Shadow of Mordor is worth revisiting for the nemesis system alone

GamesActionMiddle-Earth: Shadow of MordorShadow of Mordor is worth revisiting for the nemesis system aloneWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Monolith Productions)

Talion thrusting a blade through the face of an orc

There are few gaming accomplishments more satisfying than the thrill of pulling off kills in stealth action games. The sweetest of feats can be achievements or timed runs or trick shots but there’s something extra special about a grudge kill.Shadow of Mordor, the Warner Bros. action game of 2014, was a factory for satisfying kills with its nemesis system that became the centre of any conversation about the game.

ReinstallThis article first appeared in PC Gamer magazine issue 393 in February 2024, as part of our Reinstall series. Every month we load up a beloved classic—and find out whether it holds up to our modern gaming sensibilities.

Reinstall

This article first appeared in PC Gamer magazine issue 393 in February 2024, as part of our Reinstall series. Every month we load up a beloved classic—and find out whether it holds up to our modern gaming sensibilities.

After recently working my way through other stealth romps likeStyx: Master of ShadowsandHitman 3, I got the itch to return to one of the previous decade’s golden children to see if it’s everything I thought.

I was partially right. I don’t think Shadow of Mordor’s world design and structures are all that much to write home about, unless I’m retroactively giving old Assassin’s Creed games more credit than they’re due too. Shadow of Mordor’s crumbling Middle-earth infrastructure is largely repetitive and none too intricate.

Climbing up ruins and creeping stealthily across ropes connecting them feels serviceable now, but pretty basic. There’s not too much puzzle or exploration in spidering up the side of the same broken stone arches all over the map. It’s a wide but not high map, structures and strongholds of a couple of stories evenly spaced out across the barren crags in the corner of Middle-earth.

Sprinting across the rock landscapes and hauling up towers, jumping across gaps between buildings with ease and prancing along ropes connecting them is the kind of versatile traversal I was hoping for and that I got in spades.

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(Image credit: Monolith Productions)

Talion stabbing an orc while covering it’s mouth

Even though the Middle-earth ruins city planning feels just passable, there’s still a lot of satisfaction in combat. The basics are initially repetitive—one button to swing Talion’s sword and another to aim his bow—but quickly get compounded as I unlock parries, vaulting over orcs' heads, executions and finishing moves. It all weaves together about as well as I remember with only a little clunkiness to Talion’s general movement.

Those dogpiles become untenable, leaving me only one recourse: turning tail and running. Since those packs of gathered orcs don’t really disperse in a natural fashion, those failures to manage the crowd force me off to pick at some other fortress, hoping that the enemy AI will reset and settle while I’m away.

The times when I can keep a brawl with stock orcs to a headcount of three or four though—firing off a quick bow shot at the one running to raise the alarm, killing the one I’ve downed, and then snagging the final assailant in Talion’s ghostly grip to interrogate him for information about his captain—that’s the glory of Shadow of Mordor’s basic combat.

Killtacular

(Image credit: Monolith Productions)

Talion stealth killing an orc

The part of Shadow of Mordor that’s barely aged is its nemesis system. Its method of creating and preying upon grudges became its defining feature when it launched and for good reason. The nemesis system still kills.

I hopped into a fresh save file of Shadow of Mordor and decided that my personal goal would be to kill as many orc captains in Sauron’s army as possible without ever letting them re-hire new talent. What main quest?

The part of Shadow of Mordor that’s barely aged is its nemesis system.

The next captain throws a wrench in my plans. He’s got the Summoner trait, which lets him call for help when in danger. Thus my complaints about unwieldy mobs of orcs. After that, an orc captain I definitely killed seems to have come back from the dead, ambushing me as I’m stalking one of his higher-rank brethren saying that I gave him a scar, and sure enough his face has large pink sword marks. Each successive fight takes more work as I find captains clustered together at the same outpost, requiring much more finesse from my plans. Others have traits that make them fearful of certain attack types, forcing them to retreat and me on a chase to run them down.

The success of the nemesis system naturally begs for other games using it as inspiration. And yet they haven’t. In 2021, after a few years of trying to get it approved,Warner Bros acquired a patentfor “Nemesis characters, nemesis forts, social vendettas and followers in computer games,” the nemesis system as we know it. We’ve yet to see it legally enforced in any public fashion, but it did have a chilling effect.

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