YMMV / Middle-earth: Shadow of War

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • What was Eltariel thinking when she sided with Celebrimbor? Was she being genuinely well-intentioned, albeit hesitant or ignorant about Celebrimbor "bringing order to Middle-earth"? Or did she became a Fallen Heroine too and crossed the Moral Event Horizon by willingly supporting an aspirant Evil Overlord that would be even worse than Sauron? In one hand, she seemed remorseful about taking Celebrimbor's ring and leaving Talion to die, but on the other hand, she appears to be Drunk on the Dark Side when fighting Sauron. She does mention the best she could do against the Nazgûl and Sauron was pushing them back forever so it's not surprising that when the opportunity to break Sauron's hold and control him is alluring to her. The opening to her story DLC explains that she is not allowed to return home until the Nazgul are dead, making it very likely she figured that taking out Sauron would at least make her job easier.
  • Galadriel gets one as well. While normally, she is the Big Good of Middle Earth, here she is portrayed in a far more negative light. She commands Eltariel to an eternal, hopeless suicide mission (kill all the Nazgul, something explicitly impossible), and instead of letting her die, Galadriel commands her to take the new ring and keep working. One dialog also mentions that Eltariel isn't the first elf she's sent on this quest, but simply that Eltariel is the first one she has hope might return alive. It's a far more ruthless and commanding side of the Noldor Queen than we have seen in the past.
  • When a flashback shows that Celebrimbor was with Sauron when he handed out at least one of the Rings of Power, the question gets raised as to exactly how complicit he was in the Rings' corruption. When Talion accuses him of having turned men into Nazgûl on purpose, Celebrimbor states that he was deceived alongside everyone else as to Sauron's true aims. However, he also says the Rings were meant to bring order, which is the same mantra he uses when deciding to dominate Sauron and then conquer and enslave Middle-Earth. Alternatively, we've seen that Sauron brainwashed Celebrimbor into perfecting the One Ring, so it's equally possible that it was during this time period that Celebrimbor helped Sauron.
• Annoying Video Game Helper: Being rescued by your allies. One of your allies or Forthog may occasionally appear when Talion is downed and kill the enemy before they finish him. The chance of a rescue seems to be random^note Although it's possible that the chance is lower if you already have history with the attacker, however, and thus an ally might kill an orc you found interesting or deny you your revenge. Note that this is heavily downplayed, since the feature is genuinely useful, and disabling the "Bodyguard" upgrade lowers the chance of them happening, and it can be turned off entirely in the options menu.
• Anticlimax Boss: For all the advertisement and the sheer awesomeness of fighting a Balrog, the two boss fights against him are quite a letdown. Due to being horribly outmatched, Carnan the nature spirit does most of the work, so you are in a support role the entire time. The final section, though, which has you riding a frost-breathing plant-dragon to smash a Balrog into a frozen lake, is buggy to the point of being completely immersion breaking.
• Arc Fatigue: Amusingly enough the first Act of the game; Minas Ithil is Doomed by Canon so all of Talion's efforts to save it feel wasted, Celebrimbor won't stop prattling on about the Palantir and Shelob is holding the New Ring hostage keeping you from getting fully involved with the Nemesis system all the while feeding you esoteric visions.

• Awesome Music: The ending credits song, "Fires of War" by Nathan Grigg and Kelli Schaefer. Also, the tribute song "I Ride Back Home", a tribute to Forthog and sung by Michael "Forthog" Forgey himself.
• Broken Base:
  • The true Downer Ending of the game has divided people on if it's straight up awful, rendering everything pointless, or if it's a very fitting conclusion to the themes the game deals with, and extremely memorable.
  • Shelob's depiction in the game. In one camp, her human-like design drew criticism as being "sexualized" from gaming media outlets and personalities such as Jim Sterling, while Tolkien fans were displeased with it as another case of Canon Defilement. On the other camp, there were those that found it appealing and rather enjoyed enjoyed her character due to her sympathetic backstory and being motivated to protect Middle-earth from both Sauron and Celebrimbor. A third camp doesn't necessarily mind Shelob's ability to shapeshift (it's hardly the most unbelievable thing in this game) but are upset with the fact that, aside from being able to turn into a spider, this is Shelob In Name Only, bearing absolutely no resemblance to the original character and having heavy creative liberties taken with her backstory and motivations.
  • Overall, the ideas and changes the game presents are divisive. Either you feel that the changes hurt the story and play with the lore a bit too much, or that since the series is clearly an Alternate Universe anyway (The mere basis of the series already goes against what's in the Silmarillion, the most obvious example being Celebrimbor), don't mind the additions and changes, and might even find them to be interesting.
• Canon Defilement:
  • Some of the liberties taken with the source material, like the fact that Shelob can inexplicably turn into a human woman, have not sat well with some of the fanbase. While it makes more sense when one remembers Shelob wasn't a real spider but an evil spirit/spider hybrid who took the form of a spider (Real spiders, for example, don't have stingers), fans are unhappy she was retconned from the intelligent but evil and extremely gluttonous character she was in the books to a Good All Along Well-Intentioned Extremist.
  • The identities of two of the Nazgul. They're Helm Hammerhand and Isildur of all people. This wasn't taken kindly by many, with numerous people pointing out that all nine ringwraiths first appeared over 400 and 900 years before either had even been born, respectively... however, not only is this series an explicit Alternate Continuity with prior examples of time-displacement ^note Gondor had lost the Black Gate, and Minas Ithil had been turned into Minas Morgul a thousand years before the events of The Hobbit in canon, rather than between the Hobbit and Fellowship in the Shadow of Mordor series., but these two are not part of the original Nine. Word of God also acknowledged this, and stated they were going by Gandalf's vague description of the Wraiths as having been "kings of men" in their former lives, and used Isildur as the one person Talion would never want to Dominate under any circumstance, thus providing the catalyst for Celebrimbor's betrayal. Blade of Galadriel DLC shows another example where two of the Nazgul are female, but like Isildur and Helm Hammerhand are not the original owners of those rings, and thus also aren't part of the original Nine ensemble. Although people were quick to complain that you can't just kill nazgûl by taking their rings.
  • Along with the above, while the story hangs together on its own terms it includes several things wildly at odds with the story on the page. The timeline of Mordor is extremely compressed (and moved forward) for not much reason while other event orders are either changed or would involve new powers/events being introduced Big one being the replacement of Nazgul. Sauron also is far more powerful and present in this narrative, with powers that he had (importantly) lost by the Third Age and that would have posed a huge problem in canon. He recovers extremely quickly from Isildur's finger chop such that he can physically place a Ring on the latter's corpse (a matter of a few years) and can moreover still use both his Annatar form and his dark battle armor one. Some of this was toyed with and ultimately discarded in the films and it's also at odds with Shadow of Mordor where the Black Hand either is Sauron or is volunteering as a resurrection vessel. If Sauron could already recreate Annatar thousands of years before Talion was born, why bother?
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: A Life gem for the sword heals Talion for every swing which connects. As this game nerfed combat Branding, having a steady source of healing is always welcome.
  • Sending spies to every warchief's and especially the overlord's sides before a siege will make a fortress crumble easily.
• Complete Monster: Sauron returns. See here for details.
• Contested Sequel: Some players take issue with some of the changes this game brings to the formula, such as how it's impossible to kill off all the captains in an area and have it stay captainless (which some feel damages the Power Fantasy feeling that otherwise forms a core part of the series' appeal) and how you can only pick six pieces of equipment for Talion (sword, dagger, ranged weapon, armor, bow, rune) at a time ^note along with a gem for each piece, having three colors and five grades to choose from, compared to the previous game letting the player have fifteen separate equips on the player (all runes, yes, so you can't play dress-up with Talion but still fifteen separate mechanical effects).
