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[ThtblovesDF]

Assaulting a castle without any assault leaders is not much harder then if you do it with a full team with all upgrades, which is extremly silly. I tried it for giggles and can only recommend it, if you are in a rush. You get all the captains you need for crewing the fort by attacking it anyway.

[Kagus]

Yep; while some classes and combos serve as soft counters to others, idiotic AI is the ultimate counter to anyone.  This is one reason berserkers are significantly better than the rest, the other reason is that they get lifesteal on their attacks (at least while enraged). Since the independent 'Lifesteal' trait has been removed and Regeneration was replaced by the tank's interruptible Determination ability, this means that berserkers are pretty much the only ones with real staying power thanks to their rapid attacks while enraged.

Olog berserkers are particularly effective, as their AI tends to be even derpier than others, along with having reasonably slow attacks that don't generally chain together. Having rage bonuses (plus lifesteal on their generally large HP pools) makes them exceptionally deadly to everything... until someone shows up with an elemental damage type they're not immune to, in which case they just fart and fall over dead.


And yes, that sounds like an incredibly shitty way to make sure there's room in the roster for enemy captains, especially if they don't tell you about it.  And ESPECIALLY if it comes right around a natural time when you'd want to shore up defenses and make sure you've got a good posse of uruks in waiting.


As for blood brother, there does indeed seem to be some major bugginess involved with that... Sometimes re-branding, even out of sight of the other brother, will classify as a kill. Other times, just poking them a little bit will count. And sometimes, uruks will respond to you killing someone else's blood brother, which can result in complete clusterfucks where you kill a random uruk, one of your guys goes nuts about you killing his brother, you put him down, and then his actual blood brother shows up and has a beef with you.

Which is a pretty bad situation for such a potentially damaging trait.  My recommendation is to try and get someone or something else to kill them and hope that they develop a burning rage towards that thing instead of you.


Are sappers actually a base class? I didn't think uruks could be sappers outside of just the few suicide bomber summons. And commanders can be a pretty beefy class at times too, as it's fairly common for them to earn the Devoted Commander trait, which makes them enrage whenever one of their mooks gets killed. Similarly, their gang can get Devoted Followers or whatever it's called, which makes them enrage when the head uruk gets punched.

There's also fun stuff like elite gangs led by someone with an elemental weapon, but that all falls under the elemental coin flip as to whether or not a particular matchup will be a standard test of skills or a completely one-sided flop before it even begins.

And yes, defenders can be absolutely crazy and just shrug off all manner of special attacks. And then they derp out and stand still with their back turned to the enemy, or spend the entire round taunting and getting hit for it. Or prolong the match unnecessarily by just constantly doing that flip-and-slam move with their spear, which does little to no damage but takes ages for the animation to play.


Speaking of roster weirdness, I've been poking around at the old Shadow of Mordor lately, and had a high-level uruk and warchief bodyguard get promoted to a higher tier of captain, then run to the front middle of the screen (where new uruks appear when they're going to get promoted to captain), where the message "promoted to warchief" displayed and he just ran offscreen. All of the warchief slots were filled, and according to the warchief he used to be guarding, he's no longer anywhere in the roster. I guess he finally bought that ticket to L.A. in search of his dreams... You do you, Pûg, you do you...

[nenjin]

Olog berserkers are particularly effective, as their AI tends to be even derpier than others, along with having reasonably slow attacks that don't generally chain together. Having rage bonuses (plus lifesteal on their generally large HP pools) makes them exceptionally deadly to everything... until someone shows up with an elemental damage type they're not immune to, in which case they just fart and fall over dead.

I've found Ologs to be true wild cards. Shitty no trait ologs can still win due to their AI chaining their attacks together, something I see them do often, perhaps against AI that is potating. The biggest advantage they have is that all their attacks stagger other enemies, so if they're timing is on and the AI is aggressive, they lock down their opponent and an olog that is 1/2 or less of their opponent's level can still chip their HP down to the point they can win, faster and safer than a regular uruk with equivalent AI. But yes, they do seem to burn/poison easier than others. And they're so fucking big that ranged captains with ranged gangs can zone them very easily if no one interferes with them.

Again it's just like Salty Bet, where you can arm chair it all day but it ultimately comes down to the AI and chance on who does what first. I've watched fighters use the same attack/counter/attack move 5 times in a row to win fights and there's just, like, nothing to be done about it. Shit, the SoW Fighting Pits would be perfect for the kind of thing Salty Bet does.

