HomeReviewsThe Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria
The Lord Of The Rings: Return To Moria review: solid cozy survival fun for a group of palsIt’s janky, but in a sweet way rather than a game-breaking way
It’s janky, but in a sweet way rather than a game-breaking way
Image credit:North Beach Games
Image credit:North Beach Games
I am sure an honest, self-respecting Tolkienian fantasy dwarf would, if I pinched his apple cheeks and told him he’s very endearing, he’d at best glare at me and at worst kneecap me with his axe. And yet! That’s a large part of what I enjoy about the new subterranean survival-craft-‘em-upThe Lord Of The Rings: Return To Moria. It’s a slower, more weightysurvival gamethan you might be used to if you’re aValheimor ARK type, for example, and you’ll spend a lot of your time in the dark. But what is this, a survival game forelves? No sir. And besides, like I said, it’s rather sweet. Cosy, even.
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This setting allows for some genuine ‘ooh!’ reveals and properly great environmental storytelling. This used to be a legit dwarf kingdom, after all, and you’ll pick through old underground villages that have houses with the remains of bedrooms upstairs and, if you’re lucky, storerooms of wood and stone you can use. Some rooms or statues have the remains of barricades studded with arrows, indicating a desperate last stand. As a smart dwarf, you quickly figure out the best approach early on is to set up camps in the ruins of the old civilisation, repairing collapsed forges instead of building new ones. Your hearths, where you cook meals, throw a cheery light, and you can stop up gaps in walls to offer protection from the baddies coming to hit you.
Baddies include wolves (a lot of wolves, all the time), goblins, and aggressive semi-armoured badgers. Later: orcs, but pinkish daywalker types. In a perfect example of the lovely sort of jank in Return To Moria, your skirmishes are weirdly silent, but all other life forms in the mines, hostile or no, have the samepatta-patta-pattafootsteps. You can listen to what seems like an entire regiment of bastards tramping past your firelit walls. Enemy proximity stops you from sleeping, so it gets a bit ‘KEEP IT DOWN OUT THERE!’ at times. You see how so much of this game passively makes you roleplay as a dwarf?
Despite being the most curmugeonly of fantasy species, the dwarfs love a good sing-song when mining, and can build huge beer vats once you get the precious ores hidden in the deep mines proper, upgrading your gear as you go. You find different biomes, for want of a better word, as you tunnel deeper, and graduate from giant rat meat to sort-of-deer meat, and hit rich seams of ore, and fire up huge, ancient forge engines. I have lofty ambitions of fortifying entire halls on the upper levels, filling them with hearths and meal tables full of sizzling meat - self-sustaining dwarf homes with planters for cabbages and mint! The light of your home fires is so comforting and cheerful.
Dwarf Maker 2I made fun of the way press releases talked about the character creation, but it’s fabulous. You just pick different hair and ornaments, and make your dwarf body go in and out in different places if you want. Faces are described with an adjective like Regal or Elfin depending on how craggy they are.Image credit:RPS/North Beach Games
You can see that some things were out of reach of the ambition of the devs as well. The deeper parts of the mines are impressive and foreboding, but in practise some of the buildings are blocked up where you might expect to go in and have a poke around, the enemy AI is forgiving to the point of making you feel a bit sorry for the giant bats you can one-punch to death, and though there are many status effects (wet, cold, tired, etc.) I’m unclear as to how, exactly, they impacted me while I was stomping around. Darkness is an important factor, because it’s more dangerous in dark areas so you’re encouraged to light fires and place torches as you delve deeper, but honestly a lot of the time, unless I was exploring an entirely new area, I just ran around in the dark.
Image credit:RPS/North Beach Games
Image credit:RPS/North Beach Games
But it’s so sweet! It’s so full of love and pretty reveals, and empty dwarf pubs that feel hand crafted, and overheard orc conversations where they bitch about goblins. If you have a group of friends that you already play games like this with, then I’d say it’s well worth bringing campfires and cosy stew to as many corners of Moria as you can.
