People generally seem to consider Celebrimbor a good guy, but is he really? Let's see... He wants to use Sauron's own strength against him, like Boromir tried and Galadriel warned against and build an army of orcs, like Saruman. He calls himself the Silver hand, echoing the White Hand. Even the branding of the orcs with the hand print on the face like the film. He enslaves them with mind control, much like Sauron himself, and while that can be forgiven with the fact they used to be Sauron's servants, he is apathetic even towards the suffering of the outcasts elitists. Not only that, he lies to Talion about his true goals. While his amnesia is confirmed to be genuine, the Ithildin wall is Celebrimbor's declaration of himself as the Bright Lord of Mordor, one of the lines Celebrimbor says at the beginning of the game, meaning he actually does have some memories left. Makes you wonder about making that new magic ring. Celebrimbor keeps Talion away from others to the point Talion can't remember his family. By the end, Talion and Celibrimor have one goal. The most visual sign of Celibrimor's mind control is that eyes turn light blue. Bottom line? Celebrimbor is a Well-Intentioned Extremist at best and an outright Villain Protagonist at worst, and this game is Spec Ops: The Line in fantasy land. You think you're playing a hero....
The Bright Lord DLC shows Celebrimbor did start out with the good intention of redeeming himself by killing Sauron and saving his family with the Ring he stole... Except like the One Ring always does, he is steadily corrupted by it, believing that his family was dead rather than trying to save them and twisting his love for them into a desire for vengeance for what seemed to be their deaths. Even Sauron of all people states Celebrimbor has become the very thing he sought to destroy, that his flames feed nothing but evil. He even echoes Galadriel with "all shall fear me and rejoice".
Flashbacks in Shadow of War make it ambiguous as to whether Annatar tricked Celebrimbor or if Celebrimbor was a partner in taking over Middle-Earth and was betrayed by Annatar.
Talion doesn't actually seem to want revenge all that much compared to your typical angst driven hero. He finds the whole concept of murder disquieting and while he's disgusted by the orcs, doesn't take much pleasure in their deaths either. Is he trying to avenge his family or attempting to break the curse to be with them again? Both?
Gondor as a whole gets one of these as The Good Kingdom gets treated as The Empire. We find out the Gondorians treat their prisoners as nothing more than slave labor to maintain their defenses, they treat the descendants of said prisoners as vermin, and there's a lot of Fantastic Racism towards those not of Numenorean blood. Ironically, this is not that far off from Tolkien's notes but most fans wouldn't realize it.
Sauron gets one in-universe, with his Appendix entry. Unlike most of the entries (which are written from the point of view of Men), this one is much kinder to Sauron, painting him as a Well-Intentioned Extremist trying to avert the slow death of the world caused by the withdrawal of the Valar, who has been repeatedly betrayed by friends and allies such as Celibrimor. Thought it's suggested that this is less an alternate interpretation and more Sauron's personal alternate reality where he very much would describe himself this way. If only everyone would stop resisting, everything would be ordered and great!
Whether through the intervention of an outside force or simply from lacking the traits to make them That One Boss, some Uruks are significantly easier to defeat than others. Some can even be a One-Hit Kill or immediately grabbed for branding and other similar stunts.
The fights against The Hammer and Tower of Sauron are far more predictable and anticlimactic than the Warchiefs you have to kill/brand to get to them.
Sauron himself is taken out in only a few Quick Time Events. Though even at the height of his power, his body could still be sliced by a broken sword... However, The Bright Lord DLC has him return, and he's a fantastic final boss.
The Climax Boss battle against your nemesis can be this if you weeded out Sauron's forces enough, as you can end up fighting an Uruk you don't even know, who has barely leveled up. Not to mention that in that climax battle, you're faced with an army of Uruks, but you've only got five warchiefs to help you with no army of your own, and the same thing happens when you arrive at the Black Gate at the end of the game.
It's possible for a captain to be an absolute beast in forward combat, with traits that make them immune to ranged and beast attacks, strongly resistant against melee, a poisoned weapon, regeneration, and battle-hardened to the point that they keep coming back if you don't decapitate them, among other things. Thanks to the way the nemesis system works, this sort of captain can be one-hit killed by stealth finishers. If you run across them while free roaming, don't know who they are, and stealth-kill them, an epic duel to the death just got replaced with a quick, quiet shank.
