The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria review: fathoms to go

The Lord of the Rings Return To Moria treads a very familiar gameplay loop in a world that isn’t quite fit for purpose. The premise is one that should fill any Lord of the Rings fan with feelings of excitement and wonder: being able to explore Moria to your heart’s content is almost unheard of in video games, with the exception being the Mines of MoriaExpansion for The Lord of the Rings Online. But Moria: Return This is an open-world, survival game that has been forced into a very linear world. The game’s mechanics are constantly at odds with each other and can frustrate players more than entertain them.

Taking place after the events of the main trilogy during the Fourth Age of Middle-earth, Lord Gimli — voiced once again by John Rhys-Davies — has summoned all the dwarves to Moria in an attempt to reclaim it from goblins, orcs, cave trolls, and plenty of other foes who have set up shop in the once magnificent kingdom of Khazad-dûm. Moria: Return You are stranded in a mine over 200 feet deep, separated from your mining company by a floor that has given way.

The main objective is to get back to the other dwarves. You must first explore and then conquer the entire underground labyrinth. It is filled with enemies of all kinds. Plenty of the usual survival game tropes are here, from starting with weak tools and weapons and gradually upgrading them as you find rarer materials and build more capable machines, to hunger and weariness meters that limit the amount you’re capable of doing in a set period.

Free Range Games/North Beach Games image via Polygon

This is why it’s all the more baffling that the world you’re able to explore is so restrictive. Take ValheimFor example, the closest comparison within the genre. Several biomes are featured in this Viking survival game The game has more challenging monsters and harder materials. However, you can explore anywhere you want and you are free to make mistakes. It’s part of the adventure to stumble upon an area that is beyond your abilities, and then run away with your tail in your mouth. This adds to the intrigue of a high-level region and the desire to discover its secrets.

Moria: Return is devoid of these moments because, despite the world being procedurally generated, you’re underground. Instead of letting the player choose a direction to dig in, the map consists only of tiled areas with very specific places to excavate. You can explore off the beaten track a little and find areas to return to later down the line, but there’s little to properly pique your interest. There are references to the film trilogy throughout that you may encounter — Gandalf has left a plethora of notes warning about what’s coming in the next area, and you can find the room where Frodo was saved by his mithril shirt, for example. But by and large, this is a survival game that has Lord of the Rings-themed set dressing rather than anything meaningful to say about the lore or world it inhabits — moments of ha, that’s neatRather than something that will stay with you, you should quickly get on your way.

It’s even worse because the tile system adds linearity into a game that is known for its freedom. In other survival games, exploration is most rewarding when done gradually around the place you choose to set up shop, which means you’re never straying You can also read more about You can be far away from your safe and comfortable bed. Store all the minerals you’ve earned, food that replenishes your health, and any other resources, in chests. The chests will expand in an ever-increasing circle around your base.

Free Range Games/North Beach Games image via Polygon

Moria: Return The toolkit is complete, yet it pushes the user in a straight-line as they search for an exit to get back to their company. It’s boring and it interferes with the whole resource gathering loop. By the time I had reached the titular Mines of Moria, the trip back to my home base to recover the valuable resources I’d left behind had become a lengthy trek, taking up much of the in-game day. The amount of goblins and wolves that patrolled the hallways made the journey longer than necessary.

Fast travel would be a simple solution to these frustrations, but unlocking it requires black diamonds, a resource that can only be found during horde attacks — which, when playing solo and not with friends, are immensely tough to survive — or from orc chests, which seem to have a fairly low drop rate. You can get black diamonds by slaying bosses. But these are very rare. Spend these black diamonds at your base to craft new mapstones or reconstruct a destroyed one. But you must do this at each individual base in order to designate them as fast-travel locations, and if you’ve hauled yourself all the way back to your initial hovel, you’d have no reason to go back there once you’ve collected your left-behind belongings. Thus, fast-travel isn’t an option until after it would be most useful.

Free Range Games/North Beach Games image via Polygon

This back and forth traveling is only made worse by two-dimensional fighting. There are a few different weapon types at your disposal once you’ve made it to Orc Town (the region containing the first boss in the game, after about 8-10 hours), such as a sword, maul, or battle ax, but they offer little aside from strengths against the varying enemy types. Light attack, heavy attack, or block — those are the three options available to you, and the janky enemy AI, which sees them get stuck on terrain or run behind you, makes it all the more infuriating.

Moria: Return isn’t the worst offender in a sea of bad survival games, and there’s certainly enjoyment to be found exploring Khazad-dûm’s depths if you’re with friends — but as a mainly solo dwarf, progress is slow, combat is frustrating, and exploration features far too much backtracking in the linear world you’re in. There’s a certain satisfaction in upgrading my gear and taking out tougher enemies, and ultimately, I still want to get back to Lord Gimli. But the structure of the game is at odds with the mechanics, and the disappointing combat doesn’t help. A few patches could see this become a survival game that can hold its own against the more popular entries in the genre, but as it stands, perhaps the dwarves should’ve let the orcs claim Moria and built their new kingdom somewhere else.

The Lord of the Rings Return To MoriaThe game was released on Oct. 24, for PlayStation 5 and Windows PC. Xbox Series X also received a pre-release download code. North Beach Games provided a code for a PC pre-release to review the game. Vox Media is affiliated with other companies. Vox Media can earn affiliate commissions, but this does not affect editorial content. Find out more about affiliate links. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.