Middle-Earth: Shadow of War is the long-awaited sequel to Shadow of Mordor, one of the first big releases of the current gen consoles back in the days. Monolith Productions is in charge of this sequel and wants to create the same kind of success as the first game. Meaning they’ll try to improve things as much as possible, without actually leaving the key elements of the original behind. During Gamescom, we could check out just how good this sequel is shaping up to be.
Our story continues
Shadow of War continues our story and is a direct sequel to Shadow of Mordor. If you haven’t played the original before, we recommend you doing so before the sequel release. Of course, you can still enjoy the sequel without having to know exactly what happened in Shadow of Mordor, but you’ll miss out on some of the lore. That being said, we still follow the adventures of Talion who is infused with the spirit of the elf lord Celebrimbor. Talion has forged a new ring of power which Celebrimbor believes holds to power to become a powerful king instead of a Dark Lord. Talion doesn’t really care but agrees to take his sword once more and fight the new troops of Sauron, who’s officially back in action.
Face the Balrog
The demo we were about to see promised a spectacular fight with a Balrog, one of the most powerful enemies in the Lord of the Rings universe. Before we could attack it, however, we had to defeat a couple of other enemies first. At the start of the demo, we came across with a giant enemy who wanted to attack us for something we did in the past. The infamous nemesis system returns in Shadow of War, meaning the enemies will remember who you are and what you’ve done to them. It’s never a good idea to insult the wrong monsters! We didn’t have time to fight the giant so we ran away to face the true challenge.
The world of Shadow of War is a huge open world filled with things to do. Of course, since this was just a presentation, we couldn’t explore the map but from what we’ve seen, it looks like it has tons of interesting places to offer. That being said, the main goal here was to defeat the troops of an evil commander. While fighting, you’ll switch between Talion’s powers and the more mythical powers of Celebrimbor to inflict more damage. To make things even better, you can also ‘recruit’ an enemy to fight for you, giving it commands to attack the enemies whenever you need it! After we defeated the enemies, it was already too late, the Balrog was summoned and we were in for a true fight!
Strange boss
Or, that’s what we hoped would happen. Instead, we were fighting some kind of boss we fought back in the early days of gaming. We just had to avoid its attacks at the right time and shoot an arrow at the clearly marked places on its body. It’s a shame the developers went for this approach since fighting the giant demon of smoke and fire looked more like a tutorial than a true test of skills.
Combat changed a lot when another giant mythical monster joins the battle. Apparently, this one is on your side so you quickly climb on top of it to control it. Fighting the Balrog now transformed into a Monster Brawler just like Godzilla. We were both throwing slow punches while Talion kept shooting arrows at the vulnerable back of the Balrog. This repeated itself a couple of times until the Balrog eventually ran away with the promise of the developer that it wouldn’t forget this encounter. Well, to be honest, it’s an encounter we would like to forget as soon as possible. It’s not the best way to showcase the game since there truly is a lot of potential here. I’m hoping for the best and I’m hoping the team will change this battle into something of epic proportions.
Early conclusion
The world of Shadow of War looked very impressive, especially on the Xbox One X console. There’s a lot to discover and epic fight to be fought. Too bad the Balrog was a little disappointing but I’m sure the team will find the right balance to fix this. This Middle-Earth Shadow of War is by far one of the bigger games that’s releasing later this year and I think it should be on the list of many gamers.
