The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria is a procedurally generated survival sim from developer Free Range Games. Set in the Fourth Age of Middle-earth, Return to Moria will see players summoned to the Misty Mountains by Lord Gimli Lockbearer to reopen the mines of Morial and salvage the vast treasures of this forsaken place.
Armed with nothing but wits and dwarven nerve, players set out in a procedurally generated world fraught with danger and rich in treasure. Offering a host of features and progression mechanics, Return to Moria aims to offer players a unique and exciting adventure in a familiar yet mysterious setting. Base building, exploration and crafting entice players to continue to delve into the depths of Moria despite the progressively darker and more dangerous enemies that lurk in the shadows.
Return to Moria opens with a brief cinematic with compelling voice-over work thanks to the wonderful John Rys-Davies lending his talents once again to the Character of Gimli. After a quick explanation and invitation to an expedition to Moria, Players will have an opportunity to customize and create their own dwarf for the adventure.
“The Character Creator in Return to Moria offers some fairly solid customization options allowing players to create a dwarf that feels entirely their own.”
The Character Creator in Return to Moria offers some fairly solid customization options. While not as detailed as some editors, Moria manages to offer enough customization to allow players to create a dwarf that feels entirely their own. For those wondering, creating a female dwarf is also an option, beard and all. As for the lore junkies among us, you’ll also be pleasantly surprised to select your dwarf’s origins which impacts things like starting clothing. The creator is simple to navigate and control, and the end result is a unique character for players to use.
Once you’ve selected the perfect beard for your cave-spelunking adventures, players will find themselves in a collapsed cave with no gear, no weapons and no way out. This early segment of Return to Moria works as the title’s tutorial, offering just enough hand-holding for players to learn the basics without restricting their desire to explore. It works well in the setting and quickly teaches players all they need to know to move out into the greater world.
As for the world itself, Free Range Games has done an excellent job of capturing the unique tension of Moria. Much like in the movies, Moria, at times, feels grand and vast with sweeping subterranean vistas while at others claustrophobic and terrifying. The world is begging to be explored, and the narrative and setting invite you to do just that.
While procedurally generated, Free Range Games has still managed to make Moria feel like the movie set pieces. It’s an impressive feat really, considering how easily it would have been for each area in an underground system to be another simple cave. While there is some redundancy in various chambers, it’s in line with how Moria is described in the books and portrayed in the movies.
As one can imagine, in a cave-based survival game, there is a lot of emphasis placed on light and darkness. This is another area that Return to Moria shines; leveraging a dynamic lighting system that acts as both a visual aid as well as a place of safety, Moria looks and feels grounded in its setting. Areas lit up become safer, while areas in shadow attract things that go bump in the night.
The system works to add needed tension and suspense to the experience while also offering some great practical gaming mechanics. Staying in darkness too long without a light source results in a debuff that impacts the player experience. Light, alternatively, drives back many of the enemies you’ll encounter in the vast world of Return to Moria, leaving players to be creative with how they want to explore and conquer the world around them.
While the world-building and setting are expertly handled, the graphical fidelity doesn’t hold to the same standard. While Return to Moria is a decent-looking game overall (the lighting system being a real highlight), there are times when the visuals lack the sharpness and detail we’ve come to expect from modern titles. Often, during the playthrough, textures would take a few extra seconds to render when exploring a new area fully. This was most evident when mining and igniting a torch. While the quality of the render would improve, often, the initial reveal of an area of mineral patch looked lower res.
Additionally, despite leveraging a solid dynamic lighting system, the sources of light, namely torches, lacked the stunning visual appeal one would expect from flame. While we have seen some impressive fire simulation in games over the past couple of years, these lacked that aforementioned graphical fidelity and thus took away from the overall experience.
What further exasperated this issue is the lack of customization in the graphical settings menu. Other than basic graphics quality selector and DLSS and AMD FSR support, there isn’t much to tweak in the settings. While Return to Moria can run on many lower-end systems, it unfortunately doesn’t allow those with high-end systems to crank up the visuals.
Despite this, however, Return to Moria is still a solid-looking title. This becomes quickly evident when leveraging the base building mechanics. One of my favourite features, the base building system, allows you to create entirely new structures or repair and expand on existing buildings littered through the Mines of Moria. Often, while exploring, you’ll come across an abandoned city with many of its buildings still partially intact. Abandoned forges and furnaces can be repaired and rekindled, allowing you to breathe new life into a dilapidated structure.
