I ran into what I would call classic A.I. stupidity a moment ago.
I infiltrated a stronghold just to mess around with the Uruks in it, so eventually I let myself being spotted. So one of them sounds the alarm and the entire stronghold chases me. I run to a nearby ladder, climb it and crouch once I reached the upper platform. All the stronghold's worth of Uruks were below chasing me, so they start climbing the ladder, one by one, the others below waiting to climb all crowded amongst themselves (funnily enough I would totally imagine a scene where they would actually fight amongst themselves to determine the right to climb the ladder first).
None of them took different paths (and there were a few others to reach me). And so one by one I just combo'ed them to death as they finishing climbing, and they all fell back down, dying in the process. I must have killed a good 15+ of them that way, essentially without efforts.
Oh and did I mention another classic A.I. behavior in video gaming? The one in which a patrolling enemy sees the dead body of a fellow guard? In Shadow of Mordor it's essentially on the Skyrim level of stupidity... but it's actually a little better, just a bit. They sometimes move around the body a bit to give the illusion that they're actually "searching the area" for the potential presence of the killer, but usually they stop and say something along the line of "who cares what killed him, when the killer shows up we'll kill him! ah!". They don't sound the alarm because obviously there's so many mobs in a stronghold that if you the player would risk it big time every time you'd kill just one guard it'd make the game frustrating I guess (would it?, genuinely wondering here).
" Huh, what's that... a dead Uruk, one of us! "
...* sniffs *...
" Huh, I'm thirsty... "
What I have in mind would have been something akin to the patrol making the discovery of the dead guard running back to the nearest group of guards, without necessarily sounding the alarm, and talk them into coming back to the body's location with him to do a small search in the area. They'd then be looking around as a group for maybe two or three minutes, and then claiming that they're bored, hungry or that they feel like crushing the head of their personal rivals only to finally leave the dead body to rot.
Ah, but then it hit me again...
" Ah yes... A.I., that one aspect in video gaming that pretty much never moved an inch since the past decade ".
What will it take? Another decade?
I guess I'll have to do with it. And I agree with those of you who think that the game is more easy than anything else so far. The only "challenge" you'll get is obviously if you stand there trying to counter 20 Uruks surrounding you without trying to Spacebar (dodge) your way out of there. But that has nothing to do with "it's challenging because the enemies are actually intelligent".
It's "challenging" because, instead of actual A.I. the enemies hit hard enough (simple "difficulty" mechanic, no A.I. needed) and/or the captains/warchiefs are immune to certain types of attacks. If a captain is immune to long range attacks (bow), that doesn't represent a real challenge, he's tougher not because he's climbing ladders and taking cover, or trying to hide in bushes when things go bad for him, or because he destroyed Caragor cages himself to let them loose on you to create a distraction to his advantage... nope, he's "tougher" because he can take 6 Elf-shots and nothing happens. Now, obviously, if we could kill them all by just sniping them from afar all the time it'd be even easier, I get that. It just feels cheap at times, even if I understand why it is the way it is.
Anyways, that's about A.I. and the game's difficulty, but there's something else that irks me now...
The frequency of enemy spawning. Not the fact that they spawn at all, I mean I don't want to end up with a completely emptied map filled with cadavers. Just the speed at which enemies spawn, and additionally the distance-from-Talion spawning. I don't think that it is an exaggeration to say that other than gathering intel by "interrogating" enemies there's basically no point in actually killing them (unless it's absolutely necessary). I'm saying this because the one individual or the one group of "trash" mobs that you just killed will be right back in about 15 seconds (and that's also probably not an exaggeration either, most enemies come back under a minute). And, you don't even have to leave the area for it to be filled up again, Orcs and Uruks just... come back. They either spawn right back at their usual idling posts 30 meters away, or a "patrol" that magically happens to pass by 20 seconds later will stop at the "empty" spot and occupy it anew. Rinse and repeat, you can actually watch it as it occurs while perched on top of a ruin or something along the lines.
At least in FarCry 2 you had to leave outposts' immediate surroundings for a patrol to stop by and re-occupy it. I don't know if it was completely intentional to be as it is (in Shadow of Mordor) but I sure hope that they're open to suggestions for some readjustments, because for me it's just pushing on the ridiculousness level. Yes, I want respawning, but no I don't exactly want it to happen in 15 seconds nor do I want it to happen in front of me, let me leave the area and give some plausibility to the scenario, let a patrol spawn 300 meters away instead of 20, and let them walk to the stronghold I just "cleared", so that it takes them at least two or three minutes for them to get there.
Am I the only one taking it like this concerning respawning? Oh well...
I do have complaints yeah, certainly not a perfect game (which game is?), but generally-speaking I do honestly enjoy it. I would give it a solid 7.5 / 10, so far anyway (6 hours in my current game at this point).