• Creepy Awesome: Talion after being transformed into a Nazgul has definitely left an impression on the fanbase, with his horrifying voice, scary, dark appearance, and his shadowy Ringwraith magic.
• Cry for the Devil: Each and every one of Tolkien's Orcs are twisted monsters who love to kill and torture. Even the ones who serve the Bright Lord are malicious brutes who just happen to revere the player characters. However, the new improvements to the Nemesis system include improvements for the Branded Orcs, and with those improvements come more admirable and pitiable aspects to the Orcs that may make you feel for a Captain who isn't even on your side. It helps that Tolkien himself was troubled by his decision to make every Orc an unrepentant bastard, and Idril wonders what the Orcs would be without being ruled over by Sauron.
  • The Shame mechanic is especially good at making certain players feel like they're not much better than the Orcs, especially if they end up Deranging them and turning them into a hollow shell of what they used to be.
• Crossing the Line Twice: Bruz's entire character? Hilarious. Shaming Bruz to the point of gibbering fear? Horrible. Keeping him around afterwards when his only lines, including during fights with other orcs, revolve around him not wanting the "bloody fort"? Absolutely hilarious. Managing to make him an overlord means that all of his speeches consist of him not wanting to keep the fort he currently owns? Absolutely amazing. Making him an undead Olog-hai ruling a fort, unable to speak coherently? Amazing and pitiful.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Defenders. Their shields block most attacks from the front, and they will likely learn to stop you from vaulting over them if the fight takes long enough. If you get behind them, they still may perform an instant 180 degree turn when you try to hit them, and even wooden shields can somehow flawlessly block a fiery explosion that levels everyone else without as much as scratching them. On the arena, they are rather overpowered, as they are capable of blocking even Olog attacks 97% of the time. They are vulnerable against stealth, orcs who can dodge them (Assassins and Tricksters) and the "Waters of Lórien" upgrade^note  Which allows Talion to teleport through opponents but consumes focus , but they can still be ridicuosly tough, especially if they are tanks, who regain their health and get up once they are downed once.
  • Fire Drakes can be very difficult to handle, especially in groups. Since they fly most of the time, the player needs to snipe them to make them vulnerable to executions. The problem is they can only be knocked down as they are about to attack. This more often than not results in the player getting hit by their very hard hitting attacks. The fact they tend to be in battles where the player needs to focus on other enemies doesn't help.
  • Ologs can be this or Goddamned Bats depending on Talion's skill set, but what makes them always brutal is their constant use of unblockable attacks and high resistance to executions or stealth kills due to their size. They all have natural grapples too, and getting hit by any Olog attack will stun you and completely deplete your Might meter. It's harder to consistently attack Ologs like you would an Orc which leaves you vulnerable to attacks from other enemies should you try to kill them. Therefore fighting multiple Ologs makes consistent damage to them nearly impossible all while they squeeze you like a small bloody teddy bear. You will inevitably be ambushed by two Olog captains both leading groups of Ologs that'll most likely lead to your death. Try to vault them and they'll throw you to the ground, for no damage but considering that large-scale fights requires lots of vaulting, you can find yourself getting tossed back and forth in an attempt to escape.
  • Caragors come back full swing. Literally Every attempt at attacking them they will beef through and shove you back. You're forced to use arrows or your Might bar in order to off them. All the while surrounding Orcs are free to rush you. Focus on them and a Caragor can jump you with an instant and unblockable attack that'll instantly kill you. Worse is now grunt Orcs and captains can learn to actually tame and ride them, meaning they'll fight in perfect unison with the other Orcs and not against them. Caragor riders can make them do everything from before and also swing at you from offscreen with a blockable attack that, you won't see a counter prompt for until the last milisecond. Snipers (which are mentioned below) retain all of their annoying quirks while riding caragors.
  • Like the first game a Captain can become this depending on what abilities they have. A particularly frustrating combination is a Defender with Fast Learner. Because not only do you have to deal with an already defensive Uruk that requires a specific strategy but you have to kill them fast, lest they adapt to it. Coupled with other strengths like Arrow-Proof, it could make them Nigh-Invulnerable.
    • Snipers are the biggest pain in the ass if they're on the other side of a fort or outpost. They can bring Talion (or worse, Baranor) down to low health with a single shot, and they will not miss if you don't find cover.
  • The online arenas allow you to upgrade your warchief to legendary if they survive 5 consecutive battles. The problem is that the system doesn't really take your orc's status into account (Regular, Epic, Legendary), and they might die because your unknown opponent turned out be Legendary. In practice, this means that to reach the level where your orc turns legendary, you just about need a Legendary orc to stand a chance against your opponents. On the other hand, even one win gives you a free chest that allows you to upgrade any of your orcs.
  • Every single enemy if you play on the Gravewalker difficulty, especially in the beginning of the game. You get no last chances without upgrades, and enemeis strike hard; captains get extremely durable, and eventually your Army screen may be filled by grunts who downed you while you were trying to whittle down an enemy captain's health.
• Difficulty Spike: Act IV: The Shadow Wars raises the game's difficulty noticeably, as story quests shift to defending fortresses from Sauron's siege armies. Unlike previous quests, which involved Talion and (at most) a handful of followers operating in a relatively small area^note Even fortress assaults involve Talion and his assault team taking a single victory point, then moving on to the next one, and so forth, fort defenses require you to defend the entire fort and often involve simultaneous skirmishes at numerous victory points; as such, it's entirely possible to be too late to save a dying follower at Point A because you were busy defending Point B. The attackers are likely to be more powerful than your followers, and while you can review their composition of the assault force, you cannot weaken them before the assault (by defeating warchiefs, infiltrating spies, etc.). Getting your perimeter breached causes future attackers to spawn insidethe fort, and losing any victory point spawns an extra attacker to try to take advantage of the situation. During the first few stages, it can actually be easier to sacrifice your low-level followers and to try to recruit the attackers, as the enemy captains tend to be on a lower level than Talion at that point. Most grinding can be circumvented by this method, and losing a fortress every now and then may actually be a good idea, since the goal then becomes to retake the fort (which is far easier and allows you to weaken the enemy before the siege). The Act received an overhaul in July 2018, which significantly lessened the number of fort defense quests necessary to complete the Shadow Wars; fort defense quests are still available afterwards, but they're optional.
• Disappointing Last Level: Many players generally agree that Act IV is the weakest part of the game, being what is essentially a long Playable Epilogue that encourages long grinding to get to the Golden Ending of the game.
  • People have noted that branding every attacker and turning them into your forts' warchiefs reduces some of the grinding, since you get several high-level orcs at your disposal; the only downside if an attacker is higher level than you, they cannot be branded.^note : Fortunately, the fort missions reward a lot of XP after the first few. And since you don't lose anything if you fail the fort defense, you can just let a way-too-underpowered fort be decimated by Sauron's forces and then dominate the winners. It is still slow and methodical, but constant rebuilding is still more exciting than defending all the time, sitting and watching fighting pits for hours or searching for good uruks in the wild.
  • Later updates aimed to fix most of these problems, mostly in the line of streamlining the Shadow Wars (reducing the number of defense missions from a mind-numbing twenty to a decently-large but perfectly doable five), as well as adding voiceovers on loading screens, giving Dark Talion domination lines, and adding additional Ringwraith armor pieces.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: The game's Central Theme is how those who fight monsters end up being corrupted by powers that no one should use for good. Yet, it's very jarring considering that many reviewers and gamers praised the gameplay and combat, which involve using all those cool superpowers granted by the Ring, and the core appeal of the series is that it's a Power Fantasy where you slaughter orcs by the dozens.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Affable orcs like Brûz can make players forget that they are still bloodthirsty monsters who aren't above betraying you or each other. Especially when the shame mechanic makes them looks more pitiful but even deranged orcs execute slaves and ambush others captains for their goods.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Much like in the last game, the Orcs absolutely steal the show for their over-the-top personalities and general badassery.
