@zevvion:Just for reference I am currently somewhere in the "endgame" last (4th) act, haven't quite finished the game yet.
In regards to the challenge. It is for sure a more difficult, or rather a better designed balance wise game then Shadow of Mordor was, not even an argument. On that front they've done much better. The biggest factor in this is that they have nerfed Talion a whole bunch, compared to the first game. Even fully leveled up and geared out you are nowhere near the godlike level of power you were before.
Specifically the main change is that they broke up the mobius loop of chaining multiple shadow strikes into executes into super, into drains into more shadow strikes and more executes and so on into infinity. First of all executions (and all other skills that use the same meter) build up much much slower, no longer you need only like 5 hits (if that with crits) to start spamming executes, it takes way more investment then that. Secondly you can only do about 3-4 shadow strike kills tops before going empty on focus, and it now costs 2 arrows each do do that move plus focus. Which nicely flows into the third factor that you are also more limited in those resources focus+arrows and there are only a couple of places you can use to get them back on your build/gear that are sometimes even mutually exclusive with other stuff (like say drain giving 1 arrow back is on the same perk option as drain dominating) so there is no longer that effect of you just getting all your arrows and focus back super fast and easy ala in the first game when you had just a few good runes on your weapons. So essentially you actually have to do some proper fighting now instead of just being able to spam instakill moves forever. (also super builds slower too and captains have more HP in general too)
That's not to say that the whole game is some kind of amazing challenge. Far from it. 95-99% of the time you are still in no danger or in any real threat. Spamming dodge roll still provides the same invulnerability it did before. And frankly you stalking a single orc in the open world while knowing his weaknesses is still easy kills all day (with one or two exceptions maybe). The challenging parts of the game generally come when shit hits the fan and clusterfucks happen, like having to fight 2-4 orc captains in a fortress with and alarm going for example and the challange becomes parsing the mess that's going on and getting far enough away to get some jabs in after. But the game also does do a better job of providing those clusterfucks to the player not just at the start of the game but through ought, with betrayals, ambushes, and warchiefs. There are also like @pyrodactyl mentioned occasional real dicky orc trait combinations that are a right pain in the ass to deal with, stuff like savage damage being able to 1-2 shot you, humiliation/nochance, adaptability, and that's generally a good thing imo, it adds that much needed occasional sense of danger, I even had an orc unexpectedly humiliate me a couple times in the last act when I got super complacent, it was a nice "huh ok i'll take you seriously guy" moment. Speaking of deaths, I still only really died a few times in the first third of the game, which is why like I said at the start most of the time you are in very little threat at the end of the day.
Keep in mind, remember the 2 nemesis trees from the first game? Now imagine going through each of those at least 10 times. There may be twice the variety now to the orcs and an ocasional challenge, but it is stretched out over like five times the busywork.
And the grind is real man. Especially that last act. There is a very good reason that there exists a timed 100% xp booster in that marketplace. Anyone thinks they did not design deliberately with that shit in mind is delusional. The first 20 levels of the game the leveling pace feels nice and brisk you are getting new skills quickly and the world is rosy. (level cap is 60). Levels 20-40, the later bulk of the game's main narative starts to drag more and more. And by the time you get to 40-60 of act 4 (by the way there is no credit roll at that point, the game just flows right into it, so imo it's still 100% part of the game proper) the grind is abasically a cliff wall. For example. It takes somewhere of 100,000-200,000 xp per level (levels still matter later on by the way because your orcs are limited to your level max) to level up, once. You get about 2000-4000 xp per level appropriate orc nemesis mission plus kill. Rough numbers, but do the math, that's 50+ orc captain missions and kills, per 1 level up. There's 20+ of those. Unless I am missing some other major way to get xp way way faster, fuck that. I play games a lot but even I don't have that kind of time to go kill over a thousand samey orc captains, there are other games to play. Eventually I said fuck it and just used cheatengine to fast forward the XP grind.
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