Awesome Music: It's agreed that the music whenever you ride atop a Caragor is oddly pleasant on the ears. It's so awesome that it even comes back in the sequel.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Dynamic instances with some uruks can feel this way. For example, having an uruk captain react to a fear when you're just close enough have it register on camera, but far enough away that he promptly "escapes" from you and disappears.
Catharsis Factor: Killing any frustrating Nemesis can lead to this. Branding them, doubly so.
Complacent Gaming Syndrome: For Story mode, the advice for the first half is "Don't die to Uruks, while grinding towards defeating the Hammer." For the second half, the advice changes to "Brand as many Uruks as you can.", which also applies to the Bright Lord DLC.
Once the player gains access to Test of the Ring, high level rune hunting becomes much easier as in that Test, the maximum level of Captains and Warchiefs is 25 (compared to 20 for other Tests and Story Mode).
Complete Monster: Here and in the sequel, The Dark Lord Sauron leads campaigns of terror and brutality that kill countless innocent beings, beginning in the Second Age when he personally murdered Celebrimbor after murdering the Elf Lord's wife and daughter. Ingratiating himself to great Kings of Men, Sauron also presented them with Rings of Power that slowly corrupted and destroyed them, making them his undead slaves, the Nazgûl. In the present, Sauron, in the guise of the Black Hand, murders the ranger Talion and his family to enslave the soul of Celebrimbor, which backfires when the wraith fuses with Talion. Sauron sends his forces to slaughter the population of Gondor, conquering the city of Minas Ithil before intending to move on to all of Middle-earth until everything that lives is destroyed or kneels before him as his slave.
Caragors can be a serious pain to deal with until you unlock the late-game ability to instantly mount and brand them.
Berserkers can also be difficult to deal with. They hit hard, are immune to frontal attacks, and will respond to them with an unblockable counterattack, so the only way to deal with them is to stun them or vault over them and hit them from behind. In a pitched battle your attacks don't prioritize the target you vaulted over, so you're likely to hit a different enemy, and if there are multiple berserkers in the melee, you're likely to get counterattacked again, leading to a Cycle of Hurting where you can't raise your hit combo enough for a finisher.
In theory, almost any enemy can become this or Goddamned Bats. The Nemesis System means that an Uruk that kills you becomes stronger, and gains his own set of strengths and weaknesses. This means that you could try to get back at some random Mook for upsetting your mission, only to find he is now invulnerable to ranged attacks, stealth, combat takedowns, and is infuriated by just about anything else. Of course, he might also become the weakest Uruk around- but the game has a nasty habit of resurrecting some enemies just to have them hunt you down.
Disappointing Last Level: The finale of the game is seen as a letdown by some. The entire game is building up (post-branding) to creating an army to challenge Sauron out of Uruks that you've branded. When you go off to the final battles, you only have the five war chiefs you branded, a single caragor, and maybe a handful of other orcs.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Ratbag is beloved by many fans for his Butt-Monkey tendencies and being the source of most of the game's humor. His popularity is such that he returns in the sequel despite being smashed by the Hammer of Sauron. It's also possible a certain Nemesis can become this.
The Uruks in general are incredibly fun to watch and listen to, as Shadow of Mordor gives them distinct personalities aside from being just generic bad guys.
Evil Is Cool: Many fans appreciated the mixture of Tolkien's and Peter Jackson's Sauron, resulting in a badass, yet equally smart and cunning antagonist.
Fandom-Enraging Misconception: If you value your nerd cred, DON'T call this game "The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of Mordor." It's Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, thank you very much. For those not in the know, the game actually takes place several decades before LOTR, and is in fact closer to The Hobbit as far as the timeline is concerned.