  • There's one particular version titled "the Singer" who tends to be especially liked for, of course, singing all his taunts while strumming his lute-axe. "You may have heard of one like me~"
  • Everyone from the gameplay reveal trailer, with particular mention going to Az-Larr. The official Shadow of War Youtube channel saw the positive response he received and then made a memorial video. He was even added to the mobile version as a playable character. (Unlike most orcs, he is an official character, and not a randomly generated opponent.)
  • Brûz the Chopper, the first ally you get when you regain the branding ability in the game seems to have supplanted Az-Laar's place as the olog darling of the Shadow of War community after being unveiled in the E3 2017 presentation. So much so he is affectionally referred as "Orcbro" by fans. Players have lamented that Brûz's betrayal is completely scripted, and many try to recruit him back to their army after he has been shamed.
    Celebrimbor: I like him.
  • Ratbag returns due to being one of the most popular characters in the previous one, despite his (seeming) death.
  • Eltariel's lieutenants in Blade of Galadriel are very well-liked for their good nature and willingness to help. It helps a lot that they this way naturally without the need of brainwashing.
• Even Better Sequel: Shadow of War improves upon the widely-praised combat system and Nemesis System of Shadow of Mordor, as well as fixing many of the complaints players had about the first game (for example: the small and rather bland open world of Shadow of Mordor has been replaced with a much larger open world with more diversity in scenery). Some people have commented that Shadow of War is to Shadow of Mordor what Batman: Arkham City was to Batman: Arkham Asylum. In terms of story, Shadow of War is a deeper exploration of the themes of the first game, namely trying to fight the Dark Lord with the forces and means of darkness, making it morally complex, intricate and compelling where the first game was a more simple and basic plot, made to service new gameplay.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Random uruk Mooks can step forward and perform the introduction dialogue on behalf of the captain or warchief they work for. The fandom has taken to referring to these uruks as hype men.
  • Forthog's been dubbed "The Beard" on forums and YouTube comments.
• Foe Yay Shipping:
  • There is some between Sauron & Celebrimbor. During one of the "Shadows of the Past" missions, Celebrimbor calls the former a "beautiful visitor"^note Although he is speaking on the behalf of the Elven race, and both Sauron and Celebrimbor want to "own" the other, before eventually becoming one. Throw in jokes about rings and a reference to the Elven marriage customs^note As mentioned on the main page, Elves wear marriage bands on the right index finger; The movies and games reference this by putting the rings on the same finger and you'd have a pretty good basis for a prequel Slash Fic.
  • The Witch-king is pretty interested in Talion. The devs actually joked during a livestream that he occasionally calls Talion with the Palantir to ask if he wants to be friends with him. The Appendices reveal the Witch King despises Gondorians, and breaking Talion would be extra-satisfying to him.
• Game-Breaker:
  • While many powers are intended to break at least something, Shadow Strike Pull makes hunting captains a breeze. You can just stand on a roof and grab every worm you see for interrogation while his buddies wonder where he went. A bodyguard or another captain giving you more trouble than your target? Just pull them up to a rooftop that's too high for them to scale down and deal with them one by one or just strand them there. Its only downside is that arrow-proof enemies and olog-hai are immune to it.
  • Warchief's bodyguards being near limitless make the Shadow Wars ridiculously easy, as even if your captains aren't the same level as the enemy there are twenty of them against a wave of three. The silver chests, which are bought with the game currency from quests and scrapped equipment, also make it so you don't even have to go looking for orcs.
  • The Vendetta armor set, obtained by completing fairly simple tasks in online Vendetta missions, allows you to use Executions even when not at full Might. True, it does cost you 40% of your HP, but with enough dodging and draining stray mooks, it makes fights a lot easier. Similarly, the set allows you to use ranged attacks even if you're out of arrows, at the cost of 25% of your health.
    • Gets even more ludicrously broken once you unlock Raise Dead, as you can drain the Uruks you acquire to restore your health, while the others will distract the enemy so you can drain safely.
  • A full Ringwraith armor set will have Talion resurrecting most of the Orcs he just stealth killed, a quarter of the orcs he killed with his sword, and just shy of half of his allied orcs that die. Coupled with a rune that boosts allied orc power, and it makes almost any mission almost comically easy.
  • Since the "Deadly Spectre" upgrade^* The stealth attack where Talion leaves the wraith as a stealth "mine" to take out the nearest enemy doesn't give away your location, you can just hang from a ledge and repeat the move on a captain who is too tough to fight in combat. However, as it's a stealth attack, some enemies might be(come) immune to it.
  • In a manner reminiscent to "Scissors Cuts Rock" and implementation of the "Chunky Salsa Rule", tamed Graug can be used to bypass combat skills and squash captains flat. Long story short is that anything less than total beast immunity, most often found on hunters, won't prevent you from summoning a Graug against a captain and just stomp them into the ground. Even the legendary adaptive guardian will still fall to this tactic so long as you're thorough in finishing him off quickly.
  • Capes that briefly turn Talion invisible after a successful last chance allow him to perform stealth attacks -which, at very high levels, deal almost 10 times the damage a sword attack does- in battle. The invisibility lasts long enough to deal at least 2, if not 3 stealth attacks; while this obviously doesn't work if the opponent is immune to stealth attacks or if you can't perform a last chance, but it's completely possible to destroy an otherwise difficult enemy in a few seconds with it. I tells wonders that Eltariel's Limit Break utilizes the same strategy.
  • Epic swords that grant you large amount of wrath upon executions. Holy hell. Those with high enough levels allow you to refill Talion's Limit Break with as little as 3 to 2 executions. However, once you activate said break, executions still recharge your wrath, allowing you to stay in it as long as you have enemies to execute. (When it's active, Talion's might recharges constantly, which allows him to perform unlimited executions, which in turn recharge the wrath meter) You can capture fortresses alone with little effort with this. Your only obstacles will be some seriously difficult captains, the melee system's tendency to focus on captains over grunts, and running out of enemies. It's even more powerful than the intentionally overpowered One Ring from the previous game's DLC. They were actually nerfed after a few months. ^{Note (Spoilers)} Although this is only tested once Elven Rage is replaced by "Ringwraith" power.
  • You have to complete Carnan's entire questline to get it, but once you gain the ability to summon an allied drake, it trivializes nearly every fight even on Nemesis difficulty, barring the few enemies immune to fire. You can Shadow Mount the drake and torch every enemy in sight from the air, while their arrows basically do Scratch Damage. Lighting up enemies also quickly charges your Might for fireball attacks, and if you do get low on health, just eat a few orcs with divebomb attacks to recover.
  • Eltariel's Light skills in her DLC allows her to pretty much perma-stun any enemy, even captains, that's not immune to it. And it can be used on several enemies at once. And the Cone of Light skill can be upgraded to additionally heal allies in range of the skill.
    • Her Area of Effect actually refills her might unlike Talion's. With enough enemies, you can perform the move several times in a row, and each time adds some lights to every orc affected, allowing many one-hit kills even on ologs. Since every enemy hit by it adds to the combo, you can reach a 100-hit combo extremely easily.
    • A skill that causes her thrown knives to continue hitting enemies after it kills them easily wipes out hordes of Ghuls with little to no effort.
