Felt like the game had great ideas, a good team for many aspects...but then were forced to rush critical pieces or else lacked access to fairly crucial elements of the Tolkein legendarium that are required for this undertaking.

My wife and I played this for around 73 hours and I don't feel it was worth it. In summary, the time invested was rewarded with a few half decent cut scenes, solid armour cosmetics, cut-and-paste biomes, hack-and-slash combat, John Rhys-Davies reprising Gimli for 10 mins of overall speech, agonising hide-and-seek to find basic items, poorly explained limitations (i.e., salt is way more rare and valuable than mithril or adamant), mega-grindy mechanics, sparse customisation beyond character facial features and an small colour swatch for fixed armour designs. Even the "end" is pretty lacklustre - essentially Gimli hits you with a "Yay! You made it out of the cave - now go back in and make it nicer cause Durin may come one day."

I would say there was maybe a 15 hour window where we knew what to do, difficulty was enough to fire up the adrenaline sporadically, there were vague allusions to a storyline(ish) and there was a mix of building, mining and fighting that was alright.

However, if you're making a *mining* game then perhaps figure out and build in the mining mechanics. Floating debris that obstructs movement, ludicrously stupid and needlessly tiny irksome hit boxes, no physics simulations (i.e., cascading debris when undermining sections) and no consideration of what might be required to secure collapsing walls (something like braces) really kept you from being immersed. Where there are rooms with falling rocks, these target you as if Saruman himself is conjuring them over your head and these can even reach you when you're sheltered inside an ore vein, breaking yet more laws of physics.

In addition to being incapable of simulating a modicum of realism in the mining department, it was not uncommon to break free from the limited immersion by being stalled and forced to stand in front of an "invisible" dotted wall for 30 seconds as terrains and textures loaded. Add to this regular crashes of the game and both of our computers, and basic gameplay significantly suffered. (For contrast, I'm running full spec Ghost of Tsushima with nary a problem.)

Add to that a very irritating pool of basic songs that were never in time with mining swings (kind of the point of a working song?), were about either killing bears (not really the core interest of Dwarfs?) or about Bilbo...Now, I'm sure these Dwarves liked Bilbo, but the expedition was led by Gimli so surely his tales were of his adventures more than Bilbo's hobbit hole? Layer over that the Dwarves had about 1,000 years of history pre-Bilbo - perhaps the battles with Azog, the Five Armies, the Mountain King (not just the fulfilled prophecy), the migration to the Blue Mountains, the history of the Iron Hills, the War in the North, etc. - maybe a few of those might have been deemed worthy of a couple of songs by the Dwarf bards? It might also be less grating if you weren't forced to listen to those ad naseum - while spending a needlessly painful 30 seconds drinking any pint (key to getting buffs) or while mining (something you probably spend about 40% of game time doing).

Overall, I liked the idea of this game and desperately wanted to love it...sadly, the end result is lacking. There are a number of Easter Eggs, yet even these are either too on the nose, too contrived or ultimately deficient of Tolkein-esque substance. If you want a mining game, there are others that have figured out physics and engineering. If you want to play a Tolkein game, this one nods to canon but lacks the depth and substance that a true fan craves/requires. Appreciate much of these shortcomings are likely due to IP limitations, but as with Rings of Power, if you can't do it well and honour the source material (which is backed by a militant fanbase), maybe it's not the right time to do it.

tl;dr - a great concept, some early game fun, but ultimately bogged down by a more tedious late game and issues with combat.

I truly wanted to love this game. Everything is primed for a wonderful survival game - deep lore, rich atmosphere, dwarves and riches, hordes of goblins and orcs. However, it is really bogged down by some half-baked systems.

First and the most tragic is navigation. There was a real opportunity to emphasize the 3D traversal of a mountain, however the majority of your navigation is entirely two-dimensional. You run through relatively flat hallways or wide open rooms, with only the occasional need to ascend or descend. Worse, the rare opportunities you have to go up or down is bogged down by incredibly shoddy mechanics of two different platforms. Placing these structures on the wall can be supremely frustrating - not just in how they are placed, but then in using them to traverse the terrain while being pestered by flying enemies.

Enemies in general are frustrating. They are not frustrating in a challenging way, but in a way that simply slows down the player. Small groups will call for backup that spawns out of no where, however you can shield or block damage from any direction - even behind you. So combat becomes just hold down block and then attack once or twice. Repeat for several minutes until all the enemies are dead. And it will take several minutes because these foes are essentially just damage sponges. Flying enemies become a new challenge because the game apparently cannot allow you to target on a vertical axis, so hitting bats or moths becomes a nightmare - a nightmare that also exists against goblins when you utilize stairs.

Resource gathering is the next real heart breaker here. The most critical resource you have as a player is ore. Iron, copper, tin, etc., all the way to mithril. These are also incredibly easy to deplete in your game and be essentially soft-capped. Salt is particularly sensitive. A seemingly rare material depending on your seed, you can easily deplete your Salt midgame by making rations or making leather... then to find out you need Salt to craft an essential ingot (Durin Steel) later on. Player suggestions to create a sandbox game and transport resources via your character are a workaround to a problem that really shouldn't exist at all. Valheim gets away with this by having such a huge world that truly running out of resources is inconceivable but I have managed to carve out pretty much the entirety of the Crystal Descent.

Base building isn't particularly enjoyable either. You get buffs via drinking, sleeping, eating, admiring your treasure, and venerating the monuments of fallen heroes. However, I've found that the majority of buffs are so damn short that they will mostly have run out before you manage to navigate back to where you have been exploring. Inventory space is also wildly limited so you will spend most of your time with short hops going back and forth to your base and, frustratingly, using the mapstones seems to rapidly deplete your food and energy.

I just honestly think there are better survival games out there, but there are some ways for developers to fix this:

1. Improve the tools for players to traverse vertically - larger platforms, better connectivity between them.
2. More reason for using these vertical tools with larger vertical spaces and reasons to scale those vertical spaces
3. Make combat a bit more interesting by making blocking directional, reducing enemy HP, and emphasizing positioning.
4. Larger mineral veins. Small veins are fine, but players should be excited about stumbling upon a massive reserve and have reason to put down a little mining camp.
5. Make decorating useful by extending the duration of buffs
6. Mining carts? I mean seriously, let me lay down some tracks instead of just teleporting everywhere. Give me a diagetic way of speeding around tunnels.

dont know what i was exspecting when i finally bought it.. but it was not what i thought it would be, dont get me wrong i am enjoying the game loads.

with everything on high the game is beautiful, it runs smoothly and again its just beautifull.

game play itself is not your average survival basebuild but stil fun, the building is fairly straight forward altho im curious to see the full exstent (playing campaign)

as i progress ive found that getting decent weapons armor and the stuff is not that easy its a bit of a learning curve thats for sure.

id love it even more if the descriptions was a little bit.. well more, like give me an indication of where to find certain items or mobs but i suppose thats also a learning curve

one thing am not liking is the endless running going back and forth between my 2 camps was a pain! black diamond yeah no luck.

but all that aside this game is amazing and i cant wait to see how it all unfolds and if i can get my friends to play this with me because alone is not so much fun after a time.

8/10 recommend this game!