The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria™

The game is a base builder and exploring game with lore and small story beats to fill in the rest. Unique to this game is the mining songs and lots of drinking. As dwarves do. Fun to play with just two people ( I would recommend at least playing with a duo!) or more!

NOTE: This review is made without access to any DLC. I am not going to mark this recommended or not until after i write this. As i just finished the campaign and am very debated whether or not i can recommend this or not. So as i type ill be considering it. Im going to start with the issues i had with the game. 1. It was very "Samey" after the first 3 major zones. While there is unique place in each major zone, they HEAVILY reused things. For example one of the things that disappointed me the most was all of the "Great Forges" you re-light only 1 uses a partially visually different model, all are the same puzzle, with the same solution, and with same solution complete animation and effect. 2. This is more of a personally gripe and may not effect others, but i had a lighting graphical flicker glitch happen starting at the 4th major zone, at time it was really distracting and broke my immersion constantly. 3. My god the amount of singing you do. It a really cool feature, and early game does it right, but late game you do it SO MUCH. Sing for a buff, sing for a statue, sing for a door, sing for a light; over and over and over, just sing sing sing. Dont get me wrong the songs were good, but the mechanic is way over used. 4. All over balancing and progression starting from about mid major zone 3 and on, like the best way to describe it is like you are walking along then suddenly you hit a locked plastic door, instead of looking for the key you keep walking into the door, slowly stretching out the door till suddenly it breaks and you go sprinting out until 3/4 the way till the next door. 5. Confusing ASF resources ~ What i mean by this is that in end game you have your normal "fix this statue" however the abundant stone material is "adamant" so what do your statues use? Granite. What does not exist at all in late game in any meaning number? Granite. Oh but you still need adamant since other repair objects use it. Like seriously late game 1/4 your inventory is filled with stuff you "MIGHT" need, until you dont need them anymore. Add to that late game enemies become effectively loot piñatas, so if you collect everything you quickly loose all inventory space(even with a T3 backpack). 6. Weird world scale ~ So the best way i can describe this is the final tier of "Hearth" It's radius is so large, there is only 1 area large enough and safe enough to use it fully, you need a few extra t3 to fill in gaps to prevent patrol spawns. However once you do you got a massive safe zone, during my playthrough even if i built the remain buildings, a custom house to put it all in, and a guest house for friends. I'd maybe at most use up 1/6th the amount of space. Any other room with the hearth and the room is too small. Outside of the bad, here is the good. 1. The combat was mostly fun, except when it came to Uruuk who break all rhythm the combat has. 2. Building while it had its annoyances was fun and rewarding. 3. Exploring consistently rewarded well through out the game. So 100% of the map meant good rewards. 4. Played as Dwarf Things i dont see as bad or good, just disappointed about. 1. Too many unbreakable decorative only in world objects. I can't count the amount of times i was like "this might make a good base camp" just to try and break some rumble and find its a permanent feature. 2. Forced slow pacing. It makes it hard to get into since it feels like you aren't getting anywhere until you do get some where. 3. Lack of "base spots", i feel there was only a few areas that made good "this is my base for now" spots. Wish they had more open areas, or at least area you can make open without spending 20+ hours digging out pre-built walls. 4. Unfixable destruction ~ I understand why, but at the same time how am i supposed to feel like i am "restoring moria" when i can't fix that pillar, clear out that rumble filled passage, or repair that floor/stair/wall. Just let me fix things please. I think ill go with recommending this game. It has its issues, but is fun and if you are a fan of LOTR, its a has a lot value in just that. ----- NOTE: This section was written after getting the DLC The DLC is honestly half baked, like you can see the potential everywhere and what the devs WANTED it to be, but it falls short. Complaints 1. All the dialogue when talking to NPC even quest dialogue is unvoiced. Meaning it goes from a game where 90% of the important quest stuff is voice to well reading. It not really a bad thing but its such a tone shift it feels incomplete. 2. NPCs can only travel within loaded cells within a zone, meaning if you built your main base in the later sections of the game like i did, the miner dwarves are pretty much useless. That is assuming they worked right to begin with. I got lucky and found a iron vein close enough that i just extended my base to make it safe for the miner to travel there. then after a while of playing i've seen no iron produced. This is a issue since the BIGGEST reason to use them over mining it yourself is they do not consume the vein to mine it. Meaning infinite ore, if you did not have to stay in a spot the kept the areas the miner needed loaded at all times. 3. Some of the most useful dwarves to get are not for sure, like a cooking dwarf or brewmaster. Gathering and combat are the only 2 professions any dwarf can do, with gathering be really useful for late game when you want to keep a farm collected. Good things 1. It makes a singleplayer playthrough feel less isolating. When you sing and NPCs are nearby they join in. 2. It takes away a little bit of the tedium of some minor tasks when in singleplayer. 3. Gives more use for gold coins. 4. Gives you more to do post game 5. Gives you more of a reason to build housing and repair broken down structures. Meh things 1. Really underwhelming for the normal price, get it on sell. 2. You can go outside but the interactions are limited. 3. They have a trading/bartering system, but it relying on crafted goods heavily, which relies on smiths, which rely on miners. Since miners suck it makes the system daunting to use. 4. Serious amount of teleporting for the late game content. 5. If you are late game and go to save the gimli dwarves you have to either look up where they are, or search the entirety of the first 3/4 of the game. Overall i recommend it, though get the DLC on sale. I hope the devs decide to fix the game and DLC, or at the very least a modder do it.

Uno dei giochi più immersivi che abbia mai provato. Giocarlo con un amico e vedere questi gnomi cantare e ammazzare gente lo rende un'esperienza sia divertente che adrenalinica. Sembra meglio di quello che appare dai video.

awesome

After reading so many negative reviews I picked up this game on the cheap as I love Lotr. I have been pleasantly suprised. It feels fun finding your way around, and just when it begins to feel a little samey, it moves the story on. Decent pacing and relaxed. Squeaky bum time navigating down a huge mine shaft. Nice game I'll likely keep going on.

So this game is fun, it has some bugs that NPC's enemies being glitched into walls and stuff. I enjoy the survival aspect and the building aspect. However, I think it was a bad move for the developers to cut off support after the DLC got negative reviews. Development should've honestly continued to patch the ongoing bugs that players still encounter. That being said the game is quite enjoyable.

fun survival craft in the Tolkien universe.

Love exploring Moria.

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