I'm just past the half way point and here are my thoughts. It’s perhaps more action RPG than RPG. Combat is the major theme of the game and there is very little outside of that. You kill lots and lots of orcs and not much else. The most touted feature of the game is its vendetta system which I image will be copied by other games pretty soon. Basically any battle you have with an orc chief will become a personal affair. They remember previous encounters and make appropriate comments based on what transpired. Some people have complained that the game is too difficult to the point of being bugged. It can be hard in the beginning but there is a reason for that. Many open world games have low and high level areas. SoM doesn’t. Everywhere is the same and you can get into trouble fast if you go out and attack everything. “Boss” battles can be kind of random and every time you lose to a boss they get more powerful so the next battle will be even harder. Some bosses will even cross the map and hunt you down if you’ve pissed them off. You can also encounter more than one boss at a time and they all power-up if you lose. I’ll write more once I complete the game.
How much variation is there to the environments? Meaning that I'm wondering about the exploratory aspect of the open world. Sounds like it might not have as much in that regard as a game like Skyrim.
There is very little environment variation. There are two maps. Brown and green. The first half of the game is brown and the second half is green. It's an open world but it's not really a game that you'll enjoy exploring. That sounds lame but it's not all that bad. It's a giant combat zone and everywhere you go has some kind of purpose.
I finished it and I'll have to give it an 8/10. It's an RPG but it's not an RPG. I'd say it's more of an open world strategy combat game that is very similar to Assassins Creed. There are no fetch quests, no class selections, no loot collecting or inventory and just a couple of NPCs. You spend most of your time killing orcs and collecting intel on how to kill more orcs. Some of the orcs are rather difficult and if you don't know their strengths and weaknesses you're gona have a bad time. I found the game challenging and that was probably what I liked most about it. There is a story and some lore that I'm sure many LoTR fans will love. Having only seen the movies I didn't recognize many of the references. I played it on the PC and graphics wise this game is a GPU memory whore. The Ultra setting needs 6GB of memory. I had to play on medium because even high was ganking my 3GB. At high it might play fine for about 20 minutes and then it would turn into a slide show. I'd have to quit and start again to get my frame-rate back. The game also wouldn't let me change my default resolution. Instead it allowed choosing percentages of the resolution. So I could play at 100, 90, 66, 50%.... The weird thing was that the percentages didn't seem to make any difference in how things looked. In general the visuals were good but the randomly generated and unlimited Uruk Captains looked really good.
Seems like it might be a fun strategy/rpg hybrid thing when it's under $10 during a Steam sale. Doesn't sound like it's worth $50.
It's probably worth $50 if your a big LoTR fan. Otherwise I'd say get it at $25. I got the pre-order for $30 and I'm satisfied.