In the shadowy depths of Middle-earth, a new epic tale unfolds: Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria, developed by Free Range Games and published by North Beach Games, beckons brave dwarves to rediscover the ancient mysteries and face the challenges lurking beneath the mountains. Also, there are female dwarves. With beards.

On the surface, Return to Moria is a great addition to the survival genre, but it doesn’t do anything particularly new…that is, if you’re playing alone. However, if you’re willing to dig a little deeper and can drag a couple of dwarves into the mines with you, it’s an absolute blast.

PART ONE: A New Journey Begins

The Return to Moria begins in Middle Earth’s Fourth Age, about fifty years after the conclusion of the original Lord of the Rings trilogy. We find ourselves separated from a now-graying Gimli Lockbearer and the rest of the company due to a mining accident while trying to blow open the path to Khazad-dûm. Now, possibly hundreds of fathoms below ground, and with no way back, we must go deeper into the Misty Mountains and the oppressing darkness to find a way out.

Even though it is a survival game, Return to Moria doesn’t skimp on the little details that make it an immersive and exciting experience. As I moved forward, the mines slowly revealed themselves: dark, dusty, and ruinous, with a collective of goblin, orc, and dwarf bones littering the stone floors. There was no music, just the sound of my dwarf’s labored breathing and hurried footsteps. Never mind the creaks and whispers that bounced off the rocky walls. That definitely wasn’t a soft explosion in the distance, I just heard. Totally the only living creature down here.

We’re Not Alone

As you could probably guess, that was just wishful thinking. In the aftermath of Sauron’s defeat, there are still groups of orcs below the mountains, and they’ve banded together to form their own little bastion: Orc Town. It was too much to hope that ancient treasures would just be resting there for me to snatch up on my way out. Instead, I now had to contend with the local residents and the half-orcs they’d exiled. 

For now, though, they just watched me. If I got closer, they would burrow into the ground and vanish. This was a little alarming, especially since one of Balin’s journal entries popped up, explaining that he also encountered this odd behavior and proposing that they were awaiting orders from their “leader.” WHAT ORDERS, BALIN? Pizza orders are great. Dwarf-to-go; we’re all out.  

My First Camp

Along the way, there were ruined camps that Balin constructed strewn throughout the halls. Very little of the first camp I came across was usable, so I had to scavenge from old barrels, barricades, boxes, and fallen warriors to repair the site. I liked that there was already an established camp to help me learn the basics, especially since it was getting closer to nighttime. I think the developers intended for you to make use of these sites instead of building out your own campsite from scratch, because they are everywhere. 

As I quickly scavenged for cloth, wood, and metal to build up my camp, the goblins continued to watch me carefully from afar, waiting for something. I roasted some traditional rat meat and laid out a bedroll, preparing for the night. Like Valheim and Minecraft, sleeping in a bedroll progresses time in Return to Moria. However, it doesn’t just skip to morning; it seems only to skip forward a small chunk of the time, allowing you to continue your adventures by torchlight. 

In addition to just skipping forward a small part of the day, you lose a good chunk of your hunger meter to sleep. Even if I just ate before going to sleep, my little dwarf would be starving by the time she woke up. You could attribute that to the healthy appetite of a full-grown dwarf or just an annoying game mechanic. I figured that out a little too late when I ate my last piece of rat meat right before bed and then woke up in the middle of the night to a surprise siege.

Rude Awakening

It must have been wishful thinking that the orcs and goblins might have gotten their leathery hides beaten enough that they would leave poor little dwarves like me alone. Oh no. Maybe they smelled the delicious scent of roasted rat wafting down the dark corridor or heard the sound of my dwarf sharpening a shoddily--made axe. Whatever it was, they were definitely out for blood.

At this point, I was still trying to figure out the progression system and hadn’t improved much in the way of armor or weapons tier. As the horde poured over the fallen rubble of the stone walls I hadn’t thought to reinforce, my heart sank. It had only been a night or two, and I wasn’t prepared for a siege, mentally or physically. Up until now, the tutorial had gone pretty smoothly. There wasn’t any mention of a siege or purge mechanic.

It went how you’d expect, ending with a tombstone and a broken chest. I guess this was the developers’ way of introducing you to what the core gameplay of Return to Moria would be like. This happened a few more times as I tried to get my feet off the ground before I gave up for the night. Every time I got a little farther with building or repairs, the horde seemed to knock me back down again.

A Fresh Start

After some sleep, I decided to start a fresh game with a new world seed. Similar to other survival games, there are tons of world seeds, allowing you to experience new maps with random loot and monsters. However, the tutorial map seemed to stay the same. Part of me wished that it was a little different, so that creating new characters wouldn’t feel monotonous and boring. 

Once I got past the first part of the tutorial, there was a beautiful Elven quarter, with lush green grass and sunshine, along with stronger orcs making camp in the area. I decided in this run-through that I wanted to try to set up a little base camp there. I stumbled upon a broken down building that had a stone hearth; unfortunately, you can only construct most of the items in the game if you are near a stone hearth, and in my haste to get to the Elven quarter…I didn’t have the coal needed to repair it. So, I threw down a temporary fireplace and a bedroll nearby.

Here is where my frustration with Return to Moria truly began to set in. I heard a few growls behind me and wheeled around to find myself face-to-face with three wolves. Now, I would consider myself to have a decent reaction time. I’m not the spring chicken I used to be, but dammit, I’m not that bad at action combat. Dodge rolling felt so sluggish at times, and attacking left me feeling kind of bored and uninspired. If you’ve played Conan Exiles or Valheim, you’re probably familiar with the same mediocre combat. You have an attack, charged attack, and block if you have a shield. That’s pretty much it. 