As for blood brother, there does indeed seem to be some major bugginess involved with that... Sometimes re-branding, even out of sight of the other brother, will classify as a kill. Other times, just poking them a little bit will count. And sometimes, uruks will respond to you killing someone else's blood brother, which can result in complete clusterfucks where you kill a random uruk, one of your guys goes nuts about you killing his brother, you put him down, and then his actual blood brother shows up and has a beef with you.

Yep. By now I've experienced each one of these scenarios. Funny and fun the first couple of times as you WTF IS GOING ON your way through the fight. But when you're actually building up your armies it's annoying as fuck. The Brightlord should have standing orders not to hang out and drink grog with Sauron's new arrivals to the region.

What gets me about Blood Brother is this: with so many orcs it feels less like a cool mechanic and more like an attention check. I'm to the point I don't honestly need to look at an Uruk's stats if they're level 30 or lower. I know how to handle enrages and most of the things they can do. Playing hours in the Fighting Pits or picking guys off tends to numb you to the details and Blood Brother penalizes you for that by, in some ways, wrecking your work. And that's annoying as hell. Blood Brothered. More like Blood Bothered.

Are sappers actually a base class? I didn't think uruks could be sappers outside of just the few suicide bomber summons.

I believe this for two reasons.
1. It'd fit the schema.
2. Sometimes I've been fighting regular Uruks and someone uses a vanilla bomb on me (looks like a flash bang, stuns you, does some damage.) There's no captain around but someone is flinging explosives. I think they're a lot rarer than other uruk classes but I think they're out there sometimes in the middle of packs, hard to identify because their kit doesn't make them stand out.

I think it's really the taunting that fucks up the AI in the Fighting Pits. That and the fact they're subject to openings in many attack animation frames for when they can attack where as the player is not. You can really tell it during synched up animations in combat, how all AI (except Caragors I feel like) won't do anything until that animation ends. But yeah, I love it when an uruk charges across the arena to then stand in front of his opponent, raise his arms up and shout in his face. I can't tell if he's posturing or begging the guy to stick a blade in his guts. Knowing uruks, it's both.

[scriver]

So a few days ago I wanted to shame a Gluttonous Ogre to bring him down to recruitable level, but he happened to become deranged instead. His dialogue became absolutely heart wrenching, I feel awful for what I did to him now. He even followed me across provinces to haunt me some more.

[Kagus]

Wait 'til you kill him, the "awaiting execution" speech is even worse.  A lot of seriously f'-ed up things in this game, honestly... Gotta give credit where it's due.

Not marketplace credit though. Fuck that.

[nenjin]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'll admit, broken Bruz gave me the feels. Didn't stop me from shaming him down to lvl 1 and leaving him there. But still, the feels.

[nenjin]

In an ironic twist to the above post, I've found Bruz dead (on the Army Screen) and I don't know what killed him. I certainly didn't. I didn't see a notification of his death while I was playing. Perhaps he was killed by some chaos left in the wake of my passing, or something, since he was level 1 and more or less completely crippled. I'm not ruling suicide out of the question either though.

[scriver]

Wait 'til you kill him, the "awaiting execution" speech is even worse.  A lot of seriously f'-ed up things in this game, honestly... Gotta give credit where it's due.

Not marketplace credit though. Fuck that.

I eventually did, and yeah, you're right. I still feel bad thinking about it. Most emotion evoking character of the year and it's a dumb fucking troll xD

[nenjin]

So I finished Act III.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

What a clusterfuck. I know the story isn't really the point of the game but still....the twists, oh the twists. I'll admit to some feels when Celebrimbro is like "you're just a vessel." "This is about more than your petty revenge or mine." It's like, really bro? After all we've been through? After all the "I THOUGHT YOU WANTED REVENGE." "Sauron can't be destroyed." Oh really? Is that why you spent the best part of two games acting like he could be? To be one upped by another token elven dual wielding badass? The sense of betrayal was fairly real.

