Middle-earth: Shadow of War - Pre-order Bonus (DLC)

I've put well over 60 hours into Talion's second outing, and the thing that keeps pulling me back has nothing to do with the main story. It's Krug the Humiliator. He killed me twice during a siege, got promoted to Warchief, and then showed up to taunt me with specific voice lines about both of those deaths. That's the loop Shadow of War sells, and it delivers on it more consistently than almost anything else in the genre. At its mechanical core, this is Monolith's Batman-style free-flow combat extended into a much bigger playground. Counter prompts, executions, a stealth layer, parkour across Orc-choked battlements, and beast-riding that lets you drop onto enemy formations from the back of a caragor or a drake. The six-track skill tree is genuinely dense and slightly overwhelming early on - there is, infamously, a perk you have to unlock just to auto-collect loot without pressing a button. The combat itself holds up past hour 40, though; Orc captains each carry specific weaknesses and immunities, so fights rarely feel like pure button-mashing, even when you're deep into NG territory. The Nemesis System is the reason this game still gets talked about. Every Orc captain has procedurally generated traits, fears, relationships, and a memory of past encounters. The hierarchy runs from captains up through veteran captains, Warchiefs, and the Overlord who physically reshapes the fortress he controls - a Terror Tribe Overlord fills the place with spikes and torture racks, a Marauder Overlord goes full gaudy-gold. Fortress Sieges build all of that into large-scale set pieces where you select up to six Assault Leaders from your dominated army, each heading their own unit type, and the composition genuinely matters - leave siege weapons behind and the walls won't crack, leave archers out and your troops get picked off from the battlements. The chaos on-screen can tip into muddy targeting, especially mid-siege when multiple captains with conflicting immunity types are clustering the same capture point. It's the game's most persistent mechanical complaint, and it's valid. On the story side: Talion and Celebrimbor are serviceable leads, but the writing's real personality lives in the Orcs. The volume of recorded dialogue is enormous, and the emergent moments - a betrayal right before you breach the inner sanctum, a blood-brother leaping in to defend the captain you're trying to dominate - land harder than any scripted cutscene. The Shelob-as-human-woman interpretation will stress out lore purists, and the game never fully earns its liberties with Tolkien canon. Treat it as well-funded fan fiction set in a Middle-earth you recognize and it mostly works. The final act, the Shadow Wars defense phase, was grindy at launch and tied to a since-removed marketplace; post-patch it reads as the proper climax it was always meant to be. If you skipped Shadow of Mordor, you can follow this one without much trouble - the story recaps itself aggressively. If you want a narrative RPG where your choices carve out a genuinely personal villain who remembers your failures and grows stronger because of them, Shadow of War does that better than anything else currently on Steam. Just budget for the fact that the skill menu will humble you before the Orcs get the chance.

Monika · Scout Team

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