Review: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War on Switch 2 – Great RPGs, Disappointing Ports
I finally got to spend some quality time with the Nintendo Switch 2 ports of some of the best open-world RPGs of all time: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War. Both titles are famous for their use of the patented Nemesis system. That is: when an enemy kills you, it comes back stronger—and if it wasn’t a named enemy, you better believe they have a name, and a new rank to show for it. It’s great to have both of these games, chock full of their DLC, all ready to go on the portable Nintendo Switch 2. But man, I wish these ports were better.
Those hoping that publisher Warner Bros. and port studio Aspyr would use the Nintendo Switch 2’s hardware to its fullest extent while adding next-generation bells and whistles will be sorely disappointed. Each one of these games has a hard framerate cap of 30 FPS—even while docked. That’s pretty rough, especially for someone like me who played these on PC at over 60 FPS on release. Not only that, but few features are added except for gyro aiming. Shadow of War even had its asynchronous multiplayer features—like Online Vendettas and Fortress Conquests—completely removed for this release. Each of these games is also pretty massive, with Shadow of Mordor taking up 55 GB and Shadow of War requiring a massive 75 GB.
Okay, now that the bad is out of the way, let’s talk about the good.
You get two huge, fantastic games with all of the trimmings. If you played the Batman: Arkham games and liked the combat, Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War have a similar style—just with more options, and more lethality. I mean, Batman’s cool, but playing as a possessed Ranger with a ghost inside you that can turn enemies into allies is fantastic. The combat alone makes these some of the most fun games I’ve played from the previous generation.
For Shadow of Mordor you get the “Game of the Year Edition” and with Shadow of War you get the “Definitive Edition.” That includes two story DLCs for each game. That’s already in addition to the whopping 20 (or so) hours it takes to complete each base game. That’s a lot of video game value. And if you missed these games in the previous generation, this is the best time to get in and play them. Especially since Shadow of War was originally riddled with a pointless grind that encouraged you to buy loot boxes to help ease the burden. That was entirely removed back in 2018.
Also returning for these ports is the Nemesis Forge. This allows you to take your most loyal follower—and your most hated, ultimate Nemesis—from Shadow of Mordor with you into Shadow of War. It's a brilliant feature that Aspyr actively revived for this release after Warner Bros. discontinued it on other platforms years ago.
However, despite these great games being available on the Switch 2, these ports just aren’t great. If you really want to play the games on a portable system, Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War are both Steam Deck certified, and often on deep discount. If you act quickly, you can still grab these on the Nintendo eShop with their 50% launch discount, but make sure your SD card is ready for it.
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