Take the orc army you have formed and go to the siege together!

Produced by Warner Bros., the Middle-earth series of games, the second film, Shadow of War, was adapted from Tolkien's well-known fantasy novel series, that is, the well-known "Lord of the Rings" fantasy world, the game created. The previous game, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, achieved good results, in addition to the excellent optimization and smooth combat system, its "orc cultivation" design is even more enjoyable, and it is also a fairly rare innovation in the market.

In view of the success of the orc system, this sequel is to strengthen this feature, the production team Monolith invested a lot of resources to create a further orc system, from the way of program generation, produce more kinds of orcs, personality, appearance, ability are very varied. The elaborate "nemesis system" has created a grudge between the orcs and the protagonist. This game can be said to be based on the previous game, strengthening the design of various aspects.

Recruit your orc army and repel the forces of Sauron's army

Inheriting the core design of the previous generation, the protagonist must reverse the overall situation with only one person's strength, so it is necessary to use the power of the Lord of the Rings Maker: Keller Brix, to transform orcs for his own use, and through the power of the new Supreme Ring, dominate the captain-level orcs, let it and his men serve you, and then expand the territory of power.

Players will fight against orc armies on five vast maps, in addition to various missions, the player's goal is to liberate the major areas, under the power of the orcs, infiltrate one captain-level orc after another, secretly support their own forces, wait for the time to ripen, gather deployed subordinates, and capture the fortresses in the area to liberate the area in one fell swoop.

Players can prepare for everything, erase the chiefs in the fortress one by one beforehand, and then arrange for their own strong orcs to infiltrate the chief's seat, or attack the fortress with personal courage and skill with only minimal preparation. After taking all the areas and building up your own army, you can fight Sauron's army to the death.

More powerful character performance, more challenging battles

Monolith draws on the strengths of the previous game to further enhance the game's gameplay system. In terms of combat, this game still follows the combat system of the previous game, which is very similar to the hand-to-hand design of "Batman" under warner, plus the element of stealth and stealth killing, providing players with a variety of means to deal with the enemy. Players can sneak down the orcs one by one, or directly rush into the enemy line to fight, or they can adopt a hybrid combat style and sneak a high profile.

Compared with the previous game, "Middle-earth: Shadow of War" has a more powerful combat ability, and as the level increases, more and more powerful skills can be unlocked, such as chain execution, chain domination, teleportation to kill enemies, teleportation domination, summoning mounts or subordinates, etc. Ordinary orcs are not opponents at all. Of course, don't think that this has become a matchless game, the focus of this game is on the orc captain, the captain's combat strength has also increased a lot in this game, often able to counter the protagonist's aura, and even take a group of creeps to engage in a siege, rush up and slash a pass, less than 10 seconds to the Western Sky, but if you can master the know-how, insight into the captain's weakness, you can play between the palms.

Take down the city and build your own orc army

In Shadow of War, the design of attack/defense battles has been added, making the action of recruiting orcs more meaningful for players. When a certain number of strong orcs are controlled in an area, they can launch siege warfare, take down the fortress in the area, gather the captain of the strong orc and his little brother, purchase siege weapons, and launch an attack. Each fortress is guarded by several chieftain-level orcs, and must occupy one by one when attacking the city, and each occupation point is guarded by a chief and his captain-level bodyguards, and after capturing all the points, you can challenge the king.

Players can choose a careful plan, first dominate the chief's bodyguard, and then assign a bodyguard to lure the chief to a sparsely populated place, surround the chief with the rebellious bodyguards, pull the chief down one by one, and then assign his men to infiltrate into the chief's position, and when all the chiefs have become your people, you can lie down and take down the city. Troublesome players can also enjoy the fierce battle of the siege without dealing with the chieftain beforehand.

Don't think it's all right after taking the fortress, Sauron's army is preparing to retake the city. Players can enrich their military appearance, dominate more strong orcs, assist their subordinates to solve the tasks of old enemies to upgrade them, screen strong orcs with good quality, eliminate too many weaknesses, send their hands to the arena to challenge high-level opponents, win can be greatly upgraded, and death can also subdue the winner.

Use training commands to enhance orcs, but don't invest too much, as orcs are not loyal creatures. Players can also purchase war chests directly in the mall with in-game currency to directly smoke orcs, eliminating the need for a bunch of kung fu to help orcs level up. Appoint strong orcs as chiefs, and as with sieges, they will guard the capture points. In addition to orc combat power, it is also important to spend money to upgrade the city, upgrading the iron gate to block the army, configuring the fire archer to support the battle inside the city, buying shields to upgrade the blocking attack, and finally, personally participating in the battle with the enemy captain to prevent them from occupying the point.

Bad ending design

The core design of Middle-earth: Shadow of War was so successful that most players could have fun early in the game, but when the game came to the last one, the production team decided to have an "epic defensive battle". There are 4 cities in the game, and players will defend each city 5 times in the final chapter, that is, a total of 20 defensive battles, Monolith probably believes that this design allows players to fully experience the essence of orc cultivation.

However, this arrangement suddenly transformed the originally good game experience into highly repetitive content, and what was worse, the city was knocked down and it took time to save his subordinates and re-attack the city. Defensive warfare itself does not take much time, and the most troublesome thing is to improve the combat effectiveness of the army. Attacking siege armies will be stronger and stronger each time, attacking chiefs will become more and more hierarchical, leading more captain bodyguards, and even using siege beasts, players must spend a lot of time to improve their own and orcs' levels, or find more powerful orcs to replace. The author used the fastest shortcut (directly to level 60 and then smoked the orcs), but it still took a lot of time to complete act 4.

The last chapter not only requires the player to level up the liver orcs, but also needs to delve into the adaptability of the entire defensive system and orc attributes, for example, it is important to configure the captain with the commander attribute at the gate occupation point, and the commander of the infinite summoning creep has a great advantage in attacking/defending the city, but it is easy to eat the soil by throwing all the troops into it and messing around.

However, many players can not eat this set, for these players, this is still an ARPG, do not want to spend a lot of time to cultivate, select orcs, or delve into the attack / defense configuration, the experience of the orc system only wants to point to the end, and the production team forces players to study in depth, otherwise they don't want to break the level. There is even a saying that the highly protracted content is designed to lure players to kryptonite orcs to save time, which makes the game suffer a lot of bad reviews.

summary

Overall, the core design of This "Middle-earth: Shadow of War" is very good, but the last chapter is a highly repetitive and time-consuming defensive battle, which has caused many players to be dissatisfied. In fact, there are many players who enjoy siege warfare and orc army cultivation, but not all players are so loving.

Another point is that unfortunately, this game is completely focused on the design of orcs. Tolkien's novel provides a rather large world view, originally has great potential to create a fantasy world that makes players fascinated, and when watching the Lord of the Rings movies, the beautiful elven village, the majestic and white city of Gondor, and the calm and leisurely Hobbit village are very impressive.

But in Middle-earth: Shadow of War, there are only orcs, orcs, and orcs, of course, this is just a difference in the focus of the game, but it is a pity that such a great theme.