi g. Rqnger moves are generally locked behind power exp...

[SharpKris]

Ok i've finished the game and i would admit that it's not a bad game but it's far from being a 9/10.
the combat becomes repetitive, mouseclick attack ftw, and though the nemesis systems seems fun it becomes an annoyance
when half the time you hit your own troops midcombat instead of the enemy units. 

[Parsely]

The difficulty is pretty intense early on, and that was also where I had most of my fun. Once you get a few of the health upgrades and the later skills, the combat stops being much of a challenge, but I guess that's the point of leveling up. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed the entire game, which is more than I can say for most AAA releases these days. I picked up the season pass too, because I definitely wouldn't mind playing some more when they release DLC. If there's a sequel in the pipeline I can't even imagine how much better it's going to be if they continue to expand on these mechanics and flesh them out even more.

This feels like just exactly the trend Monolith went through with Batman. I must say, it's impressive how well they immerse themselves in the lore of whatever thing they're jumping into. A lot of Batman fans were really pleased by the depiction of the villains in the games, I know I was. :3

[ThtblovesDF]

I finished it.

Really had good fun and will continue to play it for a good while, did not find it nearly as crazy challaning as people seem to say, especially the rock paper shotgun article on it is basically just the tester crying really hard. Most of the time i keept moving, even during fights, switching up archery (when the white bar is full) and swordplay, focusing on using runes that compilment my playstyle and having my controlled orcs do attacks on the biggest orcs around, until they where the biggest orcs around, doubling my rune farming.

[Rakonas]

I finished it today also. 19 hours of quite excellent gameplay, definitely my favorite AAA title of the year. The story was really good imo and the ending was very satisfying and fits well into the gap between the Hobbit and the trilogy. I'm skeptical of a sequel which was kind of hinted because it seemed like the story could be perfect just as a stand-alone and anything further might be eh, but they've done well with one game.

[dennislp3]

I finished it...the download that is...40 hours to download -_-

Time to play now

After putting in near 8 hours straight I have to say I am pretty happy with it. Died a few times which is pretty rare in games for me...though I like how death is handled

[SharpKris]

is it just me or chain casting shadow strike = wingame

[Malus]

is it just me or chain casting shadow strike = wingame

By the time you've unlocked it, you've pretty much beaten the game anyway. It is pretty ridiculous being able to chain kill 7 people, then flurry someone up to x5 combo, combat-brand two targets to regenerate your elf-shot, then shadow strike chain kill 7 more. At that point, though, regular orcs are literally zero threat to you. A lot of the stronger captains are immune to ranged, so shadow strike doesn't work on them (though it's useful for thinning the herd, I suppose, but you can do that more easily by unleashing a carrog or igniting a fire, or brutalizing someone once you have the epic rune) but again, once you've gotten the majority of the ability tree unlocked, all of the combat is pretty trivial, which is unfortunate. It makes me wish there was an even higher tier of enemy, even more difficult to defeat -- I still like the idea of having massively overpowered abilities (I mean, you get abilities that let you go invisible for 30 seconds and stealth kill whoever you want, or 30 seconds of unlimited combat brands/finishers) but there just doesn't seem to be a foe worth using them on.

[Spehss _]

Roommate got this game for the Xbone, he's been playing it for basically two days straight. Looks wicked sick.

[Rakonas]

is it just me or chain casting shadow strike = wingame

By the time you've unlocked it, you've pretty much beaten the game anyway. It is pretty ridiculous being able to chain kill 7 people, then flurry someone up to x5 combo, combat-brand two targets to regenerate your elf-shot, then shadow strike chain kill 7 more. At that point, though, regular orcs are literally zero threat to you. A lot of the stronger captains are immune to ranged, so shadow strike doesn't work on them (though it's useful for thinning the herd, I suppose, but you can do that more easily by unleashing a carrog or igniting a fire, or brutalizing someone once you have the epic rune) but again, once you've gotten the majority of the ability tree unlocked, all of the combat is pretty trivial, which is unfortunate. It makes me wish there was an even higher tier of enemy, even more difficult to defeat -- I still like the idea of having massively overpowered abilities (I mean, you get abilities that let you go invisible for 30 seconds and stealth kill whoever you want, or 30 seconds of unlimited combat brands/finishers) but there just doesn't seem to be a foe worth using them on.

Once you're good at using your powers you obviously have a great advantage. You can kill several orcs with headshots even faster than shadow strike once you've got that, you can kill a ton of orcs with the execution ability, the stealth ability, etc. It would be nice if there were some harder enemies somehow, but all I can think of doing that is making it frustrating, more luck based, or just more health.

[Neyvn]

Just got to the second half...

[Parsely]

is it just me or chain casting shadow strike = wingame

By the time you've unlocked it, you've pretty much beaten the game anyway. It is pretty ridiculous being able to chain kill 7 people, then flurry someone up to x5 combo, combat-brand two targets to regenerate your elf-shot, then shadow strike chain kill 7 more. At that point, though, regular orcs are literally zero threat to you. A lot of the stronger captains are immune to ranged, so shadow strike doesn't work on them (though it's useful for thinning the herd, I suppose, but you can do that more easily by unleashing a carrog or igniting a fire, or brutalizing someone once you have the epic rune) but again, once you've gotten the majority of the ability tree unlocked, all of the combat is pretty trivial, which is unfortunate. It makes me wish there was an even higher tier of enemy, even more difficult to defeat -- I still like the idea of having massively overpowered abilities (I mean, you get abilities that let you go invisible for 30 seconds and stealth kill whoever you want, or 30 seconds of unlimited combat brands/finishers) but there just doesn't seem to be a foe worth using them on.

Once you're good at using your powers you obviously have a great advantage. You can kill several orcs with headshots even faster than shadow strike once you've got that, you can kill a ton of orcs with the execution ability, the stealth ability, etc. It would be nice if there were some harder enemies somehow, but all I can think of doing that is making it frustrating, more luck based, or just more health.

To a certain extent, I like that optional tier of meta difficulty included in some games where the intention is for you to exploit the nature of the game super hard in order to win, like in EDF.

[ThtblovesDF]

I want a mod that allows a powerlevel max of 50, not just 20. It would be... fun.