It’s not been a great year for Lord of the Rings games, has it?Lord of the Rings: Gollumfrom Daedalic Entertainment was anabject failure and a shallow, broken mess. The game was so poorly received that it started a brief trend of developersissuing public apologies to players. Before the release of Return to Moria, my hopes were higher. However, after playing Free Range Games’ survival crafting game, I am sorely disappointed.
To truly understand the heartbreak I felt while playing Return to Moria, you need to understand just how excited I was about it. No, the game never looked like it would revolutionise the genre from its trailers or pre-release content. However, there was just enough Lord of the Rings sprinkled in there to get me excited. Who doesn’t want to hum Dwarvish tunes while mining and exploring such a storied and famous part of Tolkien’s world?
Mountains Cold
I even began listening to Dwarvish music, with Far Over The Misty Mountains Cold and Song of Durin worming their way into my Spotify On Repeat. I’ll be honest here, I don’t particularly enjoy most survival crafting games. While the bar may have been higher for me because of this fact, I still believe that Return to Moria would not have pleased even the most optimistic Lord of the Rings fan.
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There is not a single feature in Return to Moria that you wouldn’t have seen in the dozens of other survival crafting games that came before it. There’s rudimentary base-building, basic combat and resource bars, all with that veneer of jank that often accompanies the genre’s lowest-quality titles. Free Range hasn’t been brave, but I had hoped the Tolkien aspects could keep me interested.
It just doesn’t capture the spirit of the universe it inhabits. Lord of the Rings is about the journey. It’s about adventuring into the unknown and being resilient when faced with insurmountable odds. Meanwhile, Return to Moria is about fighting endless packs of wolves until you quit the game out of sheer boredom. I’m not kidding, Patch 1.0.2 reduces the amount of wolves that appear in the Elven Quarter. My party and I fought a pack of wolves every 30 seconds, it was unbearable.
The decision to make Return to Moria’s map randomly generated is a regrettable one. There was real potential here to create a meaningful recreation of Tolkien’s writings. Landmarks like the Bridge of Khazad-dûm have static locations, with the world generating around these points, but it’s not enough to make you feel like you’re actually in Moria. The environments are lifeless, and even the lush Elven Quarter doesn’t fill me with a sense of wonder. It’s not purely a visual shortcoming, but rather how empty each corner of the map feels. I am walking around murky, randomly generated environments with no desire to discover more.
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Moria’s The Pity
Return to Moria would have benefitted from an approach not unlike the one taken byGrounded, a game which has a static map filled with environmental storytelling and scripted events. There was an opportunity to take advantage of the real reason people are playing another standard survival game: the lore and universe of Lord of the Rings.
I could speak more on features, but there isn’t much to say. You build, you explore, and you fight. It doesn’t do any of these three well. Even so, I may have looked past these shortcomings if it really nailed its adaptation, but it doesn’t. Lord of the Rings has a rich history of fantastic games, but Return to Moria will not be joining those ranks.
