One of my best sessions in The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria was when I forgot to load up on enemies. Can you imagine how much easier the fellowship would have been without the goblin hordes and the big flaming Balrogs?" In the short time between reloading and having all the monsters back in their place, I was free from the distractions of Moria's hard, buggy, and deeply frustrating combat. I could explore.

The monsters tore through the landscape and withdrew me from the ongoing battle. They became inert and let me decorate them with arrows or jump out from around me. I should add that only a few times, but in light of other more serious problems, such as frequent frame rate stuttering, I am beginning to think that Gandalf was right to avoid Moriah.

Gimli may not always listen to him. He is obsessed with reclaiming the Dwarven mines in this Valheim-esque survival game set in the Fourth Age of Middle-earth (after "The Lord of the Rings"). With a speech by the actual John Rhys-Davies, you can enter the character creator and begin the game while creating the beer-bellied dwarf of your dreams.

An ill-advised explosion has left your character (who can only be invited by friend code for cooperative play) stranded underground in an ancient mountain. You are trying to find a way out and return to the expedition, but there are many cavernous halls and steep tunnels ahead of you.

What sets Return to Moria apart from other survival games is Moria itself. Moria is the opposite of the open fields, hazy deserts, and lush forests common in the genre. The mines are smaller, more boxy in layout, and absolutely painful to navigate, as each procedurally generated cave or dwarven hall looks almost identical to the other.

There was a paragraph here moaning about custom map markers and how they don't show up as waypoints on the screen. So if you actually want to go back, click on the little closed eye icon next to the custom map memo. It only shows you vaguely where to go, but it's much better than stumbling blindly in the dark.

Yes, mines and caves are famously dimly lit and similar places, but I am a dwarf with a giant pickaxe in my pocket. Even if I don't remember the exact path to the copper ore I discovered earlier, I should be able to scramble through the rocks and stones and cut a new path. Instead, Moriah is surrounded by walls that cannot be broken. Structural cave walls and monolithic dwarf masonry cannot be penetrated by even the sturdiest pickaxe.

I have come to think of Moria more as a dungeon and the return to Moria more as a dungeon crawler. Thinking of it that way makes it more challenging and atmospheric.

Not many games do the underground areas justice. Underground areas tend to be too bright, lit by endlessly burning torches and mysterious candles that must have been lit just before you got there. But Moriah is moderately dim, so dark that you have to hold a flashlight in one hand most of the time. There is little music, mostly cavernous, echoing soundscapes that make you feel cold and alone, literally out of your depths.

Oddly enough for a game set deep underground, the day/night cycle is also curious. At night, it somehow gets even darker, and the goblins and orcs that run the gaffs come in droves. I would go on expeditions during the day to scout out new areas and fill my bag with raw materials, but if night falls and there are a few open spaces left, I might be able to take on the spider hordes.

With a blow of poison frob in the face and your strength bar slowly dwindling, you decide to flee to the warmth and shelter of your newest base camp. There are few ways to regain your strength outside of camp, so you return here when things start to get dark, repair your gear, sleep off your seeping wounds, and in the morning eat roast meat or mushroom stew.

If they die, they can return to their own bodies and regain their equipment. If you are particularly unlucky, you can leave behind more than one corpse.

While this arduous process was certainly frustrating, it added a sense of urgency to the exploration that one would normally only get from a soul liking. The moment I finally unlocked Moria's map stone, which enables teleportation, was as slow as the bonfire warp in the original Dark Souls.

So here's what I enjoyed most about Return to Moria. Perhaps "fun" isn't the right word, but the path to the second main area involves a steep descent through a giant pit, with few existing ladders or platforms along the way. Instead, you must rely on your own building skills. As you peer into the void, you wonder, "Is that dim thing a scaffold?" and "How in the world am I going to get there?"

Swinging down rope ladders and attaching wooden platforms to the bulging cavern walls, I was able to slowly descend through the vast crystal chasm. When I finally reached the bottom and gained a foothold, it was the exact moment I threw my nickel in the air. If only there had been more moments like that in "Return to Moria," I would have been tempted to overlook that critical issue.

This is not a game without ambition. Moria is simulated to some degree, with goblin patrols moving around the world, seemingly scouting and returning to camp at certain times of the day. Goblins can come out of nowhere, and goblin dialogue can be heard inches away.

If you make too much noise while exploring, a goblin horde may be summoned. However, in 99% of the game, I ran around and picked up tons of ore noisily, and nothing happened.

I have subscribed to the idea of a simulated underworld ever since I first played Arx Fatalis. Unfortunately, the simulation here is half-baked and is overlaid by a rigid combat system that feels outdated on the Xbox 360.

With weapons and shields equipped, you can attack, roll, block, and charge attacks. At long range, you can even fire arrows with the least satisfying bow in video games. Attacks receive little feedback, so when stamina is low, the game compensates by draining what little color it has from the world. This only makes it harder and harder to survive and makes you want to throw in the towel and bet on the next life. Certain areas, like the crowded Octo Town, don't feel balanced with a single player in mind. I had good luck with the boss there when I stood on a platform and chiseled arrows at him. By thinking defensively instead of strolling in to shake hands, I prevented the boss from properly activating.

I know this is a survival game, not Devil May Cry. I am not expecting Capcom quality, but most of my worst times in Moria involved combat. Rarely can you actually fight only the orcs in front of you, and they almost always appear behind you to call your companions and divide your attention to limit your escape. Also, the more enemies there are, the worse the performance.

I already mentioned the bug, but background stuttering occurs frequently when exploring the world or when many things (such as enemies) are on the screen at once. Often, "Return to Moriah" simply does not feel good to play.

It's a shame, because it is one of the few games that feels true to the "Lord of the Rings" license. The developer, Free Range Games, has nailed Moriah. It feels cold, dark, and infested with evil, and the emphasis on crafting is perfect for the dwarven protagonist.

But every time I find the game too grim, I stumble into an orc camp and have to engage in exhausting combat, or get my camp destroyed in a seemingly random siege, or get lost in a maze of rooms trying to find coal that I know is around here somewhere In the end, they were exhausted. Eventually, I am exhausted and now just want to get out of Moria. Frankly, the goblins are more than welcome.