The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria's launch on PC received unfavorable critical reception. The developer has now ported the game over to the PS5, and after going hands on with it, I can confirm that there have been little to no improvements in this below mediocre survival game. Moria copies elements from contemporaries of the genre but doesn’t pay much attention towards crafting an experience that would be cohesive.

There is a bit of fun that comes from collecting resources and getting more powerful, but that’s buried deep beneath layers of game design issues and technical jank that make it a game that’s best skipped.