  • Baranor has some of his own. For example, having a full set of bombs gives him an item that not only dazes a Captain, but hurts them, too — and there is no immunity to them. In addition, depending on some of the modifiers, Baranor can become a killing machine, such as being able to poison orcs who land a hit on him, or having a flaming shield that burns and dazes enemies, or having bolts that penetrate flesh and hit multiple orcs. It doesn't hurt that unlike Talion, Baranor's wrist-crossbow can fire multiple shots with no delay, and if the Captain is Soft-Headed, he'll be slain quickly.
    • A surprisingly high number of rune combinations and can end up making any conflict a breeze if Baranor just kills enough captains to get them. One combo can allow you to regain a poison bolt on each stealth kill and gain focus from chain kills; figure out that each chain kill from stealth also counts as a stealth kill, and you can wipe out an entire army of orcs, and come out of it with a net profit in bolts and focus, at the cost of pulling off one stealth kill. Another triples your stealth attack damage, which ends up being enough to one shot common non-stealth immune captains after stacking a few common dagger runes, and even when it isn't, you can grapple or use a launcher bodyguard to just keep slamming your dagger into their neck until they die.
    • It must be noted in the case of Baranor's DLC, the game is empowering the player more and more to see how high a score they can achieve, so the game breaking weaponry is justified.
• Genius Bonus: Before putting on Isildur's ring, Talion breathes, "My fate is my own." Those familiar with Tolkein's work would recognize this as an Author Tract: Men had the Gift of Fate that no Elf or Dwarf had, the ability to choose their own fate.
• Goddamn Bats:
  • Archers and hunters are sometimes frustratingly accurate. Getting hit by ranged weapons every few seconds and not finding the shooter before losing your first "Last Chance" is especially annoying when fighting overlords. They become a nightmare on Gravewalker difficulty.
  • Ologs can be this or Demonic Spiders depending on Talion's skill set, but what makes them always annoying in groups is that they will throw you to the ground if you try to roll into them. Thankfully this doesn't do any damage but considering that larger scale fights require a lot of rolling the player can find themselves getting tossed back and forth. On the other hand, one can use the tossing animation for a quick breather, and check the surroundings.
  • Spiders. Invisible on the minimap, their color blends into the surroundings, tiny and attack quickly and the only warning players get is a quick counter icon, and don't deal that much damage but slow you down, give you Interface Screw, drain all three of your special meters, preventing you from shadow striking, consuming, or entering Elven Rage.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • Any orc with the "No Chance" trait, especially during sieges. Most orcs who have this trait are assassins, who are good at avoiding your attacks, deal a lot of damage, but aren't too durable. Dying ends the siege, and if you're defending, you also lose the fortress until you reclaim it. Since sieges have a lot going on, it's possible to get overwhelmed by enemies and then get finished off by a captain with said trait. If you're surrounded by aforementioned ranged mooks, it gets even worse.
  • Trickster orcs refuse to stay still and have no problems evading your attacks. Especially if they are arrow- and frost-proof, since you can't force them to stop moving. Some of them can even escape after getting downed.
  • Zog the Eternal, because of his immunities and the fact that he will always resurrect and decide to constantly I Shall Taunt You.
  • Sniper orcs, due to their tendency of shooting at you from extreme ranges, usually from above, and their attacks hurt. They are not too bad on their own, but if one sets their sight on you when you are busy fighting another captain, they can be devastating due to their pinpoint accuracy. This can actually be turned around, since they seem to have the highest chance of saving Talion if assigned as bodyguards.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • In the game the Orc Captains that spawn, their levels usually stay around the same as Talion. However if you never go past the first chapter their levels never rise above the lower teens (there are exceptions with returning from dead), but yet still give you a ton of EXP. If you just stay in Chapter 1 and grind enough you can outright kill any Captain with a stealth kill unless they are immune to it, making very easy to level up and start the main campaign being way stronger than anything you would encounter at the beginning.
    • And if you play a little longer but still stay in Chapter 1, you get access to Online Vendettas which grant a lot of Gems and several Captains that give a lot more EXP. With enough grinding it is easily possible to start Chapter 2 with maxed out levels, the best equipment and enough money to get anything you want.
  • It's hard to tell if it's a bug, but it's possible to go countless hours into the game and not encounter Zog again after his death. There are some who took their time to reach the Golden Ending but didn't even know he could come back after his storyline before reading about it.
  • One possible bonus a cape (even non-Legendary ones) can give is that after standing still for 6 seconds, Talion turns invisible^note When invisible, he is replaced by the wraith so the player can still see them until you do something (crouching, aiming and attract are allowed though). However, the timer doesn't care how the 6 seconds are spent, and thus Talion will often be invisible after captains finish talking, or if you check the captains strengths and weaknesses and keep the list open for 6 seconds.
  • Challenges that require killing grunts can be performed on your own troops, even if the challenge claims otherwise.
  • One particularly common bug involves Talion's / Celebrimbor's speech glitching out after capturing a fortress, resulting in him going silent for the remainder... but, the cutscene keeps right on playing in this case. It gives the impression that all of the sudden, Talion just completely forgot that whole big dramatic inspiring speech he'd memorized earlier, and is now awkwardly shuffling back and forth in place in front of his army while they stare at him expectantly.
  • The system that unlocks the Blade of Galadriel follower orc chest is somewhat simplistic and can be tricked to give you free followers. If you have two different save games on the same PSN/Xbox account, ^note Say, you have your main save file on your own PS4, but replay the game on one owned by a family member one where you've beaten the DLC and one where you haven't, every time you switch from the "DLC not completed" save to the "DLC completed" save the online-based system thinks you played through the DLC, awarding you the orc chest without having to restart the DLC.
  • The bonus granted by the Legendary Machine dagger, which allows your throwing knives to explode, has some consistantly... odd properties that don't seem intended. For one, the explosion caused by the throwing knives acts more like a non-elemental Destroyers' bombs then the fire damage expected from the animation, though this can be a stylistic/game-balance decision. What's more noticeable, however, is that the explosive knives have a tendency to outright ignore Arrow-proof and adaptations that would normally result in Captains ignoring or dodging the knives, resulting in a free, unavoidable stun being available to the player every few seconds.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In the full ending, Talion takes one last look at Minas Morgul before joining the nine without a struggle. However, the Blade of Galadriel reveals that by that point most of his humanity is already gone and Talion's final moments before turning were full of anger and hate towards a former ally.
  • Talion's final wish in BoG is that he doesn't want to die in Mordor. In the end, he is finally killed when his fellbeast is hit by falling debris from the erupting mount doom in the middle of Mordor.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: This xkcd comic becomes even funnier with the knowledge that Sauron and Shelob were lovers, and that she was one of the few sentient beings he didn't put a ring on when given the chance, which ultimately came back to bite him.
  • Players find it amusing that Super Mario Odyssey gives Mario the same domination ability as Talion — except that game has no problems with brainwashing beings and bending them to your will, which War explicitly moralizes on. Zero Punctuation lampshaded this in its review, with Mario saying, "Suffer-a me now!"
• Ho Yay:
  • Celebrimbor disappears after forging the new ring. Talion's first reaction is to start searching for him, and he doesn't even hesitate to give away their best chance of defeating Sauron in exchange for Celebrimbor, despite CB's protests. The bridge scene feels like a messy breakup, with Celebrimbor leaving Talion for another person.
  • Ratbag and Ranger. They lived together quite a while, and once the latter disappears, the former searches all around Middle-earth to find him, and hugs him once he is found. He does consider him more of a pet than anything else, though. Ranger himself has a bit of a hot and cold approach toward him.
  • The entire scene of Sauron giving Sûladan a ring feels like a proposal, with him kneeling and offering him a ring. Man, the rings really add a lot of subtext to the series.
