The iconic fantasy world, created by J.R.R. Tolkien, is summoning us back to the Fourth Age of Middle-Earth. Development studio, Free Range Games, and publishers, North Beach Games, invite you to adventure into Middle-earth once more as you work to uncover the mysteries in The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria. What will you uncover in the depths?

Set in the Fourth Age of Middle-Earth, you are summoned to the Misty Mountains by a familiar face, Lord Gimli Lockbearer. You need to help take back the lost spoils of the Dwarven homeland, Khazad-dûm, also known as Dwaarowdel, but more commonly known as Moria, deep below their feet. If you are a little like me, you love the Lord of the Rings series, so you will love the little Easter eggs that are placed around Moria, making the experience that much better. 

The realms are procedurally generated, so no two adventures will be the same. You won’t mind too much if you smash it out solo before you jump into another session with your friends. Each run will feel different for you. I was a little shocked by the genre of The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria. It’s more of a survival/crafting game, where you need to mine resources to craft things, using these items to build your little camp up to be the biggest, but entwined with this is the fact you need to upgrade your gear as you take on the hordes of enemies.

There are also three different mountains where you can adventure, creating hours of fun, and as I mentioned before, you can jump in with your mates. Playing with friends makes the game more exciting, and by halving the workload, you can build some truly impressive encampments. 

On your adventures, you’ll find landmarks and ruins that you need to rebuild, in turn, linking up to your camp and helping to take back what is owned by the Dwarves. As you explore these ruins in your efforts to rebuild them, you might find some artifacts, and as I mentioned before, some of these could be the cool easter eggs I mentioned earlier, and die-hard fans won’t want to miss them.

I was impressed by the simple-to-use and detailed character creation menu. You can spend a few moments knocking out a decent-looking character, but you can also spend time delving into every aspect to create a truly heroic character worthy of defending Middle-Earth. 

I appreciate games that offer nice and simplistic controls, and this game does it super well. Each time you go to complete an action, like crafting or even selecting something like your axe, you’ll be prompted with the button you need to use, meaning you’ll never be confused about what you have to do next, but even with these prompts, the controls all felt well planned out. Having said that, I would sometimes get a little jumbled up with what I was doing, pressing select on the wrong item while trying to draw my axe, and I’d have to start beating a goblin with a torch instead. 

The developers did an absolutely fantastic job with the graphics in this title, using similar styles made popular by many fantasy franchises. As you mine through the mountains, the caves are lit by a beam of moonlight coming through a crack in the ceiling, and raw materials brightly reflect the light from your fiery torch.

It helps to create an incredibly immersive environment, really helping you feel like you are far below the mountain peaks and surrounded by darkness. The creatures and goblins you encounter while adventuring are crafted with beautiful textures and details, giving them a very evil appearance, and you know something is about to go down. Playing on the Xbox Series X, I can’t fault how the game looks and performs, and short cutscenes helped to break up the gameplay with some incredible animations.

Occasionally, as you chip away in the mines, you’ll be prompted to start singing, and you’re character will start to sing one of the Dwarven songs. It almost had me feeling like I was in Snow White and The Seven Dwarves. The voice acting in this was absolutely brilliant, including deep and booming voices for the dwarves, and mischievous and dark voices for the goblins. It all was really well done, really bringing cutscenes to life and making me feel like I was part of the action. Ambient noise was also incredibly real, and at no point did I feel like I was hearing the same sound over and over. The only exception to this would be if I had Thron, my ass-kicking character, swinging his pickaxe for long periods, then it would get old fairly quickly, but even then, it was all broken up a little, so at no stage did I feel like I had to switch off the sound. 

If you love the Lord of the Rings, either the books or the movies, The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria lets you uncover the mysteries beneath the Misty Mountains. Even if you’re looking for a new game where you can chill out solo or meet some new friends, where you can experience beautiful graphics, immersive audio, and incredible gameplay, then The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria is a fantastic choice and well worth a try.

Written by: Hayden Nelson