The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria™

I wish I could recommend this for a single-player experience because the art-direction is really, really good. This particular take on dwarves and dwarf culture of Middle-Earth is incredibly compelling. Moria itself is really well-done. With a little stylization, the devs have made a compelling dungeon that doesn't lean entirely on graphical fidelity. Unfortunately the gameplay is just a bit boring. There's nothing really new here that other tree-choppers don't do, but it also doesn't do it with any particular finesse. The combat is incredibly rudamentary, the crafting is one-dimensional and leans on timers for any kind of difficulty, exploration is a little too by-the-numbers, and the building is neither particularly flexible nor particularly user-friendly. There's a lack of polish that becomes clear when the game attempts any kind of verticality, as jumping, climbing, and falling animations are incredibly sluggish and disjointed from the actual environment. Ultimately, the game just lacks the amount of polish I'd expect from an IP this big. I feel like everything this game brings to the table is done better by other games. That being said, this game isn't, like, offensively bad, just mediocre. I feel like the bones are good enough for a multiplayer experience, though certainly better games exist for that too. Ultimately, if your gaming group is really into LotR or dwarves in general you might get more out of this. Otherwise, I'd probably just give it a pass.

Your instincts are correct - don't bother with this one, even if you're buying it because 'lotr'. It has all the work requirements of a survival crafter, none of the fun. Maybe if you have some entertaining friends but they really would be carrying the entertainment themselves.

I had a full review written up, but apparently Steam has a word/letter limit, and it wouldn't all fit...if you would like to read it, you can find it here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b1hNA73ZMiAmNUxx3dgNRoYbpzlgpeNQMr8RETg_mUs/edit?usp=sharing TL;DR The GAME underneath Mines of Moria is unfinished. A skeleton, an outline, a cornerstone upon which a great game COULD have been built, but wasn’t. If you are looking for a new survival-crafter to play, look elsewhere (might I recommend Wind Rose?). On the other hand, the lore and ambiance is fantastic: if you are a LOTR fan, pick this game up on DEEP DISCOUNT, bring your other LOTR fan friends, put the game on STORY difficulty, and try to ignore all the little things that will attempt to drive you mad. My playgroup will NOT be purchasing the DLC expansion. Reading about it seems to suggest it is little more than a massive grind-fest. We’ll pass. Time to try other survival-crafter games.

Return to Moria – A Masterclass in Wasting Potential If you ever wanted to see a beloved franchise dragged into the mines and left there, Return to Moria delivers. This game feels less like a celebration of Tolkien’s world and more like a rushed, bare‑bones survival project wearing a Middle‑earth skin. Combat? A button‑mashing disaster. Enemies feel weightless, hit detection is inconsistent, and every fight is a repetitive slog. There’s no strategy, no impact, no satisfaction—just spam until something falls over. Crafting and progression? Tedious. Everything requires absurd amounts of resources, and the grind is so excessive it feels designed to pad out missing content. The crafting menus are clunky, the systems are shallow, and nothing you build feels meaningful. Polish? None. Visual glitches, audio bugs, UI issues, broken quests, missing features, and mechanics that simply don’t work. It feels like early access, except it’s not. Overall: Return to Moria is a clunky, shallow, buggy, uninspired survival game that fails to respect the source material or the player’s time. It’s not just disappointing—it’s genuinely hard to recommend in its current state. Fans deserved better, and Middle‑earth deserved far better than this.

Repetiv, Generic and despite really trying, not that lore acurate. The game is a pretty generic survival semi-open-world craft game where you progress by steadyly unlocking better gear, resources and crafting methods. Multiplayer is possible, but not necessary required, but helpful. Nothing of this is new, or hasnt been done better by games like Subnautica. The combat-system is pretty clunky and rather underwhelming. You lock on an enemy and then strike him until its over. If you have multible enemys or destroyable stuff next to you, you will have a problem. Health is also not regeneratet during fights or in the mines at all, so you better hold out until you are where you have to be. The mines themselves are lovingly created, the visuals quite good and the layout encorages creative traveling. They are also lore acurate for the most part, if with some libertys for gaming-purposes. The game does not deliver on its premise. You do not rebuild Moria, you do not do anything with the help of others (unless multiplayer) and the story is quite railroading. At the begining you are trapped in the mines and then you are forced to reach the other side to get out. The game is just a long walk, wich is balantly railroaded along a single path. The game becomes forced after some time. But the game is one thing above all: repetive. You use resources to craft gear, master a part of the path, defeat enemy, reach new part of the mines, need stronger gear, need new resources, meet stronger enemy, get everything, defeat stronger enemy, get to next part, rinse and repeat. After the sixt part of your journy the underlining mystery or the goal are not longer enough to keep you going. And since the game heavily railroads you along one path without alternatives you feel constricted. And then happens what caused me to quit the game. You reach the other side, you craft the thing necessary to leave the mines and then you meet the final boss. Without spoilers: The boss is a thing that in canon can not defeated by a single ordinary warrior. So you walk back, use your thing to leave the mines and your character says: "I cant leave, i still have stuff do do here. If i dont defeat this boss, he will kill the entire platoon the king send!" Ans so you are suposed to brave another part of the mines, get new gear, new resources, etc. EXCUSE ME!?? LEAVING THE MINES AND GETTING REINFORCMENTS WERE THE WHOLE GOAL OF THE ENTIRE GAME!!! And what makes you think that you can defeat something on your own that can apparently easily kill half an army? Because the story isnt suposed to be over you have to do the same repetive sh_t again that you have been doing the entire game, despite EVERYTHING about the situation at hand makes leaving and getting help the only rational choice. At this point i couldnt bear the repetitvnes of the game anymore and since there was no mystery or goal to drive me forward while the game forced me into an absolute stupid choice, i decidet to quit and stop playing. Seventy Hours of repetive, railroaded tasks and then the game pretends the maingoal cant be reached (escaping the mine), because your character is worried that hundreds of other dwarfs will be killed if you dont kill by yourself what will kill all of them. WASTED TIME. Do not buy this unless you are really into repetive tasks, repetive gameplay and balant railroading.