Enemy AI also felt kind of sporadic. If you were lucky enough to find a statue or a wall, you could kind of parry around that to take advantage of the enemies bugging out or standing still, but more often than not, I found myself surrounded and frustrated. These wolves were also faster than any goblins or orcs I had fought up to this point and didn’t seem to be affected by a shield bash or parry. And they just…kept…coming. 

After the first group was defeated, I attempted to build up my camp some more. Thirty seconds later, no exaggeration, here came another pack of wolves, hungry for dwarf meat. It happened so frequently that I took to saying “Oh, there’s Doordash with my order!” because they always delivered wolf meat right to my door. I would never want for meat again, if I could survive the Wolf Wars. This happened several more times before I got tired of fighting with them and barricaded myself inside the house.

I built up the stone walls as quickly as I could (which in itself was horribly stressful because the building menu is frustrating to use) and climbed to the second floor to look down upon my would-be hunters. With a sigh of relief, they padded away. A minute later, they were back again. However, this time, there were six wolves. I definitely wasn’t going downstairs at that point, so I just kept repairing my walls. Another minute, nine wolves patrolled by me. I got up to get a drink of water and came back, and 12 twelve wolves were patrolling back and forth outside my house. Needless to say, that was the end of my single-player experience. The spawn rate is absolutely ridiculous in Return to Moria, and they either need to patch it or allow the players to tweak that rate themselves in the settings or console.   

PART TWO: The Beginning of Multiplayer

Bringing in a couple of friends was the best decision I made during my playthrough of Return to Moria. Not only did I now have backup against the constant onslaught of wolves, but it greatly helped with collecting resources. In my own game, I had hit a really hard progression wall before I started making any meaningful progression. Not only could I not go outside my base to gather resources because of the high spawn rate of enemies, but I was constantly getting sieged/purged, and I didn’t get the chance to explore and figure out what I needed to do next.

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Progression

Return to Moria’s progression system seems to be rooted in the ruined statues found all throughout the halls and mines. These broken statues need to be repaired, but once they are, you can get a recipe (or a fragment) that unlocks more weapons, armor, and building pieces. I feel really conflicted about this system for a few reasons. 

With no stats, skills, talent trees, or levels/experience, our progression depended entirely on gathering all of these recipes (which are easy to miss or forget unless you mark them), and they were frequently placed in areas that just didn’t make sense. For example, the loom. The loom is placed in an area that takes a while to get to and allows you to change hide scraps to hide.

However, the armor that we made with that hide was a tier below the armor we had to struggle to make to get to the loom in the first place. It felt like there was a path we were meant to follow to unlock things in a certain order, but we had no way of knowing what that truly was. We frequently ended up unlocking recipes in a weird sequence or fighting creatures that we weren’t ready for, like a freaking troll that decided to set up shop amongst the geysers.

Whistle While You Work

Progression grumbling aside, when our little group worked together and had decent enough armor to stand on our own, we had an absolute blast exploring the caverns. Moria is enormous, and very easy to get lost in. However, once we embraced Map Stones for instant travel, we started to get more comfortable with the long treks and branching out exploring for untapped resources. 

Speaking of which, I was a little disappointed in the mining in Return to Moria. At first, I was genuinely surprised when I could dig through the rocky dirt out onto the other side. That kind of mining reminded me a lot of EQ Next: Landmark, because you were actually carving out the dirt and the environment around it adjusted with it. 

With that being said, mining is pretty limited. There are specific spots that hold ore or minerals that you can dig through, but it’s not nearly as freeform as you’d expect. I couldn’t just pick a spot and start mining wherever I’d like. Most of the environment was destructible, but not those dang stone walls outside of the deposit. Part of the shadow curse must have leaked into the mine walls, because those things refuse to budge, no matter the tier of pickaxe you have.

Though it’s frustrating, mining as a group is hilariously fun. When one dwarf would start to mine, the rest of us could join in with a mining song to help them out. Our dwarves even harmonized! Since you get to pick a specific voice at character creation, there are a ton of fun combos to try out when busting out a mining song with your friends. I was actually pretty happy and surprised when I learned that you could change your voice and appearance anytime from the main menu! More survival games should add that feature.

You Jump First, No You Jump First!

There are also steep declines that sometimes required us to build platforms and rope ladders to get down, and the shared terror of three drunken dwarves all clamoring down a ladder into the darkness and all being afraid to jump off is hilarious. One such place was the Crystal Descent, where we probably spent a good thirty minutes just trying to build a path 200 fathoms straight down. 

My fiance and best friend sprinted forward, building little haphazard platforms that would prevent them from falling to their deaths, and I trailed behind trying to fill in the gaps and make sure we could get back UP. Of course, when we finally made it to the bottom, we realized that none of us brought enough materials to make a Map Stone and would have to make the brutal climb all the way up. Rule number one: always carry enough materials for a Map Stone.  

Final Thoughts

With friends, I absolutely love Return to Moria. In fact, I can’t wait to start a new game with them to explore and see how much the new world seed changes. However, I will never play it alone again. Unless the developers come out and release settings for players to tweak or a console to change spawn rates, it is just entirely too frustrating to play alone. I would say that you need at least a solid group of four dwarves to progress and delve deeper into the caverns of Moria. 

Return to Moria has a TON of potential, but overall I would say the worldbuilding and fantastic job they did on bringing Moria to life is what carries the title; not necessarily the survival mechanics or gameplay. Aside from singing mining songs with friends, I can’t think of much that it brings to the table that I haven’t seen done better in other survival games like Valheim or Conan Exiles. Return to Moria has definitely created an interesting and immersive world, probably one of the most lore-accurate ones I’ve seen in a while. I just wish that they had dedicated a little more time to making their combat and survival system as interesting too. 

Full Disclosure: A copy of the game was provided by PR for the purposes of this review. Reviewed on PC.