Lord of the Rings + Base Building + Survival? Count me in.

In reality, none of those things actually turn out to be what you may expect.

Lore

Lord of the Rings is just oozing lore at every corner, and Moria certainly is ripe for the picking. Since this game takes place at the end of the 3rd age (Rings is gone, Gimli still lives), you won’t ever cross paths with the Fellowship, but Moria is a tomb and should be full of history. Sure there are orcs in every corner, but you’re borderline Indiana Jones in terms of potential here.

In practical terms, there isn’t much here that comes from the official lore. You have target quests to complete along the path, which guide your exploration to a degree. It’s mostly window dressing, with some minor exceptions (Elven Quarter and the final bit). I will say that the art style is where things make a bolder statement. This feels like Peter Jackson’s vision.

Base Building

For some reason, the entire game is built on a cardinal grid. North-east does not exist. The net effect is that the base building portions are locked into this grid, and if you happen to a generated corner, you may be stuck with things locked into 45 degree angles. You don’t have the ability to fast travel, build roofs, or ramps until QUITE a ways into the game.

If you’re going into this wanting to build a new Kazad-dum, this is not the game. If you’re going into this for the pragmatic base building – in particular where fast travel stations are located, then yeah, this will work out just fine. Due to the general lack of continual harvest, you will never backtrack to a prior base once you have a new fast-travel point/base. Always you are heading east.

Survival

This is the most confusing part to me. Survival games are not new, there’s an entire genre of amazing ones out there. You need food/sleep/shelter to survive, tools to acquire material to progress, equipment to attack/defend, and exploring the world.

The food/sleep/shelter portion sort of works here. You won’t have the ability to create portable food until you’re well into the Deeps (what appears to be the half point). Light sources are weird, where even with a torch you’re considered in the dark, which drains stamina. Food variety is generally meaningless, as the stat boosts are identical, and “feeling full” is whatever item you can cook. That farming is present with food seems strange… perhaps I am missing something or this is simply a QoL thing.

Tool progress is a mixed bag. You need to keep moving forward to find new things to do. Take on some tougher foes to barely collect some material to make a better sword, so the next time is easier. The tiers of progress are ultra confusing mind you, as you’ll enter the proper Mines of Moria and not be able to collect half the stuff around you, and no indication what to upgrade in order to do so. I do like the exploration aspect, that discovery is predicated on trying to mine something, or repairing random statues for recipes. But if I’m given the option of a gold vein, I should be a few minutes away from unlocking the ability to mine it. Note to all: collect as much coal, stone, granite and adamant as you can.

Equipment has tiers, which you unlock well after you actually need them, which again is a nice risk/reward function. The downside is that Moria has way to many frigging enemies with absolutely stupid AI. You’re fighting constantly through swarms of enemies, stuck repairing gear after nearly every attack, and the combat is simply mind-numbingly boring. I triggered a horde attack of orcs in Moria, which lasted nearly 15 minutes. Orcs drop zero loot of use, except to repair your gear. I’m sure there will be a mod (or an update) that controls enemy spawn rates, or increases the damage you do so that this is a bump rather than a wall of dumb. The bosses (and trolls) are interesting for multiple reasons, but I’ve had my share of orcs. Learn to love the dodge-roll.

Exploration

This is the broken expectation part. The game is fundamentally a dungeon tile explorer. You are in pre-generated “rooms” that have a dirt path connecting to another pre-generated “room”. You can explore any of the rooms, but progress is entirely and absolutely gated behind the dirt paths. The walls of these rooms are also unbreakable, same with the floors. I was absolutely not ready for this. In hindsight I can’t see how this game could have functions with pure freedom given the lore limitations. Not like you should be able to dig down as deep as you want and find a Balrog in minute 15.

The net effect is that plays much more like a dungeon run, with survival elements. Explore the tiles to find the entrance to the next zone. Explore that zone for the “McGuffin” that allows access to the next, at so on.

Subvert Expectations

This is not Valheim. This is not Ark or Rust. You are in Moria not to rebuild it but to traverse it. It took way too long for me to come to that realization, but once I did my enjoyment of the game drastically changed. Each room become a puzzle to solve. Every zone one to conquer and leave behind. I needed to buff up before the next spelunking.

This is a very slow burn game, and if you’re going into this expecting a free-craft survival game (as it’s promoted), you’re going to be in for a bad time. If you look at this instead as a dungeon crawler with survival elements, then yeah, this game is actually pretty solid.