  • Massive amounts of this from many of the captains. Tear of Grace points out repeatedly in his playthrough how many of their lines are super stalker creepy, especially the ones with the title "The Obsessed".
  Captain on caragor hunt: "When we're done, I want that cage for...reasons." (flirty hip wiggle)
• I Knew It!: As he became an Ensemble Dark Horse and wasn't decapitated in the last game, Ratbag's return wasn't entirely unexpected.
• Iron Woobie: Talion. All he wants is being allowed release from his undeath and rejoin his loved ones in death, but he can't so long as Sauron threatens Middle-Earth. Even when he could very well allow himself to die when Celebrimbor abandons him to pursue power for his own, Talion opts to turn himself into a Ringwraith and remains locked in war with Sauron inside Mordor for many, many decades.
• It Was His Sled: Talion becomes a ringwraith. Even the devs don't seem to consider it a spoiler anymore, considering they sometimes post fan-submitted screenshots of Dark Talion in social media and occasionally play in post-act IV during livestreams.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Despite him betraying Talion, kidnapping his close ally and tries to kill him, it's hard to not feel sorry for Brûz when he is shamed as punishment. Even other orcs note they'd rather being dead than suffer the same fate as him.
  • It's worth noting that even the act of betraying Talion isn't anywhere near as sinister as betrayal tropes usually are, since the Orcs are only ever "Loyal" to Talion in the first place because they are brainwashed into it.^Spoilers Bruz, on the other hand, seems to faking his branding This is less a case of "an ally betrays the hero" then it is a case of a slave breaking free and punishing the one who enslaved him.
    • Orcs nicknamed "The Nameless One" are Talion's former allies who realized that Talion is too dangerous and decided to take matters into their own hands to protect their brethen; they have perfectly valid points against Talion's actions. Their altruism usually ends badly for them.
  • There's an orc captain variant who's extremely old and has only lasted as long as he has because Sauron's necromancers keep bringing him back to life. If the player keeps killing him over and over, he'll start begging to be put to rest in broken sentences.
  • Some of the Orcs when they become Deranged can become this. Of note is that one who particularly hounded the player beforehand can be reduced to bawling "I tried" and similar sentences. It almost makes a player want to kill them just to end their suffering.
  • Killed someone's Blood Brother? They are clearly heartbroken about it. Their quest for revenge ends in either death, brainwashing, or something even worse.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The game's heavy use of the word "shrakh" (Black Speech for "shit") finally broke people and it's now the curse of choice for Shadow fans.
  • To a lesser extent, so has "glob".
  • Brûz the Chopper has been referred to a "Orcbro" by some people due to his personality.
  • It's popular to make insinuations about any Uruks named "Shag the (Descriptor)."
  • Celebrimbor's Act 1 obsession with his Ring and the Palantir (or "Pa-LAHN-teeyah", as he pronounces it).
  • “Bright Lord, Dark Lord, Edge Lord” used to describe, in order, Celebrimbor, Sauron, and Ring Wraith Talion
  • Press Y to Shame^explanation A still image of a disappointed looking Celebrimbor with the Shame prompt akin to the Press X to Doubt meme from L.A. Noire. It’s usually used to express disappointment in someone or something, though the ‘h’ in Shame is sometimes blacked out to make the context relatable instead of patronizing.
  • The game's depiction of Shelob has sparked a lot of jokes along the lines of it actually not being contrary to canon or Tolkien's vision, as he always envisioned her as a sexy goth girl.◊
• Moral Event Horizon: See here.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • Talion and Celebrimbor's combined "Charge!" is an excellent way to start a Siege. Talion even keeps it after Celebrimbor is out of the picture.
  • ...and their rousing speeches are an excellent way to end them. Dark Talion's booming Voice of the Legion possibly even more so.
  • The domination lines are back from the previous game, and remain just as awesome. (Even if they repeat a lot) Many people didn't like that Dark Talion originally didn't have any, but fans missing them got him his own set of lines.
    Celebrimbor: You will obey!

• Narm Charm: Having a troll making a head popping noise doesn't really scream epic fantasy, but Brüz's personality is just so charming and it still underlines that there is no difference between the Bright Lord and Dark Lord.
  Brüz: "Bright Lord? Dark Lord? Same thing, really."
• Nausea Fuel: Ologs with epithets like "The Tanner" or "The Skinner" may talk about how they make the leather clothes they wear. Some of the steps include pounding dung into the skin/hide and later soaking it in caragor brains. And some of their armor still has the previous owner's faces...
• Nightmare Retardant: The Nazgul are a lot more talkative in this game than they are in the books and films. Some might think that they would be a lot scarier if they would shut up for five minutes. It becomes more grating than scary during the boss fights with Isildur and the Witch King; they have about five spooky threats each and repeat them like broken records. On top of that, the Witch King's lines often overlap with each other and the other Nazgul's, rendering him unintelligible anyway.
• No Yay: While the original game had certain orcs with some... over-affectionate lines directed towards Talion, this game makes it even more blatant by adding orcs with the "Obsessed" nickname, whose lines are pretty much "I Have You Now, My Pretty".
• Obvious Beta: Not the entire game (although there are plenty of glitches), but Act IV and beyond seem a bit rushed. Some developer comments have implied that they ran out of time, potentially explaining many of these issues.
  • Dark Talion originally didn't have any lines for dominating orcs, but this has been since addressed with a patch.
  • Orcs still call him the Bright Lord, although this may be intentional.
  • The missions become a lot more repetitive and grinding becomes more common. Whether this was to sell lootboxes is a discussion for someplace else. This is set to be addressed in a future patch, which promises improvements to the narrative, and the announcement hints that due to the endless siege mode, capturing forts won't be a heavy focus.
  • Undead fortresses are identical to mystic ones. Somewhat justified since Mystics are interested in magic and necromancy.
  • Talion still uses some of Celebrimbor's weapons; most notably his hammer, and during some animations some weapons actually still turn blue for a few seconds. He uses a more appropriate hammer in the Blade of Galadriel DLC, making it possible this one will be changed later down the line.
• Older Than They Think:
  • The Elves in the story being varying degrees of jerks and/or extremists and Sauron pulling a I Surrender, Suckers may leave people who only know the films surprised. Readers of The Silmarilion won't be, although they probably will roll their eyes at the merging of Elven behavior from the First Age and from the Second thousands of years apart.
  • The Nazgûl not being all male? Middle-Earth Role Playing actually did it first, with the Númenórean woman Adunaphêl.
  • When it comes to Shelob, the developers have stated they patterned her on Thuringwethil, a female Maia briefly referenced in The Silmarillion aliged with Sauron and Morgoth in the First Age who dressed/shapeshifted as a giant vampire bat. So, the idea of a character like this is...okay. Rewriting Shelob to be this character though, lacks all support: Shelob is canonically no mere spider, being descended from an intelligent Eldritch Abomination and capable of thought, but then again so are the spiders of Mirkwood (which are incapable of any of the things Shelob gets up to).
  • Many complaints were made about how a new Great Ring being created is against the spirit of Tolkien. Tolkien mentions in one of his letters that in a "realistic" Middle-Earth, Sauron and Saruman would have divided the lands between them with the latter successfully gaining the knowledge to create his, although he specifically says this as something that is not his work. ^note In canon, Saruman tried making a Ring of Power, but never succeeded as Tolkien basically states only Sauron has the skillset to forge a One Ring. The purpose of the Rings was to preserve the state of the old world and stop the decline of Elves within their sphere of influence, and the One Ring was meant, aside from controlling the other Rings, to preserve Sauron's own power from waning the same way; whatever power they were supposed to hold no longer exists in Middle-Earth.