“Much like in the movies, Moria, at times, feels grand and vast with sweeping subterranean vistas while at others claustrophobic and terrifying.”
Mechanically, the base building system works fairly well. Leveraging a snap grid system, players can construct unique buildings and defences all within a marked zone around their hearth. This allows players to reinforce existing structures or create entirely new ones. The system also leverages its own physics mechanics, forcing players to think strategically and creatively in order for structures to actually stand properly. One cannot simply stack a series of walls vertically, for example, without proper reinforcements and supporting structures. This forces building design to make logical sense, a design philosophy I very much appreciate.
One of the most important progression mechanics in Return to Moria is the crafting system. This really is the bread and butter of progression, and I am happy to report that Free Range has done an excellent job at managing that delicate balance of depth and simplicity. Crafting in Return to Moria revolves around unlocking progressively better gear and tools while forcing players to delve deeper into the mines themselves to collect the materials needed. Thankfully, everything is clearly explained and easy to grasp so that more time is spent playing and less time researching on how actually to use the system.
Along with crafting, players will also be introduced to cooking, another very important aspect of the gameplay experience. As hunger is one of the survival mechanics present in Return to Moria(along with sleep, temperature and noise levels), players will spend some of their time foraging, hunting and cooking to survive. Like crafting, cooking is easy to understand and execute and once again encourages players to explore.
This crafting and exploration rhythm really is the heart of Return to Moria and is handled exceptionally well. With progression as a driving motive, players are enticed to venture deeper into the world and discover. What makes it more enticing still is the aforementioned setting and lore that surround the Mines of Moria. Once again, Free Range takes full advantage of the setting with lore pieces and nods to iconic moments and items littered through the world around you. You’ll often uncover exciting artifacts, locations and lore scrolls that highlight aspects of the Fellowships journey through Moria. It’s a fun nod to the source material that helps give depth to the actions and locations the player visits throughout the game.
While exploration is a blast in Return to Moria, it would be incomplete without the danger of goblins and orcs. Moria is filled with both, along with a host of other monsters for you to discover and conquer. This brings us to combat and the mechanics surrounding it. While the basic mechanics functionally work well, it is a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to the feel and gravitas of combat.
“When you can work as a fellowship, Return to Moria becomes a much more exciting and interesting experience.”
For starters, Return to Moria leverages a semi-locked, passive target system. When you are close to an enemy and attack, the system automatically targets the closest enemy you are facing. In theory, this should create a sort of rhythm to combat, with you able to bounce between enemies by simply pointing and moving between targets. In practice, it leaves something to be desired.
Combat encounters instead feel a little more chaotic and jarring when engaging multiple enemies. Additionally, the animations sometimes lack the smooth flow one would want to see when moving from one action to another. This leaves the whole experience feeling a bit more clumsy than one would like. Instead of a smooth, flowing system, combat feels like can feel like an awkward dance in the wrong size shoes.
However, with this being said, there are moments when combat works exceptionally well. Charged attacks, ranged attacks, shield charges, and many other maneuvers allow you to manage multiple enemies efficiently once you’ve gotten used to dancing in your metaphorical size 12 shoes. When combat works the way it’s intended, the result is a fun and engaging affair where every engagement encourages players to think quickly and creatively about how they want to engage their oncoming foes. At the moment, though, combat is probably the weakest mechanic for Return to Moria.
Despite this critique, however, the overall experience of Return to Moria has been a fairly fun and exciting affair. Supporting up to 8 players, Moria is best played with friends. There is something special about exploring such an iconic location with friends who love the franchise as much as you do. When you can work as a fellowship, Return to Moria becomes a much more exciting and interesting experience.
Setting up and executing a multiplayer experience is exceptionally easy. When you create or load an existing world in multiplayer(as a note, your worlds and characters can be used in both single and multiplayer), you’ll be given a world code. Share that with your friends, and they can join your game. Anything they currently have equipped comes into the world with them, and anything they log out with goes with them. It’s as simple as that.
Return to Moria, from Free Range Games, is a fun experience for fans of survival titles and Lord of the Rings. It takes some of the better systems from the genre and marries them to the lore and setting of Moria, the result of which is a world that fans can be excited about. While Return to Moria does have some shortcomings, namely in the form of janky combat and lacklustre visuals, the overall experience is still enjoyable for those who love the franchise.
