Absolutely amazing game with a boring generic plot, but the main story doesn't bother me at all because the Nemesis system, that's where the real story is. this system is the main selling point and for good reason.
I've only done 6 main story missions and have only reached the second region and I have over 30 hours of gameplay due to the Nemesis system procedurally generating far more interesting and personal stories than the main storyline. In fact the main story line is only good for unlocking more skills, if you're a massive fan of Lord of the Rings you might enjoy the main story, it keeps the game going, but I'm not a fan of LOTR lore or films,
For me, I only do the main story to just unlock more and more skills, mechanics and gameplay systems that enhances the nemesis system to be more complex than it is at the start, the main plot missions are mostly tutorials at the beginning.
This is one of the most addicting games I've ever played, I bought it for 4 euro on sale and got insanely lucky, I've played the first game but this one takes it to another level. It seperates itself from Ubisoft open worlds by never allowing the world to become boring because you're constantly creating new enemies, allies, taking out Captains, and generating your own personal vendettas and even planting spies in the enemy ranks.
The combat is incredible, taken straight from the Batman Arkham games except instead of punching you're slaughtering Orcs with swords and arrows. The stealth is great too.
The movement and traversal is absolutely amazing, you can climb pretty much anything, make large leaps flying through the air, ride monsters and beasts, as you upgrade you can cross the map simply by sprinting and jumping into the air and climbing every structure and mountain you come across.
The nemesis system carries this game and seperates it from most other open worlds. I haven't even unlocked all of the mechanics in the nemesis system but for example, I killed an Orc with poison and he died being eaten by bugs that I dropped on him by shooting a hive and dropping them on his head while he was low on health.
He came back completely deformed and worshipped bugs, and was immune to poison, his dialogue was rambling and crazy. The amount of dialogue they have recorded for the Orcs to account for every way you could have killed them or how you dealt with their "blood brothers" is insane, they take into account your relationship with every captain you've killed. Plant a spy in a group of Orcs? They might get captured and executed in front of you in public as a random encounter. Kill an Orc with fire? He'll come back worshipping the fire gods or something, You'll get ambushed in the middle of a mission by an Orc who has a beef with you, you might get saved by an Orc you've added to your army, you might get betrayed by him, you might get ambushed by like 4 captains at once, and if you die an ally has a chance to jump in and save you before the death blow.
the amount of unique interactions is bananas, the amount of time it must have taken to account for everything is unreal, Orc captains have unique personalities, weaknesses, fears etc. and like I said, I haven't unlocked the full potential of the system.
My main critique is the main story, but it doesn't bother me at all really.
Also it can become very trivial and easy as you progress in terms of grinding and unlocking powerful skills and weapons, but this is very easily fixed by changing the difficulty, I recommend raising the difficulty to Nemesis to keep the game challenging, not only does it make combat less trivial and easy, it makes the nemesis mechanic more important.
For example, on Normal difficulty, Orc captains have different weaknesses, fears, and different immunities to certain skills such as stealth or certain effects such as fire or poison immunity, you're supposed to take advantage of to kill them.
But on normal mode if you have a powerfu enough weapons and good skills and build, you don't have to utilize their weakness at all, just have a good enough weapon and strength build and you can just slash them to death with your sword using normal combat methods.
The nemesis difficulty forces you to utilize their different weaknesses and fears and change you build or tactics, because you can be killed much faster and you don't do as much damage in normal combat, it makes every captain encounter far more tense and requires planning before you do it, especially since you can be ambushed and are surrounded by multiple normal orcs and have to deal with them all while finding a way to kill the captain using his weaknesses that you have to learn through investigation and interrogating other Orcs.
Most addictive game I've played in years.