Franchise Original Sin: This game take significant liberties with Tolkien's original Middle-earth writings, such as adding new species, altering the timeframe somewhat, and even going so far as to have Celebrimbor return from the dead as a wraith. While some lore purists weren't entirely happy, they were mostly minor differences with only a handful of serious contradictions, and even these were generally given a pass due to them being explained. The fact that the creators had clearly done their homework on the Legendarium helped soften the blow, and the novelty of the genuinely innovative Nemesis System helped to distract from the changes. However, the sequel would go on to make even more changes from the original mythos, including adding a China analogue the source material gave no indication even existed, turning Shelob into a shapeshifter who opposed Sauron, and establishing that the Nazgul's rings can be transferred from person to person. More dramatic departures such as these didn't go over as well with the fanbase, especially because they were applied to characters who were still alive at that point in canon, and the fact that players had grown accustomed to the unique gameplay mechanics and extensive research meant that less attention was drawn away from the changes made.
The Wraith Flash (pathetically) damages enemies around you and stuns them, its area of effect becoming bigger the higher your hit streak; it also makes you immune to all damage during the animation and counts as a hit in your combo. After unlocking the critical strikes and reducing the number of charges required, all its limitations are gone, and you can just spam it endlessly. Its defining grace however, is that besides mounted combat, enemies cannot become immune to it. It's truly gamebreaking if you get to use two specials, and can pair Wraith Flash with Wraith Burn. In big crowds, it'll kill a dozen orcs after five hits.
If you'd like, you won't even need Wraith Burn, as the damage of Wraith Flash increases the more the hit streak goes up. At hit streaks of 0-20, it won't One-Hit-Kill anything but Ghuls, yet 20-30 may start to kill orcs who've been wounded beforehand, and 30+ starting to One-Hit-Kill all ordinary uruks. Captains/Warchiefs of course are tougher, but at high hit streaks you can still inflict tremendous damage with Wraith Flash... particularly on those immune to Stealth/Ranged/Combat Finishers.
Certain runes allow Talion to automatically regain a percentage of his health bar (unlike most other healing runes, which only have a chance of success) when using Drain or Brand. You can stack them. Once Talion gains the ability to Brand enemies at low combo numbers, he can pretty much waltz through armies, turning increasing numbers to his side and ignoring all but the worst damage. Mass Branding also makes short work of any Uruk Captain or Warchief who may be immune to all of Talion's attacks.
The Storm of Urfael ability gives you 20 seconds of unlimited finishers. The downsides are its limited duration and the fact that it costs 2,500 Mithrin (a decently large amount) to unlock. Unless you have the Rising Storm (automatically unlocks Storm of Urfael as long as the rune is still on the weapon) and Ruination (+10 seconds to the duration of Storm of Urfael) runes, which cancel both of said downsides. With 30 seconds of unlimited finishers every time you get to use the power, you can just mash your finisher button and kill pretty much anything that's not immune to melee. In large groups.
One ability allows the player to instantly ride a beast with a shadow arrow attack. Even Horned Graugs. Do it multiple times, and you'll have a small army of beasts following you, ready to attack all enemies in sight. It alternatively makes the later hunting missions—for graugs and dire caragors—a joke as you can instantly take control of the first one you see and then immediately kill it to complete the mission.
The Bright Lord DLC gives you The One Ring. As you'd expect from such an Artifact of Doom, it's hilariously powerful for three very big reasons: 1: It lets you use Combat Finishers whenever you like, as often as you like, without having to start a hit streak. 2: It gives you Bullet Time like when you use the bow. That's all well and good, but the thing that REALLY makes it stand out, is that it ignores defenses, meaning you can use Combat Finishers even on Captains that are normally immune to them. The only thing limiting it is a short meter, but even though you can increase it with sidequests, you'll be able to kill anything short of Sauron before it runs out anyway. IGN even complained that it was too powerful and detracted from the score because of it when they reviewed the DLC.
Th Brutalize skill coupled with runes that increase the number of Uruks terrorized allow you dispatch entire platoons of Uruks with just one stealth attack. Very effective for taking out gangs protecting Captains and Warchiefs.
Hunters and Archers. They aren't too hard to take down or avoid, but they can pelt you with arrows and spears in the middle of a battle, dealing a little bit of damage, but more importantly, resetting your hitstreak. And in the thick of it, they can be pretty tough to find and destroy. Good luck if a Captain has a crossbow with Rapid Fire.
Berserkers will automatically counter you if you attack them from the front. Normally, that's easy to deal with (you just need to stun them, or you can take them down with stealth or your bow before combat even begins), but in a big melee it's all too easy to attack one by mistake and get countered, taking damage and resetting your hitstreak in the process.
