So you've done all of the side missions in Shadow of War. You're about level 45 or something at this point of the game. You've collected all of those artifacts and heard all of Celebrimbor and Talion's dialogue talking about them (at least you should have). You've taken over all of the regions and have your orc army taking care of the fortresses. Now let's get to the "final" mission real quick before getting to The Shadow Wars.
The final mission consists of Talion and Elatriel fighting on the bridge towards the Witch King and Sauron. Along with Elatriel, you have all of your orcs within that region following you along to help defeat the opposing orc captains getting in your way. Sure it's not EVERY SINGLE orc captain you've dominated following you along, but it feels empowering having an actual army backing you up. In fact you can dominate the enemy captains for extra backup. Strength in numbers can help you greatly here and it makes for an entertaining fight as you actually attempt to defeat your rival the Witch King. Rival is a generous word for this guy since in-game you've only heard that the Witch King is one of the more powerful of the Nazgul, and you've banished most of them as you get to beating the game. So after some fun battles with the Captains, you meet the Witch King, he is significantly harder than many of the Nazgul you've fought and he's basically all of them combined. Though along with just him, there are several orc soldiers trying to kill me. So I skillfully juggle between him and killing other orc soldiers and I grab the Witch King's face and learn the "Truth."
Celebrimbor's body is currently being possessed by Sauron himself. Talion is upset by this, Celebrimbor is angry that Talion is upset by this. Celebrimbor has a plan where he will "dominate" Sauron's body with the new ring they have and will rule Mordor as the "Bright Lord." The story is actually very similar to the newest Devil May Cry where Dante finds out that Virgil wants to rule the land in place of the guy they just killed. Talion has none of this and is actually defeated pretty easily, Celebrimbor simply un-posesses himself from Talion and decides to work together with Elatriel to defeat Sauron. This is very unfortunate for Talion as he is dying from the wounds he suffered from the actual first time he died from the Black Gate.
Anyway we stray away from Talion and go to Celebrimbor and Elatriel's battle with Sauron in Celebrimbor's body. The fight is interesting, fun, and has more depth than fighting an orc Captain. The battle is indeed fitting to how someone would have to fight Sauron head-on as he's a giant hulking man. So you beat him, except you don't because Sauron basically calls Celebrimbor an idiot for trying to dominate his mind and cuts off Elatriel's fingers, taking the new ring and forces Celebrimbor to posess his own body. It's sort of a letdown but hey, we didn't exactly expect the game to actually end at this point. Also Elatriel runs away I guess.
Now after all of that stuff, Talion is still dying, ignoring the orcs that were backing him up he's all by himself. So Shelob talks to Talion in his head and gives him the ultimatum in order for him to attempt to make things right. Wear the ring the Witch King used to change the tides of war but also turn into a Ring-Wraith, or die. Talion dies The End.
He doesn't die, and takes the ring and goes on a mission to take back Minas Ithil, or Minas Morgul as it is now. Talion is now a Ring Wraith and has the ability to bring dead orcs back to life. Awesome! Though you can't resurrect dead orc Captains until you complete the final pit fight in Minas Morgul.
So now what? Now we have the namesake of the game happen. The Shadow Wars. Yay. Now it's sandbox mode, where you have to defend the fortresses in each region from Sauron's more powerful orcs. Cool, maybe more side-missions have opened up. Maybe we can help Baranor with stuff. Meet Idril again? Maybe we can do something about that Balrog we didn't kill and use it to turn the tides of war? Ok no, you don't do any of that for whatever reason. You just defend the fortress in each region, except Minas Morgul. That's it. You have to defend each region when they say they're being attacked. If someone had enough patience, they could totally do this. I don't have enough patience and just stopped playing after stage 5. It gets tedious after a while and it kind of forces the player to buy lootboxes in order to get stronger orcs to defend the fortresses instead of dominating ones in the wild.
Except, nobody should do that. No videogame should have pacing in it where you say to yourself, "hey can I beat the game now?" That's just bad pacing, and it's made to look like a ploy to actually buy lootboxes. Why should I play a game for a few more hours without any sidequests? Why should I play the game when I know that there's more DLC coming? I'm simply wasting valuable time just to see the TRUE ENDING in-game. So like a normal human being, I watched the ending online and was unamused. I will still play the Shadow Wars part very slowly in my spare time, but now I feel that I don't need to. The game is still good, it's still fun, and it's still kind-of worth $60. Now, I feel like I've beaten it and will continue to play other games.
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