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As you venture further into the story, new abilities unlock on the skill tree which helps you become more efficient in combat and also increasing your wraith abilities. Alongside these abilities you can also upgrade your weapons, you are equipped with a dagger for stealth attacks, a standard long sword for melee combat and you also have a wraith bow which can be handy for quietly taking out enemy archers sitting up in towers. You will use the same three weapons throughout the entire course of the game; however, killing the enemy captains will grant you a rune for a specific weapon as well as an amount of power points.
The runes can be put into a weapon slot, and to add slots you need to have found various collectibles from around the map which in turn gives you a small amount of currency. Once you have collected enough currency you can then buy and add up to 5 rune slots to each weapon. The runes give you various additional buffs to your standard weapons, something on the lines of gaining focus when doing a flurry attack or recovering health as an example. The power points you get from killing the captains unlock higher tiers on your character skill tree, and the game tells you on the skill tree screen how many points you need to accumulate before the line moves down to the next level of available skills. The skill tree is broken down into two sections with the left side being your ranger skills and right side is your wraith skills. As with most third-person action RPG games, these skills upgrade your attacks and allow you to pull off combos with a larger move set or a new move that will scare the Uruks when you are getting surrounded. Combinations of these skills can make a few enemies flee from the battle in terror!
Alongside the runes there are also legendary weapons missions. Each of your three weapons can get a legendary status by doing the 10 short missions for each one. The sword missions usually involve an arena style combat scenario where you have to kill all enemies without leaving the area allotted on the map; the bow missions, once again, you have to kill a set amount of foes in a specific way and finally you have the dagger missions which involves stealth killing a set amount of enemies. Each of these missions also have additional bonus requirements like drop stealth kill a set amount of enemies out of the quota given for the mission, and completing these bonus missions grants you extra currency to unlock the extra rune slots etc.
Some of the skills unlock during the course of doing the story missions (These unlocks have a gold lock symbol on them) so it is worthwhile actually following the first 5 or so missions to start unlocking various abilities to use whilst playing. The initial missions will also allow you to start riding the Caragor (A large beast like mount which can be handy for getting about quicker if you don’t want to use the fast travel system) and also a tutorial type mission on the Nemesis system and Vendettas.
The Nemesis system sees you seeking vengeance on an enemy that has slain you; the NPC (Non Player Character) will recognise you when he next comes across you. Your nemesis could literally be a low ranking Orc, a standard foot soldier if you will, however, once he has killed you he will be promoted to a Captain. From this point you can then gain intelligence on him which shows his strength, weaknesses and fears, all of which can be exploited and then you will go and hunt him down across the map, he will be stronger than when you first met and could now have a small group of Orcs patrolling with him. If he manages to kill you a second time you could find that he becomes even more powerful and harder to kill and be promoted yet again climbing the ranks of Sauron’s army. I can honestly say it makes revisiting locations on the map a bit more interesting than just going from mission to mission, you feel an urge to go and get vengeance on the Orc that slain you!
The Vendetta system is a great addition to the game and makes your solo adventure through Mordor a little more sociable and fun. A friend of mine on Steam who also owns Shadow of Mordor had been killed by an Uruk (many times looking at the enemy stats!). Latbag Pain-Lover was an Uruk Elite Captain at Level 20, and every time you die to a Captain they level up in power and gain more Orcs for protection. I received a red icon that was not the balance of power icon and under inspection it told me to avenge his death. After starting the mission you hunt round the map area depicted by a large green section and use your wraith vision to find his locale. Once found you then look at the intel on him to exploit his weakness and try and take the Uruk and his cronies out. You also get a bonus modifier here where if you complete the task in less than 5 minutes you are given extra currency to spend on weapon unlocks. This is a great fun way to make the game a little more social and can be a talking point looking at screen shots and chatting about them.
Go to page 3 for more thoughts on the game.
Retro at heart and lover of all things ’80s, especially the computers, the music and the awesome movies and TV shows! Crazy huge retro gaming collection spanning the ’80s and ’90s with hundreds of tapes, discs and carts for various machines on top of a 600+ strong Steam library that is ever-growing. No I am not a serial hoarder, just a dedicated retro gamer!