Ghuls really take the cake in this field. While not individually powerful, they often attack in swarms of twenty or more, and their attacks are uncounterable, ensuring that you'll always take some amount of damage when fighting them (but as a small mercy, taking damage from them doesn't break your combo, so you can still Wraith Flash them easily). To make matters worse, their Last Chance events always consist of button-mashing, which is markedly more frantic and difficult than what you'd get fighting an Uruk, captain, warchief, or even a Caragor or Graug.
Doubly annoying are Ghul Spitters, who come with a ranged attack in the form of acid spit. Unlike regular Ghul attacks, these can break your combo, and they tend to stay outside the radius of Wraith Flash regardless, demanding a manual approach.
Uruks who are decapitated shouldn't be able to come back. A few do, however, sometimes without their heads. This is appropriate as it implies Sauron, known as the Necromancer, sent the Orc's Zombie Remains after you.
A quirk with the physics engine occasionally causes Uruks to randomly get catapulted into the skybox for seemingly no reason. It is, as you might expect, often hilarious. Even better, because the game thinks that they're still walking, they'll look like they're running on air whether they're rising or falling.
Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: While high-level Captains and Warchiefs can certainly provide a challenge, the real problem with fighting them is that they tend to attract a veritable army of Uruks who can make the fight nearly impossible. This is more significant for Warchiefs, as Talion will always face them in Strongholds, where an alarm can be raised for said army of Uruks to spawn.
The three main bosses of the game — The Hammer, The Tower, and Sauron are relatively easy to beat, considering how difficult some missions can be. In fact, the first boss fight against The Hammer is arguably the most difficult (depending on what the player has unlocked before the fight), with the subsequent boss fights only getting easier.
Tolkien had never been satisfied with his orcs being Always Chaotic Evil. He had intended to rectify this, but died before he could make any major changes. Then Shadow of Mordor came along and revealed that, while orcs were certainly evil, their society was incredibly complex and nuanced.
Knowing Ratbag survives his date with the Tower's hammer makes his dispatching a lot more palatable.
Hilarious in Hindsight: The Tower is eerily similar to Arkham Knight's Scarecrow. Both are experts in mind tricks and hallucinations, speak with a deep slow voice, and suffer from severe Body Horror. They both also try to taunt the protagonist with captured allies, and manage do turn close allies against the protagonist.
Jerkass Woobie: Celebrimbor is by all hints given, not nice. He is quick to suggest letting Sauron's victims die if he sees no benefit in gain from helping them, and by all hints wanted to use the One Ring to rule Middle Earth himself. But as we see his backstory, as punishment for stealing the ring Sauron beat him brutally, made him watch as he killed his wife and daughter before beating him to death, and then keeping him bound to the world as a Wraith.
Magnificent Bastard: The Wraith's true identity, Celebrimbor, the Bright Lord, is the one who forged the three Elven Rings of Power and helped Sauron finish the One Ring, before realizing Sauron's true nature. Briefly overcoming Sauron and losing only thanks to the wiles of the Ring itself, Celebrimbor returns as The Wraith in the present, manipulating the revived ranger Talion into slowly taking over parts of Mordor and establishing the kingdom of the Bright Lord, crushing the wills of the uruks to serve him to steadily supplant Sauron himself.
Memetic Badass: Talion becomes this in-universe; Uruks are often overheard discussing "the Ranger" coming to get them, and Uruk chieftains can actually have the Weakness "Fear Of The Gravewalker".
Sometimes the chorus music gets a bit over the top with the endless repetition of the One Ring's words. It gets silly eventually, as clear-voiced tenors chant: "burzum-ishi krimpatul", over and over again.
The names of certain Nemesis Uruks make them impossible to take seriously.
With the help of Photo Mode, you can see that Talion makes some interesting faces during executions.
Using Lithariel as a skin for Talion becomes ridiculous as the skin has no dialogue changes. It becomes impossible to take the Uruks seriously when they use "Ranger" or the male pronoun after spotting Lithariel, since Lithariel is neither. Taken up to eleven in the main quest where Talion has to escort her. Yes, the player can have Lithariel escorting herself, and the dialogue played is still between Talion and Lithariel.