Not that it made any sense. Nor what comes after. So Celebrimbro and Sauron are now Sourbrimbro, and he's abandoned you to die your actual death. But you use Isildur's Ring to become a Ring Wraith to keep fighting on so you can prevent him from taking over Mordor and ruling da vurld. Ostensibly Talion should be under Sauron's control, using his power.....but he's still himself, fighting off Sauron's influence while getting all the benefits of being a Ringwraith. I guess that tracks with actual canon since the Ringbearer of the One Ring, whoever that is, fought off Sauron's influence for decades and decades, and the Ring of the Nazgul aren't as powerful as it. But it still feels like the kind of thing that "technically" works while in practice is there simply to justify the plot/gameplay movements they want to hit. You knew Celebrimbro and Talion were eventually going to be at odds, and the whole narrative of SoW and the dialog between them has been building that up. But when it happened it happened abruptly in one cutscene. The whole game Eltariel or whatever her name is made it clear she didn't like Celebrimbro and didn't trust him and worried what he would do if he got what he wanted. And then promptly dismisses all her problems and concerns at the critical moment and willingly, almost enthusiastically becomes his puppet, while Talion, after ALL the shit he's done at Celebrimbro's prompting, defies him and that one moment instantly seals his fate as Celebrimbro is like "Well clearly you aren't capable of helping me best Sauron, goodbye." The writing up to this point implied there was friction but not this level of friction. Which is why the twist works, but only "technically." I did not forsee that dominating the Ring Wraiths would be Talion's line in the sand, because of all the other horrible shit he's done he didn't bat an eye at. They set up the pretext that Talion and Celebrimbro might part ways but they didn't really sell the climax that made it happen very well. Maybe if I'd played the whole story right through I'd have seen an escalation in their problems with each other and the climax would have seemed more natural. But at the pace I did play it, it all seemed very abrupt and arbitrary. I didn't think Celebrimbro constantly disagreeing with everything Talion says meant that the first time he did something Celebrimbro didn't agree with, he'd kick Talion to the curb and better deal him for New Elven Hotness. Can't WAIT for that DLC. 

All that said.....man am I so glad to be rid of Celebrimbro. The constant Candice Contrarian dialog between him and Talion, the endless denigration of anything that isn't or wasn't elven...if the writers goal was to make Celebrimbro unlikable in this game, they accomplished it in spades. I liked him at the end of SoM but he really revealed himself to be a total twat in SoW.

And I dig the wraith aesthetic of new Talion. Evil green is my color, baby, and you get to raise the dead. I'm now playing Talion as sort of what I always thought SoM was about before I looked in to it: an evil agent that may or may not serve Sauron. I do remember going "ok, how is any of this post game shit going to work if you're severed from the wraith?" and it was answered satisfactorily within the context of their own completely bonkers narrative. Lose Celebrimbro, become a Ring Wraith. I also like that, for once, Talion is his own man/wraith thing, making his own calls. The wraith image he projects is himself and that is kinda cool in a game series where the main protagonist has been a whiny, mopey character who has constantly let themselves be led around by the nose by other people, another character that completely overshadows them.

I can see why people are pissed about the Shadow War though, now. I imagine you'll face Level 45 to 60 orcs for the duration, and that entails a fairly significant grind on your part to raise your player level...so you can raise your orcs' levels. And the leveling is soooo slow even for someone that did a shit ton of unnecessary grinding before completing the story.

I mean, I'm not sure how hard the Shadow War will be, because I haven't started it. But if my goal was to just finish the game and damn my orc captains, I don't think it would be too hard to finish in a bloodyminded rampage.

Maybe leveling is quicker if you just blast out Vendettas and Online Conquests. (Although Conquests can end up costing you orcs which you'll want for the Shadow War....but ultimately the orcs don't really matter, you can get them whenever from whereever. It's your player level that really matters at the end of the day.)

If they weren't quite so stingy with the non-story/non-mission XP, I don't think there'd be much to complain about with the Shadow War. As it is, yeah, it's a long term project to get all the way through it if you want to stop and enjoy the roses orcses along the way.

All in all, SoW is a better game than SoM. If it has a couple major flaws, it's that there's too many damn orcs and not enough names or customization to go around so you can tell them apart. After you've seen 200+ captains come and go it's hard to remember or truly stick to one. There's so much turn over in orcs because there are 3x as many as in SoM, and so much activity in the Nemesis system sometimes (I've had 3 to 4 major "Betrayal Events" where at least 4 Captains betrayed me all at the same time, immediately followed by the Blood Brother Tantrum Spiral), and more ways for them to die or for you to get them killed, that it becomes hard to ultimately give a shit about most of them. It's not that SoM didn't have this problem on some level, it's just that the problem is even more pronounced in SoW. Requiring voice acting for all the orc names really hamstrung their ability to use more than the same list of about 30. You can only see so many "Pushkrimp the <noun>"s before it starts to spoil your immersion. I've been doing a Poison build character and it's to the point every region has at least 1 or 2 "the Venomous" "the Envenomed" "the Plauged" "Plaguebringer" orcs with same melted face and green gums. I'm sure anyone playing a Fire or Curse character experiences the same thing.

