In Shadows Of Mordor, you play as a Ranger called Talion. In the introduction, you see him and his family are killed in a ritual by “The Black Hand of Sauron”. However, Talion finds himself left in limbo and is guided by a Wraith spirit named Celebrimbor; the forger of the rings of power. Talion gains the Wraith's supernatural abilities and goes on a quest to avenge the death of his loved ones.
There's gonna be a lot of comparisons to Batman's Arkham series or Assassin's Creed since the game involves a lot of stealth and a lot of fighting. The fighting plays out the same as the Arkham games but the pace is slower/more realistic; sometimes Batman jerked about unrealistically, whereas in this game it is much smoother. Landing several hits without taking damage allows you to perform finishing moves. You have a punch move that stuns enemies, allowing you to quickly slash away at them to quickly increase your combo.
The Arkham series was like Assassin's Creed in some ways. So you have stealth with an Eagle Vision/Detective Mode vision that allows you to easily locate enemies and items, there's plenty of treasures on the map (Artefacts and healing plants), and climbing large towers unveils the map and objectives. You even get to take a unrealistic dive from them just like Assassin's Creed.
Talion is equipped with a sword, dagger and bow. You use your sword in combat, dagger for stealth kills, and bows for long range sniping. When he draws his bow, time slows down but drains your focus meter. This allows you pull off many head-shots in quick succession.
The “Nemesis” system is a much talked about feature of this game. There's a hierarchy of Uruk's which shows who is in control. You gain Power by defeating them which gives you access to new abilities. You can interrogate “Worms” just like the Riddler Informants in Batman Arkham City. This gives you info on the Uruks, stating their strengths and weaknesses, giving you hints in order to take them down. Some are immune/weak to long range, stealth or finisher attacks, whilst others are scared of the beast creatures or weak to explosive damage.
As you play the story missions, this Nemesis system is explained to you. At first, I was doing the side missions, so when I was killing these Uruks, they just seemed to respawn and I'd run into them again. You have 4 levels of Uruks, and the higher ranking Uruks can have body guards in the levels below. In order to take down the Chiefs, you need to learn who their body guards are, their weaknesses, and take them out. Later in the game, you have the ability to “Brand” them which means they fight for you. This gives you a much bigger advantage in taking down the Chiefs. When time passes, Uruks can be promoted, and new Uruks fill the space of the dead ones.
The Uruks (excluding Chiefs) can pop up unexpected. I was on a side mission where I just had to take out 10 archers with my bow, and 2 Uruks showed up. When fleeing, another joined in. This unpredictability creates some really intense scenarios but also some large difficulty spikes. You often need to take advantage of your surroundings, looking for opportunities to unleash caged beasts, cause explosions, or drop a Morgai fly (like bees) nest onto your enemies. This can damage them, or cause them to flee battle. You need to also consider when to flee too. Should you be defeated, the Uruk will get promoted and become stronger.
A tactic I liked doing is fleeing to higher ground. You have to be wary of archers or thrown axes, but once you reach higher ground, the Orcs lose sight of you very easy. This means you can rejoin the fight with a stealth kill (or more).
Initially, the game seemed easy as you can take down Orcs with ease. However, once you get other types such as Archers, Berserkers and Shielded Uruk-Hai, then the difficulty increases. It can start to get easier towards the end of the game when you unlock more finishing moves, as well as the Brand ability to gain a small following.
The game loves respawning Orcs. Even if you take 50 of them down, more will come flooding in. It's often a fight you can't really win. When completing missions, the game like to respawn them. I took down loads of Uruks in a mission, only to be surrounded again once the mission was completed, so had to partially fight my way back out. I understand there's loads of Orcs in Mordor, and they will call in reinforcements (a flame icon will be displayed over an Orc who runs towards the beacon). However, the level that it does it is just often unrealistic or unfair. This leads to frustration and also makes the the game feel repetitive.
Most of the game sees you navigate ruins, cliffs and ground. It's all brown and dull. I guess you are in Mordor. Later on you do see some colourful settings, but it is a similar aesthetic. There's only a small amount of supporting characters too, so you are often on your own. I liked the music in the game, and the chants that play when you meet an Uruk leader are really cool.
When you gain experience and level up, you get a skill point to unlock a new ability in the skill tree. The tree is split into two; Ranger and Wraith. Although it looks like you get to customise your character, each level of abilities is unlocked after you earn enough Power. You end up levelling at a pace where you end up unlocking most abilities on that tier before unlocking the next tier. This means that you don't get to customise your character as much as it appears.
When you defeat the Uruks, they drop a rune which can be assigned to your weapons which give you all kinds of perks like health recovery, focus recovery, defence or attack power. This gives you some extra customisation and some give scope for strategy.
Shadows Of Mordor has a few limitations, but it borrows elements from successful games and improves upon it (I prefer this over the average Assassin's Creed game). The combat is very satisfying, but there's a lot of it. The Nemesis system is a cool idea, but I think it would mean everyone's experience with the game is slightly different, and it is interesting how some people claim the game is too easy, while others found it very hard. I found it a mix of both, but I liked the unpredictability. The ending is really disappointing and doesn't involve much combat at all, when I expected a really epic battle.