We played this game in multiplayer with 3 people.

The gameplay loop is:
Surviving, gathering, exploring, crafting, base building, improving.

There are a lot of stuff we dicovered and had a LOT of fun. As a dwarf you mine, you drink, you feast and you fight with your friends.

We played on "Hard" difficulty. The game was challanging but not frustrating.
We had to armour up in every zone, to be able to proceed to a new zone. Then we had to armour up again, which let us to more exploring for better ore, better preperation, more buffing, getting used to dodging, treating blocking as important, celebrating beers and eating meals at the right time of the day, make stronger bases because we getting raided and making outposts for fast travel.

Loading times as a connected client were a bit odd. Some zones need to be loaded long or are not loaded and seperated by a dark, dotted line, till the game catches up. We got used to it and it was maybe the biggest negative point. Luckily, the game loop made us so much fun, that this was not so bad in our eyes.

Every zone was a progress of survival and improvement with a lot exploration. Later in game, we realised that sneaking is very useful. Entering a new zone introduces often stronger enemy types. So your weapons are weak again until you find better ore and materials. The dark of moria can also be used for something useful and some enemies call for help. The later zones felt more and more like a strong thread.

Being a dwarf itself is so ... rewarding. You can drink beer and buff yourself. You sing catchy songs, which i still hear in my head right now. Craft on multiple crafting stations. Mine and sing with your friend TOGETHER and then mine even better. So many ore variations to find, alloys which use reuse older ores and let your dwarfen hearth light up. So many food to feast on and choose of for the right situation. Building your dwarfen halls, decorationg it and admire your found treasure. Its was so fun.

Ore patches are finite tho, exept from stones which can respawn. These reward less ores and are random so we basically started a second, parrallel sandbox world to mine there with our characters, simulating basically an endless mine of moria. We did not bother, but maybe some do.

We finished the game.

It has some flaws, like the stuff i mentioned negative above, but we had so much fun and a really good time. We had some comfy evenings at our PC, decorating our dwarfen homes and forges. We cared to keep our supplies up, gathered together, gave us tasks and helped us when a dwarf was in danger.

Reatreating from a storming horde of orcs was often a valid solution, but we came back stronger and damn, it was satisfying to approch a new zone and then, after gearing up, smashing through the hordes of orcs who before stomped you in the ground. Charging with shield into the filthy orc, which just wanted to attack my friends from behind, was my favorite. I loved to play defensive and we somehow had all kinda, different playstiles.

I really can reccomend this came to everyone, who want to have some fun, doesnt bother about maybe occuring flaws and have and intresting exploration and crafting experience. Get yourself a real life beer, snacks and enjoy some slow paced exploring with your friends. "Hard" difficulty was worth it together. So, it wasn't a hack and slay, it was a journey and experience together.

When the credits ran over the screen and after having a nice time for a few weeks, we can say that this game was worth our time!

We kinda want more... much more!

I Recommended this one for playing with friends! i don't think id recommend it solo but it is possible.

This is one of the most unique and very enjoyable survival games I've ever played!!! Set entirely underground, the exploration is both amazing and immersive.You have to balance food, sleep, and the effects of darkness, all can be quite challenging, but it fits perfectly within the game’s environment.

All thouuuughhhh battles with Orcs and other creatures can be hard and frustrating it is not impossible and i still enjoy it and i've never felt like not playing the game.

If you've ever enjoyed music inspired by dwarven singing, WELLLL you're in for a treat! The game captures that beautifully. Playing with a group of friends just makes the experience even better! i am truly impressed
Whether you choose to create a new character to join your friends or continue with an existing one, the enjoyment of playing together is unparalleled.

I’ll leave it with that, discover even more wonders for yourself!

I would like to preface this review by saying that I did play through the entirety of this game with a group of 3 friends and I did have some fun times along the way. However, I only had an enjoyable time with this game due to the fact that I was playing through it with friends. I truly think that this game would make a horrible single player survival crafting experience that would feel much more tedious and lonely than it does with a group. In my opinion this is a sub par open world survival crafting game that has its LOTR setting doing a lot of heavy lifting for it.

At the end of the day there are just so many other great games within this genre that do a much better job with their exploration, building, crafting, and progression. There were many times when playing this game that progression just felt artificially slowed down due to things like armor system that has you basically return to base after every fight to repair armor. Or the energy system that has you quickly lacking your already insufficient stamina bar soon after going out for another trek into the mines. It also felt like this game was too slow to introduce fast travel which made the early game more of a slog than necessary.

There are just so many features, like others have mentioned, that just do not feel as polished as they should or make things unnecessarily tedious. Things such as the lack of showing stats for armor and weapons can be very confusing at first. Weapons and armor go up on a tier basis, and even then things like shields and helmets stay basically the same tier for the entire game which makes switching them out purely cosmetic whenever you discover a new set of armor. Another thing that I can't believe still isn't included in this modern day game is the ability to dismantle or simply destroy items. After you make a new piece of equipment, it exists in the game world forever. Your only choices for dealing with useless equipment is to drop it on the ground (where it will stay until you pick it up again) or to place it in a chest or equipment rack.

In conclusion, if you have a group of friends to play this with or you are a massive LOTR fan by all means give this game a shot and maybe you will love it. But if you haven't played any of the other great games in this genre like Valheim, Enshrouded, Subnautica, No Man's Sky, Raft, the list goes on and on. Then I encourage you to try them instead of this game because they simply do all of their gameplay features better.