Review: The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria

The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria is a game that immerses you in one of the most iconic fantasy worlds ever created, but it takes an unexpected turn. Rather than being primarily a Lord of the Rings experience, it is, first and foremost, a survival game. While it proudly embraces the Tolkien backdrop, it leans heavily on familiar survival mechanics, relying on Middle-earth to compensate for a lack of original ideas. If you’re familiar with survival games over the last 15 years, you’ll immediately recognize the gameplay elements: base-building, cooking, resource collection, crafting, and combat. Unfortunately, it doesn’t excel in any of these areas, and some aspects, such as combat and base-building, fall short when compared to other games in the genre.

Setting and Story

Return to Moria is set in Middle-earth’s Fourth Age, following the fall of Sauron and the War of the Ring’s conclusion. In this era, rarely explored in the canon, Gimli, voiced by John Rhys-Davies, gathers the dwarf factions to reclaim Moria from goblins and orcs. As a summoned dwarf, you embark on a journey into the depths of the kingdom to build, craft, and confront a powerful entity corrupted by dark magic. While the game references events from The Fellowship of the Ring, it primarily involves exploring dark corridors, battling goblins, and resource gathering, causing the main plot to take a back seat.

Occasional Middle-earth Nostalgia

Occasionally, the game provides a touch of Middle-earth nostalgia through songs. Your dwarf character sings a variety of light-hearted songs while mining, and you and your comrades dance and sing epic ballads about your people’s history when you get drunk. During key story moments, you break out into stirring songs filled with lore. However, these musical interludes are often interrupted by goblin and orc attacks.

Gameplay Loop

One area where Return to Moria excels is the rhythmic resource-gathering and base-building loop. The game keeps you engaged by encouraging you to explore deeper into the mine, collecting resources, and improving your character. As you delve deeper, you’ll face more formidable enemies, driving you to acquire rarer materials, upgrade gear, and enhance your base. This sense of progression is satisfying and will be familiar to players of games like Minecraft and Grounded.

Issues with Building and Combat

Regrettably, the game falls short in building, combat, and exploration due to a lack of freedom. The game restricts your ability to establish bases wherever you choose, favoring preset campsites in each new zone. Even when you opt to build in other locations, the building mechanics can be frustrating. It’s often challenging to construct structures due to vague rules about load-bearing structures. Combat, a significant aspect of the game, is dull and repetitive. The enemies display poor AI, making battles tedious, and they tend to get stuck on obstacles, allowing you to exploit their weaknesses.

Exploration and Mining Limitations

Return to Moria limits exploration and mining by imposing impenetrable barriers and restricting digging to small hallways. This lack of freedom to shape the world is a departure from games like No Man’s Sky and Ark, which thrive on player creativity and freedom.

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Performance Issues

The game is plagued by performance issues, including items disappearing, unstable framerates, and excessively long loading times. Some areas fail to load properly, exposing immersion-breaking developer objects.

Multiplayer Experience

Playing with friends enhances the experience, allowing for group exploration and battles. While it can make things more chaotic, it evens the odds in combat encounters and adds a social dimension to the game. However, the more players in a world, the buggier the experience can become.

Conclusion

The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria is a survival game set in the iconic world of Middle-earth. While it successfully captures the essence of building and resource gathering, it falls short in other aspects, including combat and exploration, due to a lack of freedom and poor AI. The game’s performance issues further hamper the experience. Despite its shortcomings, it offers an engaging gameplay loop and a touch of Middle-earth nostalgia. Playing with friends can enhance the experience, but it may also introduce more bugs.

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