No Problem with Licensed Games: Received widespread critical acclaim upon release by both Gamers and Critics. It's considered by most, to be one of, if not the best, video game adaption's of J.R.R Tolkien's work. It's being expressly compared to what the Arkham series did to Batman. (It doesn't hurt that the combat system is an almost exact cut-and-paste of Arkham's, albeit with exploding heads and no Thou Shalt Not Kill mechanics whatsoever).
It can be a real irritant trying to gain Intel from an Uruk who is encountered in a large group, due to the way they can unintentionally be killed in melee. Even worse is watching the intel-bearing orc flee from you, into the jaws of a random caragor, which eats him before he can be interrogated. It would have been nice if the designers had followed Batman: Arkham Origins' lead and made it impossible to kill your informant. At least there are other ways to get Intel (finding it in the world or freeing slaves).
At least on the PS4, the same button (triangle) is used in stealth mode for "Attract" and "Brutalize". This can be a real pain, especially during stealth missions, when you're trying to lead an Uruk away for a discreet stealth kill using Attract only for the button's function to suddenly switch to Brutalize, which makes for an intentionally loud and indiscreet kill. Similarly, the same button (circle) is used for dropping to hang off of ledges and Stealth Drain. You may simply be trying better position yourself along a ledge for a Stealth Kill/Brutalize only for the function to change, leading to you attacking with a Drain.
Branded Captains lose their immunity to instant death when being thrown over a ledge. This is extremely problematic and annoying for two major reasons: One, they have a tendency to run in and attempt to assist when you're fighting near them. If you happen to be near a ledge, it's entirely possible to knock your branded Captain off accidentally. Two, the act of branding them requires grabbing onto them. After branding them, Talion has a habit of releasing them by tossing them backward, which can be right off a ledge. It's quite frustrating to track a Captain down, kill all of his followers, get his health down enough so that he can be grabbed, and then actually brand him only to have him uncontrollably thrown off a ledge immediately after. Your only recourse is to try and grab/brand him away from any ledges, but this is hard to manage when you're in the heat of combat with Uruk reinforcements close by (as getting hit by one interrupts the brand attempt).
While the excellent combat system of the Arkham games really helps the game, the fact that getting hit resets your hitstreak doesn't. In Arkham, the only time you will be facing ranged weaponry is either during bosses or if you face enemies with guns, both of which are rare. However, due to the fact that most enemies in this game look almost identical, come in large numbers, and the warning about ranged attacks is rather hard to see, it means it's completely possible to lose your combo to an enemy you didn't know even existed. While there's an upgrade in the main story that allows you to take one hit without losing your current combo, Celebrimbor doesn't have it in his story DLC. Combined with the fact that time doesn't slow down when he aims with bows, dealing with ranged enemies can be extremely frustrating. The devs seem to feel this way too, as the melee system in the sequel is more forgiving about getting hit.
Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: The game and its sequel are basically ADHD in game form; there are endless distractions to keep you busy, and the game automatically creates more as you play it. It is ridiculously easy to spend hours just hunting the randomly generated captains.
That One Achievement: If you miss the opportunity to easily get the Ghuls Gone Wild achievement in the Lord of the Hunt DLC mission where you unlock the ability to control Ghuls, it becomes a Luck-Based Mission. You need to control enough Ghuls that they stand a chance at taking down a Graug, which is already hard due to randomly spawning enemies attacking the Ghuls and each Ghul being a One-Hit-Point Wonder. In addition, your Ghuls will often run after enemies once they spawn, or alternatively, you can accidentally kill your own Ghuls whilst trying to preemptively attack an enemy they were heading towards. This is, of course, assuming you got enough Ghuls in the first place; due to the way they spawn and how you have to gain control of them, it's easy to be attacked by about twenty Ghuls but only end up with two or three of them under your control. Finally, once the Graug arrives - and you'd better hope that you're near some meat to attract them, or you'll have to take your Ghuls on a trip around the countryside to find some whilst trying to keep them alive - you have to hope that you can weaken it enough for your Ghuls to kill it in one shot, as the method needed for them to defeat the Graug also results in them all instantly dying. Didn't kill the Graug? Too bad; you've got to go through all of that again. note However, nothing stops you from bringing the Graug to the Ghuls instead.