  • Some criticism has been drawn to Baranor, a black man being featured in the trailer and cover, the Haradrim from the far south of Gondor were identified as a human race with dark/brown skin. The Haradrim were an antagonistic faction (albeit of the Worthy Opponent variant).^note According to the Appendix of Return of the King, Ecthelion II, Denethor's father, was an equal-opportunity ruler who gave a place for absolutely everybody willing to serve in his armies and promoting anyone who showed talent, regardless of where they hailed from — this is how Aragorn in his disguise of Throngil was able to become a high-ranking Captain of Gondor in his younger days. In-game, it's revealed Baranor is a Haradrim hostage who was eventually adopted by a wealthy family in Minas Ithil.
  • While the presence of fire-drakes caused some controversy – Gandalf explicitly says the purpose of the expedition to the Lonely Mountain was to prevent Sauron from reaching and recruiting Smaug – no canon source ever states that there were no dragons left in Middle-Earth. Indeed, Gandalf at one point says "there is not now any dragon left earth" who could melt the Ring, implying that there are still dragons alive. It's not out of the question that Sauron could have some of these lesser dragons or dragon-like creatures in his army; given how destructive even these seem to be, this may actually lend credence to the idea that Gandalf would want to prevent Sauron from recruiting Smaug.^note  In-game, the drakes are revealed to be infertile crossbreeds of dragon and fell-beast that Sauron has been breeding solely for warfare.
  • Some accused the creators of straight-up plagiarizing A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones, by having the Nazgul being capable of raising undead minions called wights, similarly to the White Walkers/Others though they were more like zombies than ghosts. However, Ringwraiths always had their ability to turn living beings into their wraith servants, and similar spirits used by Sauron himself (called Barrow-wights) are mentioned in the books.
  • On a similar note, those who have read the books might think the name "Castamir" is ripped-off from the Reynes of Castamere. Except a character of the same name existed in Tolkien's universe since the Silmarillion, and the Reynes' seat appears to be named after him.
• Overshadowed by Controversy:
  • Microtransactions, lootboxes and the market. Those things are a Berserk Button of greatest magnitude for most players when they show up in multiplayer games, and who are especially opposed to the idea of having a single-player game with any of those; players were afraid that most of Shadow of War high-end content will be restricted to be accessible only by paying real money in a game they'll already have purchased at full-price. Others trusted the developers' assurance that their game's microtransactions were optional, the content can be obtained through normal gameplay, and didn't see them as that bad. Either way, the game has become infamous for how it is monetized by WB.
    • Not helped by one of the developers stating that all the current playtesting had been done without the lootbox system enabled, which many interpreted to mean that it's as slap-dash as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's controversial microtransactions were. Reviews have since called the microtransaction model a silly afterthought.
  • While the game in general got overall, very positive reviews, the more mixed ones all mention the aforementioned Loot Boxes and various instances of Canon Defilement as things that drag down the experience.
• Player Punch:
  • Having any orc follower that you have grown attached to getting killed is bound to be one. Even worse is if they are brought back by Sauron and are now your enemies.
  • Several players lamented about Brûz's betrayal and subsequent Mind Rape being completely scripted and unpreventable. Many have reported to trying to recruit him back after finishing his questline, but unfortunately, he is programmed to betray you because of his permanent deranged state which resulted in certain players choosing to put him out of his misery.
  • Celebrimbor abandoning Talion and revealing that he considered him nothing but a vessel.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: Among early reviews, some say that the plot is lackluster, but the gameplay is an improvement over the first game's (if you don't count the lootboxes, that is).
• Power Up Letdown:
  • As mentioned under Scrappy Mechanic, swords that deal fire damage cause an explosion when it triggers, which, while harmless to Talion, tends to affect flurry kills rather annoyingly.
  • The ability to raise fallen captains from the dead was played up in-story as a game-breaker. However, in reality, the resurrected captains suffer a significant downgrade. They become much more vulnerable to fire and can never level up again. This becomes worse when, to upgrade your Nazgul gear, you need to resurrect several captains of different classes above a certain level. Doing so makes them permanently underpowered as the story progresses.
  • Unlike the previous game, dominating Mooks in mid-combat is now mutually exclusive with recovering Elf-shot from draining, and mooks are usually too fragile and unpredictable to justify giving up such an easy way to replenish ammo and fuel Shadow Strike for greater mobility. As a result, some players stick with the regular, non-dominating drain upgrade. Thankfully, you can still dominate named Uruks regardless of which upgrade is selected once you have the ability.
• Questionable Casting: Underneath the voice filters, Nolan North's take on Isildur is similar to his Penguin voice; Since the other Nazgûl voices have only been deepened, it means that the young Gondorian who cut the ring from Sauron's finger sounded like a raspy, overweight middle-aged man.
• Replacement Scrappy: Downplayed. The ability to switch back to Celebrimbor after beating the game is one of the most requested features on the game's forums. However, Dark Talion is also beloved by many, and the main reason people want to switch between the two wraiths is to hear him talk again. Downplayed even further now that he has his own lines for branding.
• Ron the Death Eater: Poor Eltariel got hit with this pretty badly by some people after she Betrayed Talion to help Celebrimbor against Sauron. Some players seem to think this single act (regardless of Eltariel being otherwise heroic) as an absolute Moral Event Horizon moment, declare her to be just as evil as Sauron (or even worse!), and don't consider ANY kind of reasoning for her actions. "The Blade of Galadriel" did not do much to help, as people still seem to treat her as a Villain Protagonist for targeting Talion (even though she's only doing it under Galadriel's orders, and that Talion agreed with the idea of eventually dying by her hand to avoid a Fate Worse than Death). It comes off as pretty myopic, considering some of the morally questionable actions the player can get up to in the main story.
• Rooting for the Empire:
  • After cruelly and coldly betraying Talion and leaving him to die, many fans outright rooted for Sauron against Celebrimbor since he's not even pretending that he's not going to be another Evil Overlord. Sauron's victory in the final battle against Celebrimbor, complete with the ironic reversal of slashing the Bright Lord's fingers in the style of Isildur likewise makes the bad guy winning into an awesome triumphal moment. It helps that Sauron is very much the devil we know; or more specifically, the devil we know will eventually lose, whereas had Celebrimbor successfully enslaved Sauron, he would have been a much greater threat than Sauron by himself.
  • Ironically enough, this also happens to Celebrimbor himself, because he's a vengeful wraith elf prince who goes all in on Branding Orcs and making an army out of them, which is probably the biggest selling point of the game. By comparison, Talion can look a little bland, given he's more of an everyman who's closer to earth and has reasonable doubts about the morality of what they're doing. The plot also has him hold the Idiot Ball early in the game, such as blindly trusting Shelob and underestimating Carnán's power despite Celebrimbor's warnings. At the very least, a lot of players miss Celebrimbor screaming commands while Branding Orcs after he leaves Talion after Act 3.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Due to the otherwise high amount of Developer's Foresight, (the lack of) some features comes off as rather annoying.
  • The Nemesis system
    • While the ability for captains to betray Talion is okay, even a welcome change from the "you get it, it's always there" of the predecessor, some people's games have this happen so frequently (often several captains at once), and with so little reason, that recruiting captains is seen as a temporary measure at best, with killing them being more reliable. Captains who betray you almost always receive the "Iron Will" trait, which prevents them from being recruited back. This trait has a chance to disappear after being shamed, but it takes extra time nonetheless. "Iron Will" was later nerfed, making it less common and easier to remove from orcs.
