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I thought Shadows of Mordor was more or less abandoned by the developer sometime last year, so I was pleased when I noticed that another, fairly sizable DLC pack, The Bright Lord, came out for earlier this year. Until I played it tonight, that is.
I don't understand what they were thinking. They took away a good many skills that made the game playable previously, notably the Focus/Elf Shot ability that slows time when using the bow, and the rapid slash combo that you could do after vaulting an enemy, as well as the stun that vaulting could inflict. Focus is almost a requirement for dealing with huge crowds of tanks, which you encounter as often as not, as are the vault bonuses. There are a couple classes of enemies, in addition to bosses with special abilities, that can't be properly attacked in melee from the front. The best way to deal with them is an arrow to the face, or a vault stun followed by normal attacks or the slash combo. Without Focus, you're lucky to hit one such enemy with an arrow before the crowd is on you, and without the stun, any enemy you vault is right back on you a second later.
The new main character starts with all his paltry skills unlocked, removing all possibility of development. The main "new" skill they hand you replicates an ability from the main game that allows continuous executions (finishing moves). The only new wrinkles are that it also slows time while in use, the duration is longer, and it negates bonuses possessed by enemy captains and warchiefs. It might be sufficient to make up for what's missing, even to the point of being a sort of disc-one nuke since you have it from the start of the DLC campaign. Unfortunately, they tied it to "Branding", which is a sort of mind control you can exercise over susceptible orcs and other enemies to turn them to your side. Refilling the new ability requires you to brand ten or twelve enemies. In the main game, the infinite executions skills were tied to kills of a certain sort or other activities. Branding isn't something I made much use of, but it was easy enough to pull off in the main campaign. In the DLC, it's just obnoxious for various reasons. First and foremost is that something like three-quarters of the enemies I find are automatically branded and don't count. Other than that, they wrecked it by wrecking the whole damn game.
A universal joke about modern games that aren't expressly cartoony is that their scenery is either brown or grey or otherwise dim and drab. It was taken to the extreme here. You're running around a wide-open space that's so dark you can't see beyond 30 feet or so. The sun was turned red by a mist of some sort that hangs over everything. Whatever isn't black is a rusty red color. None of the scenery looks good like that, but at least you can't see it most of the time. As a result of this perpetual, oppressive darkness, it's difficult to find enemies unless you stumble upon them. Wraith mode will let you see enemies out a little farther, but you can't see the blue arrow that means they're controlled already until you're right on top of them. Worse, wraith mode increases the information you have about living things while making it still harder to see your environment. In order to locate anything, you must either switch back and forth constantly, or run around hoping you don't stumble on anything too onerous.
When I'm running around in the dark, I usually stumble on a captain pretty quickly. Sadly, they've been configured for insane mode or something. For those unfamiliar with the game, captains and warchiefs will be of a class identical to one of the lesser enemy types, but they can get up to something like 8 special characteristics. Sometimes these are advantageous to you, and in the main game it was usually true that at least one characteristic would help. In the DLC, every third captain I find has Combat Master (immune to finishers) and the buffs that grant immunity to stealth, melee, and ranged. Which covers all damage bases except running around and letting your possessed orcs whittle him away. Great fun that. It's like Tower Defense, the action RPG. If I could find enough enemies to brand, I could use the skill to negate all the buffs, but hey, this chump and his cadre are the first things I've found that weren't already on my side. The token disadvantage given to him is a fear of Ghuls, which you can never find at an opportune moment. And he's surrounded by Berserkers and Defenders, the ones you can't hit from the front. In order to use Combat Brand to recharge the special move, or to use standing Executions, you need a combo of at least five. Alternately, at a cost of I think 4 of your 9 available bow shots, you can use a skill to brand two enemies. After which, recharging your shots will require you to...brand.
All I can think to do for a strategy is to climb the nearest wall or cliff, fire off five shots to build up a combo, use the last four on a teleport brand, and then hit everything else with Combat Brand or Flash Brand as quickly as I can. If I'm lucky, the special move will fully charge. If not, well, the Uruk might eventually kill the captain, or drive him off. I hope they don't hit me, because you don't start with any HP or Shot bonuses, and since all bonuses are granted from the start, you're stuck with about 3-4 boss hits worth of HP.
For a final great big, "fuck you", the first couple of captains I managed to kill dropped high level runes, which can be attached to your weapons to give additional buffs, but they all did things like restoring or improving Focus, which I don't even have. The runes don't transfer to the main game, so they're only useful to sell for cash, which I don't think I even need in the DLC. Unless I'm remembering wrong, the cash just paid for weapon upgrades, which are fully unlocked.
I loved Shadows of Mordor. I thought it was a little limited: Too little to see, and too few interesting diversions. However, that was partly because it was described as a sandbox in some reviews, and it clearly isn't much of one. It was still huge fun. I actually tried out the Batman Arkham games because I enjoyed the combat system. How do you go from that, to just an abject failure of a DLC? To come up with all these bad ideas, you almost need the team from Daikatana to consult. I don't even want to play it, and I'm doubtful about watching a story-only Youtube video because I'll probably still have to look at the gross color scheme.