For myself, I've enjoyed my ~100 actual hours in game. It's fairly mindless but it's entertaining. The game ended up being slightly less overall than I thought it would be, and a lot of the new stuff ended up being sheer kruft. I've used the same couple pieces of gear the entire game and sharded everything else. I hold on to legendaries and some alternate build pieces but none of it is even remotely necessary. Find a build that suits your play style, find gear that supports that play style, only replace it when you find the same thing that is an upgrade over what you're using. Turn the rest in to Mirian. Gems are next to pointless after a few dozen hours. Sieges for all they were hyped represent a tiny fraction of the gameplay, and are only remotely as crazy as they were being shown as if you completely leave the fortress alone before assaulting it. Doing the actual prep work makes them too easy. If you want to experience real fort assaults, you have to play Online Conquest where you have to face a completely upgraded fortress and all its warchiefs and bodyguards. Then shit gets real.

So while several parts of the game, especially the ones they hyped super hard, fall kinda flat.....the combat is great, there's variety, plenty of the Nemesis system to enjoy and a big open world to stomp around in that, when you get bored of one area, you go to one that looks and feels quite different. I think some critics I've read have not really given the game its due because of how they feel about WB's meddling, but I guess that's a cautionary tale for publishers more than it's an injustice to the developers. Personally I don't think the actual implementation of the market and loot crates really impacted the game that much, but many are beyond even debating their merits at this point, they're all bad, end of story, and some of that negativity has come back at the game itself in their reactions to it. Without any of that junk going on, I think people would have still "meh"'d at some parts of the game while still saying it's a legitimately good game. What instead I'm seeing is "meh" to most of the game like it's a tired, unenthusiastic series installment. Which I disagree with. They went big, covered a lot of ground. Some of it's great, most of it is good, some of it is bland.

For anyone on the fence I'd say wait for a sale. SoW will eat up a lot of your time if you're in to it, but if you've been scared off by the loot crates and bad business decisions, and the overall mixed reaction to the game, I don't think it stands a good chance of dispelling your doubts. It is practically SoM with a way bigger world, gear and visual changes, a broader if not necessarily deeper Nemesis system and a lot of one-off new additions like flying on a drake, pit fights and sieges. (Those are all reasonably well done IMO even if sieges feel too easy if done "right" and Pit Fights are really inconsistent with the odds.) If you really liked SoM there is no reason in my mind you shouldn't like SoW more. But after all the hype, the drama and the backlash I can't really blame anyone for not adoring the game, because even if it's good your enjoyment of it is tainted with the knowledge of everything else that happened.

So rather than spending $60 and then having immediate buyer's remorse and seeing the game in a negative light because of it, I'd wait for a nice sale and allow yourself to be pleasantly surprised because, you know, it's actually a good game. You can pat yourself on the back that you sent your message to the publisher that their behavior isn't going to be rewarded with launch month record breaking sales, while also getting to enjoy what I think is, if we believe that SoM is a good game, a really good game in the exact same vein on the cheap. I wonder if people will still crow about how cool the Nemesis system is after all this, or if the negative press (and actual gameplay) have deflated the hype around it.

I'm actually kind of tempted to restart the game in Nemesis difficulty. I know I could just change my difficulty in my current game but I feel like it would generate way more interesting and fun moments if I played through the story again and worked my way up in Nemesis difficulty. I've died a total of 7 times now in 100 hours so I think I've kicked sufficient amounts of ass I can stomach getting killed by orcs just for the fun of it now.

[Xotes]

I'm actually kind of tempted to restart the game in Nemesis difficulty. I know I could just change my difficulty in my current game but I feel like it would generate way more interesting and fun moments if I played through the story again and worked my way up in Nemesis difficulty. I've died a total of 7 times now in 100 hours so I think I've kicked sufficient amounts of ass I can stomach getting killed by orcs just for the fun of it now.

It might well be different for you, since you've cleared the game by now and got good, but for me, a Shadow of Mordor vet who picked Nemesis from the get-go, I've... well, I've lost track of my deaths! Good lord. I wanted the full Nemesis system and, as a result, I'm still in Nurn, and I've managed to die at least two-dozen times now, at a guess, because the orcs do not mess around. Sometimes it's frustrating, like when I had a Drooler uruk repeatedly No Chance me on the tutorial fortress assault mission, but then managing to Shame him away on the fourth assault felt very, very nice indeed. So, yeah, I recommend giving Nemesis a fresh playthrough, because it's pretty hardcore.