    • The "Blood Brothers" trait is one of the more annoying traits an Orc captain can get. When killing a captain with said trait, the captain designated as his blood brother will ambush you to avenge his fallen comrade. By itself the trait isn't that bad, but the problem is caused by the fact enemy captains can be linked to your own orcs. The game does not tell you when a captain gets a blood brother, and any captain can get one whenever time passes. What makes this trait even more annoying is that newly spawned enemy Orc captains can suddenly decide to become a blood brother to one of your favorite captains. Killing a blood brother linked to one of your captains is a guaranteed way for them to betray you. Dealing with this trait is rather cumbersome even if you check your ranks constantly, as your options are: 1) Try to avoid the linked enemy captain at all costs. 2) Kill said captain, wait for his blood brother to betray you and recruit him back into your army through multiple shamings. 3) Recruit the blood brother in your army, even when you don't find him interesting. 4) Having an allied or enemy Uruk kill the captain for you, which will not trigger any of the normal repercussions like betrayals or ambushes. At least, if the Uruk has a Blood Brother, it'll show who they're linked with, allowing players to at least find them and reveal their identity.
    • While betrayal and Blood Brothers add depth to the orcs and both have their upsides, orcs keeping their "Enraged by Rivals" trait when both are dominated is just messy; basically, both orcs will try to kill each other if you summon them simultaneously, and either one may even ambush his rival's Nemesis mission.
    • There's no real way to upgrade your overlords and warchiefs once they're promoted to the position; either you get some training orders from the market, or actively mess up your infrastructure by demoting them to captains and then training them... but this seems to increase their chance of betraying you.
    • It's impossible to kill all the captains of an area and have that area stay free of them for longer than an instant. If the game detects an empty army page, it will immediately spawn a small amount of new captains, seemingly just to avert this. By contrast, in the previous game, the army page would only get new captains if time advanced — which was something the player had to trigger manually (or receive as part of the penalty for dying). Players have noted that the automatic spawning of more captains doesn't add anything to the experience, since advancing time manually does so anyway, but it does damage the Power Fantasy feeling that otherwise forms a core part of the series' appeal.
    • Closely related is the "new Warchiefs spawn automatically" mechanic on Nemesis difficulty and above. Killing Warchiefs is the easiest way to reduce a fortress's level for sieges, but if you take too long between killing them and starting the siege, new ones will simply appear, putting you back to square one. The only way around this is to have an allied captain infiltrate the fortress in the dead Warchief's place, but this takes time and requires a duel that the captain can lose.
    • You cannot create a pit fight between undead orcs and another allied orc, despite the fact that this would speed up grinding considerably, since you could just resurrect the undead one for unlimited target practice.
    • Unless you have a training order you can't move your captain from region to region, which is really tedious as you have to build a different army in every area. Especially infuriating is that enemy Captains have absolutely no problem chasing you through Mordor.
    • Getting rescued by your allies moments before dying is awesome, unless you're actually trying to level up your opponent or create a small plotline. While bodyguards can just be turned off, Forthog can still (albeit rarely) kill your opponent before you want them to die. Likewise, while Uruk kill animations are cool to watch, leveling up an Uruk and then having their head chopped off by another uruk is rather annoying.
  • Gameplay:
    • Despite the new movement options that involve a lot of jumping, it's not possible to perform stealth takedowns from the air.
    • A minor one; weapons that deal fire damage at random can and will end flurry kills early, as they create an explosion when the element triggers. (Every elemental weapon also has the neat ability to enrage captains who hate said element, but otherwise aren't too bad) Especially annoying if the piece of equipment is your best one, so you need to downgrade to get rid of the effect, but on the other hand, it does make the player think whether they want sheer power or a elemental gimmick.
    • You no longer receive experience points for killing random grunt orcs - which makes fighting them often feel like little more than a waste of time (unless you do it to farm gems or money or to build up elven rage or might before a fight).
    • While usually consistent, the combat priorization can occasionally glitch out, like in the first game. Surrounded by captains, and you barely managed to build up one special move? Talion might spend it on the only defenseless grunt instead. It gets especially annoyong if Talion suddenly decides that Savages are his most important targets at the moment. However, the game does fix one large problem the previous game had; Talion can no longer accidentally execute his own orcs.
    • The restriction that you can't activate multiple modular upgrades at once for a single skill has irked some player. For example in Shadow of Mordor dominating an Orc both brands them and gives you Elf-Shot, while with this game's modular upgrades you can only choose one or the other.
    • The "X chance that defeated opponents explode" ability some armors give you, since you too take damage and get knocked back by said explosions. Granted, it would be pretty OP otherwise, but as it makes any fight with multiple enemies a Suicide Mission, the effect is practically worthless.
    • Talion can now perform a shadow strike to enemies on ladders. While the move itself is useful, it ends with an automatic jump that's anything but, since all it does is launch you away from your target.
    • This game adds the ability to replay missions, but for whatever reason, you cannot replay "The Fall" (of Minas Ithril) or "The Bright Lord", the game's ending mission with the final boss fight.
    • The fight pits are a serious Luck-Based Mission. Rarely does a fight play out as a fight; an orc on your side that has rampaged through the entirety of the zone with you can go down to a Mook 15 levels lower than he is without getting in a single hit. The fights seem to be decided as soon as they start and are weighted against your orcs, and when a massive olog you've spent much mirian on training orders to upgrade to legendary repeatedly just poses and nods at the crowd while a common-class junior defender stabs him in the naughty bits over and over until he dies, it can be...frustrating.
  • Regardless of one's feelings about the market while it was still active, it had one glaring design flaw: you couldn't destroy several orcs at once, and there was a 300 orc storage limit. Silver War Chests (purchaseable for 1500 units of in-game currency) had a low chance of including a legendary training order, but also came with two orcs. Trying to get one training order would inevitably result in a large amount of spare orcs, but destroying one took awhile since you needed to hold the button for a few seconds to confirm it, and the market needed to sync with the game's servers. If you decided to use a lot of the easily-acquired money to buy a lot of chests at once, you'd quickly run out of space. In short, it was fast and easy to fill out the storage, but cleaning it up could take over an hour at worst.
    • On a related subject, it's possible for Talion to have hundreds of useless items, and getting rid of them requires that they all be sold one-by-one. In fact, some people who complained that they didn't have enough in-game currency to upgrade forts didn't know that cashing in old junk was an option since the game doesn't even tell you this upfront (notably Yahtzee) to generate tons of cash.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop:
  • The game lists the strengths of the captain/warchief/overlord as soon as you encounter them or learn of their identity. You still need to interrogate worms to learn the enemy's weaknesses, and the enemy's fears and terrors cannot be exploited unless you have this intel, but it's still quite possible to play through the entire game (even on Gravewalker difficulty) without collecting any intel at all, since you'll always know what you shouldn't do.
  • The enrage mechanic has been changed significantly from the first game and captains who get enraged no longer regenerate their health incredibly fast. In addition to this, a Cooldown has also been added after the enrage wears off so that a captain can no longer become continuously enraged.
  • Interrogating and dominating orcs no longer requires you to grab them and stand still for several seconds during which you remain vulnerable, and moves that previously only branded opponents now also instantly dominate them and open the interaction menu. Additionally, domination can no longer be interrupted by enemy attacks unless you're trying to do it by holding the stun button. There is also a skill which allows you to dominate uruks who are not in combat from a distance, and is an upgrade from the Attract skill, which allows you to dominate uruks around campfires (as an example) one by one until you have an army.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike:
  • Unlike Shadow Of Mordor, you can send more than one Death Threat to a nemesis, though you need to wait many turns to fully power them up. ^note Each Death Threat creates a mission where the nemesis prepares for your coming, which sticks around for several turns. Only after this mission disappears can another one be sent to that nemesis, and so on.
