Recent reviews by DarkCat

Good soundtrack, good gameplay, good game.

Personally my favorite 4X game. Factions are different from another not only in storytelling but also gameplay. As such the game opens up to many different player preferences when it comes to winning. Graphics are beautiful and the landscape generated is breathtaking at times. Music is my go to soundtrack while working by now because it has a solid pace and gets you right into that flow.

Beware, you can easily forget time and get lost in this title.

Edit: Left the review after they back-paddled.
Full recommendation for the game, get it if you can!

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The game is beautiful but Bethesda got pretty greedy with their new paid mod policy. Leaving the modders only a 25% cut should not be a reasonable buisness practice. Essential mods which easily expanded the rather basic game to hours without an end of content may go behind a paywall now, hobbists modders with barely legal expertise, get into fighting each other over licensing issues thanks to a system badly executed by Valve and Bethesda.

Pay modders but pay them fair. Don't leave them hanging on 100% the risk for 25% the profit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-U1HZrV_ZI

This is just a sporadic word-o'-mouth piece. If you want more detailed information, just leave a question in the comments!

The gameplay changes are pretty interesting. Getting rid of focus? Pretty brutal. No stun on jumping across an orc is also a change that is hard to adjust for me but a nice challenge. Also orcs tend to block your hits way more, really one of their kind those war-driven old-school orcs. The Ring mechanic is one big piece of overdrive, the screenshot opportunities go insane.

The subtle animation changes are nice to see. Also they did a really well job in adding new punch lines, new uruk character styles altogether. I like that they thought about Mt. Doom throwing ashes around at that time around and changing the appearance of the orcs to be more geared towards war. I love gathering more background around the game and its setting as the DLC is basically a mini prequel.

If you don't weight new maps to explore for an hour too important but value gameplay alterations given to you, I can only recommend this DLC.