[Kagus]

It's a significant jump in difficulty from normal, in many ways. One of the unfortunate effects is that uruks (even the nameless, swarming globs) get vastly improved HP, to the point where everyone turns into this massive pool of hitpoints where you need a bunch of filler orcs on the side not only to refill your health, but also to provide you a way of garnering enough wrath to do any amount of damage to the brick wall you're fighting.

Also, Nenjin, as far as act IV is concerned... Get ready for the grindiest, sloggiest slog-grind of the game! Whatever closeness you felt to the few uruks who stood out from the crowd, prepare to lose interest in them completely as you try and get all the positions filled as quickly as possible so you can start the damn siege and get it over with already. It's probably not going to be as bad on normal, where you won't suddenly get 1-shot by a No Chance hunter uruk outside your line of sight and immediately lose the entire siege, forcing you to launch your own assault to retake the fort (interestingly, it's an amazing source of XP to lose a fort and then retake it, as opposed to just defending it successfully) before continuing on with other things, but it's still going to be incredibly slow-going.

Once you're done with Shadow Wars, then the ending happens and everyone lives happily ever after. Except no, because this is a Shadow of X game, and the endings are 2 for 2 pretty horrible cherries on top of perfectly decent cakes.


Also,

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

While the master ring is certainly more *powerful* than the others, I made the argument that it's probably less likely to be an enslaving force due to how the nature of the enchantment upon it is likely different. The master ring was specifically designed to control the slave rings and their users, not to enthrall its own wearer. Sauron never intended to lose the ring in the first place, so he likely didn't want any kind of "turn into a mindless slave" dweomers on the bling he himself was going to be wearing, because that's just silly. The reason the One Ring has such a suggestive, corrupting inluence is because he put so much of himself into the ring in order to enchant it. It's not made to dominate the bearer, it's just Sauron's own will trying to piece itself back together again (Make us whole Isaac Frodo, make us whole).

I'm no Tolkien scholar though, so I don't know all the absurdly comprehensive details that he likely wrote down on this very subject.


As for Talion's repulsion at dominating the wraiths and Elf #2's willingness to accept the burden of the Other One Ring, there are some fan theories as to why they do the things they do without further ado.

Talion sees himself in the ringwraiths. After all, he too was denied death. He makes it clear in SoM that he wants nothing more than to complete his journey and reunite with his loved ones in the afterlife, and he recognizes that in the Nazgûl. The uruks he was able to dehumanize thanks to the trauma he suffered at their hands, and thanks to Celerybum's urging and suggestion that they're nothing more than mindless, violent beasts. But the ringwraiths? They were human once.
 He even got to see that up close during the fight with Hammerhand. He's not comfortable doing the very thing he holds such great resentment towards Canterbury for doing to him, namely enslaving them in a state of non-death in order to further his own will.

As for Elf-two-et-al, realize that she's been hired not as an elite assassin to purge evil at its roots. Rather, she's been hired as a wall.  She's not meant to defeat them, she's just meant to keep them somewhat contained for the rest of her immortal life. Even elves get bored by that kind of tedium and hopelessness,
 so she saw Cumberbatch's offer as a means to break the cycle at the root.


It's all fan theorizing though, and still doesn't excuse the game for the poor whack it does at storytelling.  I'd rant more, but I need to get to work pretty soson here, so I'll leave with this: Fuck them for thinking Kumail's uruk sounded fine without any kind of orc-y voice modification. Fuck them.

[nenjin]

Who IS Kamail's orc voice acting supposed to be, anyways? I kept listening for a orc that sounded like a goofy Indian dood and couldn't place it.

Also getting off screened by a No Chance Hunter Assassin puts me very strongly in mind of what began to annoy me with SoM.

[Kagus]

You'll know him if you see him. I believe the most common title is "The Agonizer", but I'm not sure if that's the only one or if there are other orcs with his voice.

[Dunamisdeos]

I read your spoilers, I am a knowledgeable Tolkien buff, and it's all batsh*t insanity but that's fine because that's what they set out to make. It's like how Saint's Row is effectively a parody of the GTA-esque style of games, but also SR is still super fun. This is Saint's Row for LOTR.

Long as I get to hunt orcs and make little bands of orc followers I'll be happy when I finally pick this up on steam sale for 10$ down the road.

[nenjin]

This is Saint's Row for LOTR.

Yeah. Really just missing the Legendary Dildo of the Bro's 'n Hoes tribe when you think about it.