  • Uruks in general now have their own traits, especially among specific types/classes. Among them is Death Defiance (automatically reject one finishing move at low health), Fast Learner (an Adaptive Ability that allows one to counter and temporarily No-Sell damage from whatever move damaged them), Decoy (Exactly What It Says on the Tin, where the interface can't tell them apart), Iron Will (immunity to being Dominated and made an Follower), and many more.
  • All orcs, even those that lack the Fast Learner ability, are able to adapt to Talion's attacks if these attacks are used against them repeatedly. The chances of an enemy adapting to an attack also increase with the difficulty setting.
  • In the first game, a weakness or fear usually meant the captain will die or lose all resolve the moment it is exploited. Here, only an orc with mortal weakness, which is rare unless the captain is very low level or has been shamed repeatedly, works like that while normal weaknesses will simply make the captains take more damage and dazes will disable their strengths and make them unable to attack, but will only last for a certain period of time and will not trigger again until its cooldown has expired.
  • End-game Talion isn't quite as powerful as he was in Shadow of Mordor's endgame. This has been confirmed to be intentional, as Mordor was designed to make Talion as overpowered as possible, but the devs wanted this game to stay challenging even after beating everything.
  • Draining/ Dominating during combat now relies on the player filling up a meter instead of getting hit streaks, which is significantly more difficult, not to mention that being poisoned also drains said meter. ^note Talion can also drain/dominate uruks who are knocked to the ground for free via a skill.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • Talion's clothes revert to default in cutscenes, but this is justifiable as they are pre-rendered to allow 4K visuals. (4K files are often huge in terms of file size, and having multiple variants of the same cutscenes would quickly become a nightmare)
  • Thrown hammers turn into arrows if they hit an arrow-proof enemy. For whatever reason, neither hammers or longbows also can't trigger nemesis introducions.
  • Dark Talion still uses Celebrimbor's weapons, and his dark green effects sometimes revert to light blue. Shadow Strike pull is the worst example, as Talion clearly uses Celebrimbor's blue hammer and the move emits blue smoke. While harder to notice, activating photo mode during regular shadow strikes shows that the afterimage of Talion's sword is still Celebrimbor's sword. As Talion receives his own hammer after becoming a Nazgul which he uses in The Blade of Galadriel, it's likely something the devs missed.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: One that actually forms the basis of the opening act, no less. So you want to start forming your own army and taking out Sauron's fortresses? Fine, but you have to spend about 10 hours doing Shelob's quests in Cirith Ungol and Minas Ithil first, because she took your ring (and with it, your branding powers).
• Tainted by the Preview: Not necessarily tainted, but the fact that the game still seemed to be in alpha as of May, three months before the initially-announced release date was a bit unnerving to some. Even as the game itself seems to be rather-solidly built, and the graphics are steadily improving from the last-gen level first seen, the time-frame involved was the real kicker. This was fixed somewhat when numerous publications post very positive first impressions of the game, along with more and more footage, and even moreso when the date was pushed-back to October.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Those who disliked the market were happy to know that the orc who previously appeared in the Market screen was added into the Nemesis System when the market was removed. And he isn't unique, so he can respawn. So now the players have a physical manifestation of microtransactions they can chop up into tiny pieces over and over again.
• That One Achievement: "If You Can't Beat Them", if only because you need to die thrice to the same orc (humiliation doesn't count), and the usually rare rescues your allies can perform keep happening surpringly often. Bodyguard rescues can be turned off by turning off the power, but Forthog or even a Warchief can still save you. This one is easier in Minas Morgul and now that endless sieges were added, as you can now get rid of every ally in any location, thus making Forthog's rare appearances your only obstacle.
• That One Boss: Funnily enough, the more Nazgul there are, the easier they are to beat. One-to-one battles against them are surprisingly difficult. Helm constantly summons wildlife to attack you, making it hard to focus on fighting him. Isildur keeps rising the mooks who've died on the battlefield, and undead orcs can't be countered traditionally. Arguably, the hardest thing about Isildur's final fight are your own allies, who tend to swarm Isildur so you can't hit him.
• That One Sidequest: Many of the challenges to upgrade Eltariel's gear are pretty tough.
  • The Ice elemental set's armor and swords require you to freeze several enemies in a small timeframe - but unlike the other elements with similar requirements, there are no ice AoE attacks in the DLC. The only way to freeze several opponents in one move is either a certain piece of gear (being cursed freezes nearby enemies) and the icicles in Seregost, both of which rely on luck. Your best bet may just be to use your bow to freeze enemies^note The freezing bow's bonus is that pinning freezes the opponent entirely and using the freezing set bonus to kill them quickly.
  • One item requires you to kill a drake while riding a graug. While using the bow is allowed, finding both creatures at the same time can be difficult, as you can't just summon both of them.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The scripted betrayal of Brûz the Chopper and his subsequent Shaming, just to introduce a gameplay mechanic, didn't sit well with many players who grew fond of the big lug and wanted to have him stick around as a permanent ally. Brûz can still be dominated and kept as a follower after the shaming, but most of his personality will be gone and he will have a high chance of betraying you again.
  • The returning orcs you chose in Mordor's Nemesis Forge have very small roles. Your opponent shows up as an early boss fight in "The Arena", and never appears afterwards. Your "closest ally" is rescued in a later mission, but behaves exactly like every other ally; meaning that it's possible that the first thing they ever do after the mission is to betray you. To be fair, the fact that not everyone played the forge or the previous game does limit their roles.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring:
  • This has been the overall argument for fans who did not like the true ending of the game, claiming that by having the bad guy winning, everything done during the course of the game was ultimately undone. Though considering Sauron was inevitably going to win since he still amasses an enormous army to conquer the rest of Middle Earth during the Fellowship trilogy, other fans wonder why no one saw this coming anyway. As they note, this is one part where the game is being true to Tolkien, compared to all its other changes. Trying to defeat Sauron by using his own means against him, or wanting to mirror his power will simply not work, as Tolkien set out to demonstrate with Boromir and Saruman in the original series, and which Monolith proves with Talion, Celebrimbor and Eltariel.
    • Eltariel's DLC helps handle this, as it shows Tallion's fall in much more tragic terms, and emphasizes the tragedy that he's a good man who simply couldn't hold out...but has the same issue at the end, as it implies Eltariel was corrupted by Celebrimbor, and has Celebrimbor survive the death of Sauron...
  • Many critics have also noted that the game's highly touted Nemesis system essentially amounts to slavery, which the game's story condemns the player for. Adding to this is the fact that unlike other Tolkien works where orcs are portrayed as Always Chaotic Evil, the orcs in Shadow of War have free will and their own distinct personalities and motivations. And it is impossible to convert the orcs to your side through positive reinforcement - you have to abuse them and break their wills — though Elteriel's DLC proves this is untrue; she gains followers without Branding any of them.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Forthog Orc-Slayer gives some vibes of this, what with his perfectly human face in a corpulent Uruk body combined with his highly detailed skin.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Some players feel this way about the armor of the Servant set. At level 35^note When you unlock it, it's always at level 35, no matter what Talion's level is it's dirty, torn, red and black/dark green. However, each upgrade repairs it a bit, and its color scheme changes to dark blue cloth and black armor with yellow highlights at max level.^note Although this color scheme better matches the level 0-20 version seen in cutscenes and before you beat the game. The passive ability it offers (Reduced damage from undead enemies) is also highly situational since you will only encounter enemy undead when fighting a captain with the Necromancer trait. While the armor's spikier appearance looks pretty cool, the fact that it has very little resemblance to the level 20-40 version and the sheer amount of yellow/gold in it annoys some players, especially since the armor is meant to be similar to those the Nazgûl wear. Fortunately, the July update adds an alternate version of the armor, with a darker color scheme and a new, more broadly useful passive ability (Grunts have a chance of turning undead upon death, excluding decapitation).

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