Let's talk ME: Shadow of War.
The first thing I can say is that the game is not worth its current price point. Unless you are a hardcore fan of the franchise I would recommend waiting until it hits the $25-$35 dollar mark on sales or discounts available through Steam or it gets thrown into a bundle.
For gameplay. The combat is the same as the first game with a few different weapons variations thrown in. Such as being able to replace your bow with thrown hammers. About 90% of the combat animations and finishers were copy pasted from the first game. So the entire process of playing the game will be very familiar. There was no innovation to the combat system or improvements that stood out to me. Playing with a keyboard and mouse is just as easy as using a controller - I think KB+M is easier actually, and the combat system still looks good to watch.
So what is different besides story?
You pick up actual gear in the game now to equip that to improve your baseline stats. But it is not a full inventory system limiting you to your weapons and then armor and a cloak. There was some nice development here though as each new piece of gear does modify the actual appearance of your avatar which was lacking in the first game outside of full skin changes.
The Nemesis system has tiered level captains and warchiefs that give you variations in that gear. So following the WoW style of quality you have white through orange quality equipment with legendary being blue. Upper quality equipment will unlock further special abilities for doing specific things while using that equipment. The better quality warchief or captain you kill the better the loot - and of course the more abilities they have and harder they are to kill.
There are also more skills for more character customization to choose from and you still have options to select perks for those skills. This means that each skill line has a primary skill tier and then attached to that teir are modifier skills that improve that primary skill in some way. And this seems to be the only game innovation that is not meant to support the microtransaction system.
So microtransactions. In the world you will pick up money from some defeated orcs or find treasures worth a lot of it. You trade this in for silver level loot boxes or warchests at a merchant you can access at any time. In the silver chests are equipment upgrades and in the warchests are allies that you get - orcs that work for you and you can call upon to assist you in-game. Gold and Mithril chests are rarer chests that you might get lucky enough to get in the game but you can not buy them with the in-game money you find. Naturally the gold chests hold better stuff, the mithril chests even better than that.
Now. You do not have to buy the in-game currency with actual money; you can farm up the coins to buy silver chests and the basic war chests but it is a very slow and tedious process with some drops giving you 5 coins and some giving you 50, those amounts will vary, but those chests cost 1500 coins. The gold and mithril chests take around 200 gold coins which are different from the in-game money easily found. Or you can buy gold coins with your actual money to get the best loot and allies that you can possibly have throughout the game.
From the 10 hours I've put in, it really does feel like that as the game goes on and it gets more difficult it might become more and more necessary to grind legendary captains and warchiefs for a chance at higher tier chests. Or to get the in-game currency for better and better gear and bodyguards. Moreso if you play this game on the hardest difficulties.
For the rest of the game:
The sound quality is to be expected with a lot of Middle Earth style orchestral music and tracks, but none that get quite as repetitive as the Witcher 3 did with the moaning wail music. All of the orcs in the Nemesis system have pretty good personalities and there was a lot of humor in dialogue written there - although I did think a few times 'oh god he's doing a monologue' before killing him and sometimes at death too. I really did appreciate the level of development that went in to making the orcs feel and look different from one another as far as the captains and the warchiefs were concerned.
So overall the game is not that different from Shadows of Mordor. If you like that game you already know what to expect going in. Because I am not a fan of how invasive this microtransaction system is and the looming prospect of the game being developed to be grindy to support it - I doubt this is a game I will finish.