I don't understand what they were thinking. They took away a good many skills that made the game playable previously, notably the Focus/Elf Shot ability that slows time when using the bow, and the rapid slash combo that you could do after vaulting an enemy, as well as the stun that vaulting could inflict. Focus is almost a requirement for dealing with huge crowds of tanks, which you encounter as often as not, as are the vault bonuses. There are a couple classes of enemies, in addition to bosses with special abilities, that can't be properly attacked in melee from the front. The best way to deal with them is an arrow to the face, or a vault stun followed by normal attacks or the slash combo. Without Focus, you're lucky to hit one such enemy with an arrow before the crowd is on you, and without the stun, any enemy you vault is right back on you a second later.
The new main character starts with all his paltry skills unlocked, removing all possibility of development. The main "new" skill they hand you replicates an ability from the main game that allows continuous executions (finishing moves). The only new wrinkles are that it also slows time while in use, the duration is longer, and it negates bonuses possessed by enemy captains and warchiefs. It might be sufficient to make up for what's missing, even to the point of being a sort of disc-one nuke since you have it from the start of the DLC campaign. Unfortunately, they tied it to "Branding", which is a sort of mind control you can exercise over susceptible orcs and other enemies to turn them to your side. Refilling the new ability requires you to brand ten or twelve enemies. In the main game, the infinite executions skills were tied to kills of a certain sort or other activities. Branding isn't something I made much use of, but it was easy enough to pull off in the main campaign. In the DLC, it's just obnoxious for various reasons. First and foremost is that something like three-quarters of the enemies I find are automatically branded and don't count. Other than that, they wrecked it by wrecking the whole damn game.
A universal joke about modern games that aren't expressly cartoony is that their scenery is either brown or grey or otherwise dim and drab. It was taken to the extreme here. You're running around a wide-open space that's so dark you can't see beyond 30 feet or so. The sun was turned red by a mist of some sort that hangs over everything. Whatever isn't black is a rusty red color. None of the scenery looks good like that, but at least you can't see it most of the time. As a result of this perpetual, oppressive darkness, it's difficult to find enemies unless you stumble upon them. Wraith mode will let you see enemies out a little farther, but you can't see the blue arrow that means they're controlled already until you're right on top of them. Worse, wraith mode increases the information you have about living things while making it still harder to see your environment. In order to locate anything, you must either switch back and forth constantly, or run around hoping you don't stumble on anything too onerous.
When I'm running around in the dark, I usually stumble on a captain pretty quickly. Sadly, they've been configured for insane mode or something. For those unfamiliar with the game, captains and warchiefs will be of a class identical to one of the lesser enemy types, but they can get up to something like 8 special characteristics. Sometimes these are advantageous to you, and in the main game it was usually true that at least one characteristic would help. In the DLC, every third captain I find has Combat Master (immune to finishers) and the buffs that grant immunity to stealth, melee, and ranged. Which covers all damage bases except running around and letting your possessed orcs whittle him away. Great fun that. It's like Tower Defense, the action RPG. If I could find enough enemies to brand, I could use the skill to negate all the buffs, but hey, this chump and his cadre are the first things I've found that weren't already on my side. The token disadvantage given to him is a fear of Ghuls, which you can never find at an opportune moment. And he's surrounded by Berserkers and Defenders, the ones you can't hit from the front. In order to use Combat Brand to recharge the special move, or to use standing Executions, you need a combo of at least five. Alternately, at a cost of I think 4 of your 9 available bow shots, you can use a skill to brand two enemies. After which, recharging your shots will require you to...brand.
All I can think to do for a strategy is to climb the nearest wall or cliff, fire off five shots to build up a combo, use the last four on a teleport brand, and then hit everything else with Combat Brand or Flash Brand as quickly as I can. If I'm lucky, the special move will fully charge. If not, well, the Uruk might eventually kill the captain, or drive him off. I hope they don't hit me, because you don't start with any HP or Shot bonuses, and since all bonuses are granted from the start, you're stuck with about 3-4 boss hits worth of HP.
For a final great big, "fuck you", the first couple of captains I managed to kill dropped high level runes, which can be attached to your weapons to give additional buffs, but they all did things like restoring or improving Focus, which I don't even have. The runes don't transfer to the main game, so they're only useful to sell for cash, which I don't think I even need in the DLC. Unless I'm remembering wrong, the cash just paid for weapon upgrades, which are fully unlocked.
I loved Shadows of Mordor. I thought it was a little limited: Too little to see, and too few interesting diversions. However, that was partly because it was described as a sandbox in some reviews, and it clearly isn't much of one. It was still huge fun. I actually tried out the Batman Arkham games because I enjoyed the combat system. How do you go from that, to just an abject failure of a DLC? To come up with all these bad ideas, you almost need the team from Daikatana to consult. I don't even want to play it, and I'm doubtful about watching a story-only Youtube video because I'll probably still have to look at the gross color scheme.