Middle-Earth: Shadow of War offers a massive upgrade to the nemesis system which was already incredible in the first game. In my forty five hours of playtime I safely say that I never encountered a single Uruk with the same design as one I had faced previously. The narrative is full of various storylines that are well worth completing because they are genuinely interesting and offer great incentives like skills tied to their progression. It was also wonderful to see the return of several characters from the previous entry. The sieges are easily the highlight of the entire experience because everything about them feels grand and epic even if the build up takes longer than the actual five to ten minute battles. The Blade of Galadriel expansion provides a nice story with unique abilities while the Desolation of Mordor DLC is phenomenal and feels endlessly replayable. Playing as Baranor is a blast because his grapple gun and parachute make traversal just as fun as playing as Talion and it was great to see Torvin make a brief return.
There are still some lingering issues that can be a bit frustrating during gameplay. The Gondorian Artifacts are fully voiced but lack subtitles so it is very easy to accidentally cut off the speaker while playing. This same issue applies to the Shelob Memories because solving the puzzles too quickly will cut off her dialogue meaning you’ll miss out on some lore. The traversal problems from the first game still exist to some extent and I often found Talion jumping down to the ground when I actually intended for him to leap forward onto a wall. While the new adaptability feature is a cool concept that forces you to change your tactics it can make certain enemies like Defenders infinitely more difficult and tedious to deal with once they learn all your moves.
Overall Middle-Earth: Shadow of War is a massive and ambitious sequel that perfects the innovative nemesis system and delivers truly epic scale battles through its siege mechanics. Despite some minor traversal quirks and audio subtitle omissions the sheer depth of the world and the replayability of its expansions make it an essential experience for fans of the series.