Middle-earth: Shadow of War
The ending of this game is awful. It's a cowardly, last-minute attempt to bring this series in line with the continuity of the LotR movies, and not only is this effort laughably unsuccessful, it cheats the player out of an awesome climax they're going to feel they deserve after playing through the story. The devs didn't have the balls to follow through with what the series had been steadily building up to and fully divorce themselves from the official canon. I know that nobody in the world is going to be playing this game for the story, and rightfully so, but the lame toothlessness of the ending really is that frustrating. I was genuinely onboard with the loopy fanfic feel of the game up to that point, and enjoyed the blatant disregard of the moral philosophy of LotR for its sheer audacity.
That's far from the game's only flaw. The combat is a good deal harder than it was in Shadow of Mordor, but it doesn't quite play fair in how it increases the difficulty. Battles now seem to be a lot more chaotic, with enemies that require different keystrokes to dodge or counter all attacking at the same time, attacks are harder to dodge or counter, last chances and executions are trickier to pull off, captains have a lot more defenses and immunities in general, and the beasts you can dominate and ride have been nerfed to the point of near-ineffectiveness. If you have fond memories from Mordor of riding a caragor or graug around and slaughtering orcs with gleeful abandon, be warned that your mount will be very, very quickly killed if you try that here. The drakes - yes, they're drakes, not dragons - are no better. You are not going to be soaring triumphantly over Mordor as you consume the armies of Sauron in flame. You are going be turned into a pincushion by the orcs below as you awkwardly do your best to maybe blast a few of them with your short-ranged breath before you die. Also, there's an unfortunate MMO-like feel to the game, as indicated by the general structure (short and repetitive) of the missions from the main quest, the focus on collecting and upgrading gear (the microtransactions are annoying, but can be ignored fairly easily), and excessive grinding being essentially required.
The good news is that the grinding is a ton of fun. The return of the Nemesis System from Mordor, now even bigger and better, is this game's saving grace. There are dozens of orc captains, all with their own colorful, distinctive personalities and plenty of unique situational dialogue. Once I poisoned a barrel of grog and was promptly tackled by an assassin who specialized in poisoning, who then yelled at me that I was an amateur and using too high a dose. There's another captain who confronts you if you gather intel on him. Another is draped in spider's webs and claims that he has become "one with the spiders." Some of them will cheat death and return to you markedly different, sometimes even with a new name and fighting style, like an orc who now has a claw in place of a lost limb, or an orc previously beaten by poison who now is a shambling, diseased wreck. My personal favorite was a bard who plays (and fights with) a spiked lute, and sings every line of dialogue. It's a blast to meet all these wacky characters and then decide whether to kill or recruit them.
So, if you liked the previous game, you'll almost certainly like Shadow of War as well. I don't regret buying it, and I'm sure I have a lot more playing to do before I'm through with it. But it's incredibly messy and inconsistent, and I am a little disappointed on the whole that it's not as good as it ought to be.