L'un des pires jeux de survie qu'il m'ait été donné de jouer. Difficile de se souvenir de tous les problèmes rencontrés dans le jeu tellement il y en a, je vais donc essayer de lister tout ça en étant le plus exhaustif possible : - Enormément de bugs, monstres bloqués, bugs d'affichage, d'animations de personnages et j'en passe, c'est récurrent au point d'en être une feature principale du jeu qui en attendrira peut-être certains. Presque l'une des choses les moins dérangeantes car pas implanté volontairement dans le jeu. - Artefacts visuels entre les limites de zones (murs virtuels avec croix, très similaires aux limites de zones dans division 2 pour donner un élément de comparaison), pas un bug donc mais encore une fois un élément récurrent qui limite grandement l'immersion. - Système de fatigue extrêmement punitif pour aucune raison. Le jeu se veut très simple dans la grande majorité de ses aspects mais limite l'exploration, le farm et la capacité de combat en diminuant le nombre de jauges d'endurance avec la fatigue, j'entends par là que l'on débute une journée à la sortie du lit avec 5 barres qui se vident et se remplissent avec la course, le combat etc... mais au fil de la journée le nombre de ces barres diminue, on passe donc de 5 à 4 puis à 3 barres etc, l'endurance se vidant assez vite de base, passé 3 barres les capacités de course et autre deviennent assez ridicules. Tout cela est frustrant car a pour seule raison de forcer le joueur à dormir sans autre bénéfices particuliers. Et tout en étant en manque de cohérence certain avec le reste car le jeu ne se veut pas dur ou réaliste sur quoi que ce soit d'autre, simplement un mauvais choix de design. - Le combat, que dire à part rien à y voir, les animations ne sont pas fluides, le personnage ne se tourne pas dans le sens de la souris mais des touches directionnelles et complique donc les choses pour une aucune raison, les ennemis inintéressants et redondants en plus d'un pathing très buggé comme dit précédemment, la précision de l'arc est (très) mauvaise car l'endroit d'arrivé de la flèche aléatoire (testé sans bouger le réticule, la flèche arrive globalement tout autour du point visé mais jamais au même endroit). - Aucune informations sur l'équipement, pas de stats ou autre, on ne sait donc pas vraiment pourquoi il faut les crafter, le seul indice est quand on se rend compte qu'il faut 3 minutes pour tuer un monstre. Pas de vraie diversité de "classes" donc, le seul choix a faire est de simplement craft la dernière armure débloquée pour mettre moins de temps à tuer les monstres. -Manque cruel d'animations de personnage, même pour dormir les personnages restent debout près de leur lit, ça donne franchement une sensation d'inachevé. A mon sens le jeu est globalement inachevé et mal pensé, l'ambiance et la licence seigneur des anneaux ne suffit malheureusement pas à excuser tout le reste et je suis assez désolé de voir les nombre de revues positives de personnes louant la réussite du côté survie du jeu, ce n'est clairement pas un bon jeu de survie malgré les standards déjà assez bas du genre, voilà un exemple parmi tant d'autres de jeu affilié à une grosse licence où le minimum est fait car il y a assurance de vente et revenus du fait de la popularité de la licence. A fuir et surtout à ne pas encourager.

Base game great, loved it. The dlc made me hate it. Make of that what you will.

Weak combat, poor tutorials and onboarding, and mediocre mining/crafting too. Everything feels very "budget."

If you like a mix of building, ressource gathering and killing orcs. I can highly recommend this game. Recent update to the map was a HUGE QoL update to make it easier to navigate through the vast maze of caves and massive ruins the game has to offer.