The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria™

No. There is just too much wrong with this game to list it here. Just no.

Muito bom jogo de exploração. História envolvente quando se atenta aos detalhes e leitura. É preciso atenção e se envolver nas dicas para que consiga seguir parte da história. Dentro de cada missão tem conselhos de como prosseguir. Após terminar o jogo base, o foco é maior para upgrade e desenvolvimento de base com os NPCs. É bom utilizar de um local aberto para que possa utilizar os grandes monumentos pois eles também não são removíveis.

Short Version: A very mid crafting survival games with dwarves set in the world of Middle Earth. Combat is blah, crafting is not complex, and the plot is meager and uninteresting. The Long Version: So here is where the reviewer is coming from: I like games with dwarves in them, I like crafting games, and I know but am not obsessed with Middle Earth. I received the game in a humble bundle, played single player on normal difficulty without any DLC, and am current clocked at 8.7 hours while being mildly bored. Now, when I started this journey, I was a little curious and a little excited. The actual premise seems ripe for making a good game being dwarves retaking Moria from the remains of the Orcs after the Balrog was killed by Gandolf. Majestic underground locations with risk to body, sanity, and sobriety. Sign me up and take my money. Even the noise concept seemed like a good one considering the original material in the book with the "drums in the deep", although it turns out to be a lackluster mechanic. Anyway, the game really doesn't deliver. I experience bugs with creatures stuck in columns a lot; I had a camp under siege three times in a row with no one showing up to raid it. The stuff you can craft is not very large or very interesting compared to other survival crafting game, and the combat is utterly forgettable. The plot is miniscule and the references to Middle Earth are not particularly interesting. On the plus side, there is a lot of love in the character design and the voice work. The mining songs are a hoot. In general, the dwarf aesthetic is held well together throughout my playthrough and is wonderful. Thankfully, the code is also stable, even considering the bugs mentioned in the above paragraph. Ultimately, I am not sure who this for? Tolkein fanatics will find the Middle Earth reference meager and the plot as well. Survival crafting fans are not going to be blown away as there are several games will surpass it one way or another: Subnautica, No More Sky, Abiotic Factor, Valheim, Enshrouded, etc... It also not tops of the heap of dwarf game with Dwarf Fortress, Deep Rock Galactic, and Craft the World; I admit I am going out on a limb here, but I at least like all of these games a lot compared to Return to Moria. Maybe if you are a Tolkein, survival crafting, and dwarf obsessed person, then this game will give you a few hours of enjoyment; but, for only the truly fanatical is this going to be interesting.

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.

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.

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.

good concept/idea, poor execution

Really cool, survival and exploration game. Very nice LotR spirit and I mean dwarfs so yeah !