I think I started worrying prematurely. In Shadow of Mordor, you can run while in stealth, and you can sneak attack orcs in the face. Never mind how that's supposed to work, I can deal with it.
So far, the worst consequence of failing at stealth has been getting forced into a battle against unfavorable odds, leading, eventually, to my death. Which I'm okay with for two reasons - first, death in this game is pretty cheap. You respawn at the nearest tower and can go again right away. And second, the fight, despite the odds, was winnable. What it boils down to is that I can use stealth opportunistically and sporadically, and even then like a reckless idiot, so I'm fine.
Although, I haven't actually played any of the story missions yet. It's possible there's at least one where you have to crawl through at a snail's pace, worrying about lines of sight and the noise of your footsteps, where one wrong move will force you to start over (and, indeed, in the rpg.net forum thread, someone confirmed that there is), but since there are a lot of open world activities to get distracted by, I should have plenty to do, even if I hit a roadblock.
Overall, my first impressions are favorable. I like fighting orcs, leveling up my weapons, and finding collectibles, and while I've had only brief contact with the Nemesis system, hunting down the orc that killed me was pretty fun. I can definitely see how it could become an enjoyable mini-game on its own, provided it gets a little more complexity down the line.
The only real flaw that I've noticed so far is that it doesn't really feel like a Tolkien story. I won't go into more detail just yet, because I'll probably want to write a whole post about the plot later on, but there have been moments where I'd look at the screen and say, "wait, am I a wraith?"
I don't think continuing this game is going to be a problem for me. So long as there isn't a sudden difficulty spike down the line, I can continue with the way things have been going indefinitely.
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