I really wanted to like Shadow of Mordor but after 6 hours I couldn't stand the gameplay loop anymore. There's too many mechanics: I know, it should be a pro, but it's not when you get swarmed by 5 different types of enemies that you should fight in completely different ways, at the same time. The Nemesis system is useless. Controversial opinion maybe, but I don't really see an emergent storytelling from the system like you could have tracking dynasties in Crusader Kings 2, or the Order members in AC:Odyssey. Enemies gets replaced, some just return in an infinite loop (in my last session I had a low power captain return 4 times in a row and every time he became invulnerable to the mechanic I used to kill him), and if you fail they upgrade their rank... but then what? Maybe in the sequel they have more personality and the possibility of collecting them makes the task more fun, but here? You just watch an excel table of Orc names move. The plot is just not a plot. It doesn't move, it's mostly a showcase for the setting and the Nemesis system itself. The game is grindy. There's dozens and dozens of side missions to grind to earn "money" to power up your character and unlock another button combinations for an ability that the swarm of enemies won't let you use, being most of them perfect for dueling NPCs but you're either going stealth or playing a musou game with a single underpowered AoE attack.
