Middle-earth: Shadow of War

Middle-earth: Shadow of War is an open-world action RPG by Monolith Productions and the sequel to Shadow of Mordor. Talion and Celebrimbor once again take on Sauron's forces, build their own Uruk army and try to conquer Mordor from within.

The core of the game is the expanded Nemesis System: captains and followers have individual strengths, weaknesses, personalities and memories. Encounters, defeats and recruitments create personal rivalries and stories that differ from save to save.

The base game was released on Oct 10, 2017 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Later, the story and Nemesis expansions were bundled in the Definitive Edition.

On Sep 30, 2026, a native version for Nintendo Switch 2 follows. It is released as part of Middle-earth: The Shadow Bundle and includes the content of the Definitive Edition.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War was released natively for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. On Sep 30, 2026, Nintendo Switch 2 is added as another native platform.

Playing the older console version on newer hardware via backward compatibility is not a separate native PS5 or Xbox Series release.

Shadow of War combines third-person melee combat, ranged combat and stealth with character progression, gear and open regions. Enemy captains can be killed, dominated or recruited. This creates your own army, whose members can rise through Mordor's hierarchy.

Large fortress sieges bring this system together: Talion assembles assault forces, exploits the weaknesses of enemy leaders and conquers regions. The game also adds asynchronous online features around fortresses and revenge missions to the campaign.

The Definitive Edition bundles the base game with the major expansions. These include the story expansions The Blade of Galadriel and The Desolation of Mordor as well as the Nemesis expansions Slaughter Tribe and Outlaw Tribe.

For the Switch 2 version, this complete Definitive Edition content is part of the announced bundle and is therefore not treated as a separate base game.

On PC, Shadow of War requires at least 6 GB RAM, a GeForce GTX 660 or Radeon HD 7870, and 70 GB of free space. For the recommended settings, the Steam version lists 12 GB RAM and, among others, a GTX 970/GTX 1060 or Radeon RX 480/RX 580.