I waited a long time before getting this game, due to people saying it's full of microtransactions. Despite the i'll reviews that i've read I decided to give this game a try. Tbh I am glad that I did

As the title suggests this is more or less Shadow Of Mordor enhanced. The gameplay follows the same formula while adding alot of more upgrades and options. The further development of recruiting your very own army, and having them besiege a fortress adds what we missed from Shadow of Mordor. However, just like the last game, i feel that after a while the entire dark/bright lord's army thing got booring, along with the gameplay itself. However by adding many new locations with different scenery really made this game last longer in my eyes, perhaps way to long. I made it my quest to collect every collectible, just like i did in the first game along with doing different quest's along the way. The more i spent my time doing this, the more burned out i became. Since this is the part where i review the gameplay i'll continue with that in the story part. So long story short. Gameplay, more or less the same as the first game with alot more things to do.

Shadow's of Mordor's story was captivating. It was all about finishing your blacklist of targets while thining out the ranks of Sauron at the same time. This game pretty much picks up some time after the first game. Your mission now is to defeat Sauron. To a surprise to me we start the whole game of with a blast with the siege of Minas Ithil. I felt that I was in for a treat. the story starts of great but slowly goes downhill the more i play. As I mentioned earlier, trying to gather collectibles and doing quests at the same time kinda got tiring. After a while the story seemed to fall apart. At one point i am fighting the nazguls trying to defend the palantir, and helping the gondorians escape mordor. To fighting for carnan and helping her fight against a turncoat orc mage. The missions starts to get repetetive and the only thing that makes me wanna finish the game is the fact that it is a game set in tolkiens universe' (if we can even call it his universe at this point) Still the story has it's moments and despite the dull character development and story there were times where i thought. Not bad, great job monolith! However towards the ending the whole story just grinds to a halt. Like literally. Not that i was not surprised or anything but the way they decided to go with the whole Talion/Celebrimbor story line with Eltariel as backup.....dull. I mean literally so dull and stupid that i just wanted to uninstall the game and never play it again. I might exhagurate, and it might just be that i am still pissed of about how they decided to end the Carnan story aswell. It's just something that they brought with them from the first game. They just cant get a good ending. However if you are willing to pay a bit of real life mullah in order to actually finish the 87th part of defending and taking a fortess then here you have it. Enojy, courtesy of monotlith! Just messing about. The micro transaction thing is not that bad as many people are saying. To me it was not a problem, until they decided that you have to grind these orcs captains to lever 80 along with 5 others and then defend the fortess and procced with the same routine with all of the other fortresses. That is what pissed me of at that micro transaction thing, however monolith has stated that they are to remove it so we'll see how that goes. Anyways i looked up the ending on youtube and i must admit even with the lackluster story i still watched it with the sense of a perfect closure. It actutally got to me. The ending would have been alot better if they just hadn't locked it behind a grindfest.

Still i got what i paid for and even with a slightly disappointing story i bought the dlc's when they popped on sale. So dont let the MT's scare you. You will still have fun while not hurting your wallet.