I finished this game yesterday and based on gameplay experience I can say next few things:
Gameplay:
Gameplay is very fluid. You have 20 main missions where you have to defeat Sauron's servant Black Hand and revenge your family. This missions are nice scripted and interesting for play.
Aside that you have 20 side mission's where you need to free prisoners from Orc's. These missions could be more creative because they all have repeating pattern (go to some yellow points and free some prisoners), only variations in this missions are time limits and minor assignments for reward bonuses.
Very interesting set of mission's is the Hunting challenge. Here you will need to find different kind's of beast's and hunt for them in cave's or fields like spider's, bat's, craug's etc. I would like that game have some more bigger types of monsters except craugs.
Other missions like collecting artifacts and signs are based on collecting 100 items scattered on map which I found unchallenging. In most cases you just need to go to some point on map, climb on some ruin, or go bellow bridge and you will find and collect item.
The best way of playing is to play one main story mission on every few side missions so game keeps you motivated and focused. I needed 50 hours for finishing game and I would advise that you play it in 5-6 hours sessions per day because then becomes exciting when can sense real spirit of the game and not in short burst (2-3 hours).
Captains and warchief's system is something new which you can't see in other games and very nice done. Every orc that rule small region is called captain. Captains are controlled by few warchief's that rule over bigger parts of region. If you defeat some captain you can read his mind and find out who is his warchief(some main missions request from you to do this). Every captain and warchief has some weaknesses that you can use to defeat them and you gain them by collecting intel data by reading minds from other orcs. After defeating some captain or warchief and some time passes other orc will come to his place.
One thing I noted are small maps. When you pin down some location on the map which looks far from your position you think you will need time to get there. But when you close the map you will actually see that marked point is very close to you and you can get there less then minute by just running.
Also when you eliminate some group of orcs they will respawn almost immediately so you can never clear some area of orcs and in some times when you are outnumbered you must to run away.
Overall said for main story I would give 10/10 while other side missions except,hunting challenge,are not well designed so my personal score is 6/10. Average score 8/10.
Combat system:
Combat system,like Xenoblade Chronicle's which is also made by Monolith software, is shortly said fantastic. When you start playing game you don't have many possibilities except to fight, stealth kill or run away from enemy. Most of time you will use left click for attack and right click for block.
Later in game, when you earn some experience by completing quests, you can unlock many abilities like shadow strike(automatically teleport behind enemy), hypnotize enemy so he battles at your side, pin shot(prevent orc from escaping while shooting him in the foot) , ability to throw daggers, ability to mount craug by shadow strike etc.
After that upgrades when you attack fortress it's only your imagination limit what kind of approach you will use stealth, or open combat.
Combat system: 10/10
Graphics:
Graphic in this game is very nice. Many DirectX 11 features are included like hardware tessellation (detailed texture on every game object especially expressed on walls, wood and stone), ambient occlusion (nice and realistic lighting effects like sun goes through tree leaves and than falls on hero, night and day effects, metal reflection), excellent detailed characters (especially captains and war-chiefs).
But for my opinion it lacks some minor features, for example no wind effect, leaves on trees is static (don't fall down or moves with it's own physics), grass have nice design and moves when you running or walking but it's the same over all terrain (for example they could make more types of grass with different height and shape properties), main character face could be better animated (better scene expression and more detailed).
Regardless of lack of this minor graphics features overall said I was very satisfied with game graphics this game have to show.
My Personal Score : 9 out of 10
Conclusion:
This is not the best game I ever played but it's surely one of the best. Based on my different criteria aspects I give 9/10 for this game.