New Tolkien tale is a bit of a Celebrim-bore
The base game to Monolith’s Uruk-hunting extravaganza is a glorious thing to behold. A brutal open-world in which the opening hours force you to put it all on the line, punishing you every time you meet your maker.
By the roll of the credits you’re a Tolkien-branded superman, but it makes you feel like you’ve earned every last one of those empty, viscera-caked slots in the Nemesis System. It’s a shame then that its story sucked so hard.
The second, and final, big DLC drop aims to rectify this plot-shaped boo-boo by dropping personality vacuum Talion and pointing the spotlight firmly on Celebrimbor and his Second Age war with Sauron. It’s a great idea on paper, but in practice it ends up neutering the constant sense of threat that makes the main game so compelling.
Thankfully, Captains have been beefed up to make them more challenging, and the final showdown with Sauron is far more satisfying than the wet fart fight that concluded SOM’s story, but it does little save this well-intended bit of fan service from flinging itself into the fires of Mount Doom.
The base game to Monolith’s Uruk-hunting extravaganza is a glorious thing to behold. A brutal open-world in which the opening hours force you to put it all on the line, punishing you every time you meet your maker.
By the roll of the credits you’re a Tolkien-branded superman, but it makes you feel like you’ve earned every last one of those empty, viscera-caked slots in the Nemesis System. It’s a shame then that its story sucked so hard.
The second, and final, big DLC drop aims to rectify this plot-shaped boo-boo by dropping personality vacuum Talion and pointing the spotlight firmly on Celebrimbor and his Second Age war with Sauron. It’s a great idea on paper, but in practice it ends up neutering the constant sense of threat that makes the main game so compelling.
The final showdown with sauron is far more satisfying than the end of the main game’s story.With the invisibility of the One Ring replacing your wraith powers and the ability to dominate entire crowds in a single hit, TBL unceremoniously nerfs the moreish risk/reward of battling an ever-increasing army of cockney monsters.
Thankfully, Captains have been beefed up to make them more challenging, and the final showdown with Sauron is far more satisfying than the wet fart fight that concluded SOM’s story, but it does little save this well-intended bit of fan service from flinging itself into the fires of Mount Doom.