That One Boss: In a unique example (for now), this game's Nemesis System will probably (depending on your luck and skill) result in the creation of several of these each time it's played, and they will be different for each player as well. Some of the special challenge bosses count as this, since there seems to be no way to learn their individual strengths or weaknesses, and they also get more powerful each time they kill you.
The best example of "That One Boss" is an Uruk that somehow ends up immune to melee, ranged, and stealth. Not resistant to, immune. By this limitation they're weak to only one thing for sure: Fire. This is a problem because fire is the one thing the player does not have access to at any time, and is limited to shooting exploding targets such as campfires, or fire arrows as a late-game upgrade.
The frustration goes up to eleven if you encountered such Uruks before Talion learns Branding.note As Uruks never gain immunity to attacks from other Uruks, it is relatively easy to brand Uruks during fights against tough Captains and set them against the Captains. For Warchiefs, sending several Branded Captains as his bodyguards is an easy way of killing them. Usually, the only question is how many Branded Captains said Warchief can kill before dying.
Really, any max level Captain or Warchief will likely be one of these, as by that point they will have a veritable laundry list of strengths, resistances and various other perks with maybe one or two weaknesses. Of course, if you're able to brand said Uruk...
That One Level: "The Outcasts" requires you to traverse a gigantic fortress jam-packed with Uruks and poison five grog barrels without being spotted even once, and to make matters worse, the Uruks in this mission are much more eagle eyed than any others in the game.
For the various Tests in Trial of War, the Test of Defiance is this. For starters, Lithariel is a Glass Cannon with only one life and lower armor than Talion. Also, her Test is the only Test where the player cannot save their progress.
That One Side Quest: "The Scouring of the Shadow", a stealth-based mission which ends if you're spotted just once, even for a fraction of a second, and even if you're spotted by the Uruk you're killing, if you don't get to him quick enough. You also have to pull off the same task three times (kill the designated Uruks, among the rest of their friends) on opposite corners of their fort. Never have so many controllers been thrown across the room in the course of trying to complete one side mission. It doesn't help much that, even though this mission unlocks your Dagger achievements, hiding and sniping with your bow is one of the better ways to complete it. Made even worse by the fact that, unlike the story missions, the dagger, bow, and sword missions must be returned to to be retried (as opposed to an option on a fail screen) if they're failed and have no checkpoints. Have fun running across an entire freaking fort to retry a mission and then having to hear the same dialogue over and over again.
Bonus objectives for Test of Defiance (required for the Elite Leaderboard). Unlike the Bonus objectives for other Elite Leaderboards, Lithariel cannot Brand/Dominate enemies at all and can only pick up Elf-Shots (and not obtain them from Brands or Drains). Also, she must finish the Test with no Warchiefs left in power (bonus objective) and she must kill six Warchiefs (mandatory). note The maximum number of Warchiefs at any one time is five. This means you'll have to go out of your way to hunt down all bodyguards to ensure they won't take the position of Warchief and thus result in you having more warchiefs to kill than is allowed by the objectives (since you'll certainly reach the captain objective limit first, and Tests are ended automatically rather than manually).
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: If a few plot details were changed, this game could have seamlessly fit into the legendarium. For example, if Eryn and Ioreth's names were switched, the former could easily have been the right age to be the Gondorian healer from The Lord of the Rings. However, the character that is called Ioreth in the game couldn't be the one from the book, on account of being killed off in the beginning.
Ugly Cute: As hideous as the majority of Uruks are, there's a handful that have a pug-like quality to their faces that almost makes them endearing.
Unpopular Popular Character: The people who like Ratbag in-universe can be counted on one hand, provided you make a fist. The closest thing to a positive emotion he causes from anyone is when the Wraith seems to be vaguely amused by his "gift for failure". Out of universe though he's one of the most popular characters due to getting some of the best lines in the game to the point that you'll likely feel sad when the Hammer kills him at the end of the first half of the game. Fortunately, he is brought back in Shadow of War as it's revealed he survived being hit by the Hammer.
Visual Effects of Awesome: This game not only has rain as a dynamic weather effect, but also hail. It even bounces on impact. Unfortunately, this feature is absent from the last-gen versions.
whenever you ride atop a Caragor is oddly pleasant on the ears. It's so awesome that it even comes back in the sequel.