The Problem is... I Love The fucking Gameplay, this together with the Nemesis System was super addictive to me.

I love proc gen stuff for how it can make each playthrough feel different or even just make yours feel different from your friend's. I appreciated that the enemy would remember how you defeated them in particular, because it called out those unique events. I also don't know that there are a ton of settings where this mechanic makes sense outside of the two it appeared in already, so I won't miss it too badly.

But the story beat is static, it always gives you the same enemy in the same situation. The nemesis system turns that story beat dynamic. Every time you hit that story beat you get a different enemy in a different situation. It doesn't give everyone the same story, it gives everyone their story. It's innovation is how the system sets up stories and ties them into the gameplay. The system is designed to draw you into an encounter with a nemesis, there are multiple outcomes to that encounter. Those encounters become callbacks in the next encounter and so on and on until you've create a storyarc against that enemy.

For example I remember having a nemesis I couldn't kill with a sneak attack (which was very much my preferred way of getting rid of nemesis I wanted to get rid of). So I had to fight him head on and I set him on fire. He managed to escape while I was being overrun by grunts. One of the grunts slayed me and became a new nemesis. Meanwhile the one that got away gained a new weaknesses to fire. One storyline branched into two storylines. Not only did my individual story born from the nemesis system branch out, the gameplay encounters with those nemesis also changed from the previous encounter. The next time I fought my old nemesis I had a new trick up my sleeve, I could use fire against them. As for the new nemesis, well get to him.

That's the innovation of the nemesis system. It's a story generator that gives you your story and each encounter alters the gameplay for the next encounter. But that's only the foundation of the nemesis system. The Nemesis hierarchy and relations between them is an extra layer of storytelling. For example that grunt who killed me turned out to become a really annoying nemesis, I really struggled killing him and every encounter only made him stronger. So I devised a different strategy. I ended up turning other orks that surrounded him in the hierarchy and started using them to do my dirty work. In the end I wasn't the one to slay my new nemesis, it was a different ork (under my control) who challenged him and killed him.

And final note on what really makes all of it work is the presentation. The orks aren't just a randomized collection of traits, they're voiced and somewhat visually unique and whatever randomized outcome they get to at the end of the encounter gets properly presented in the next encounter. The presentation is the glue that ties all those encounters together into one story. You're presented with an actual nemesis and not just some generic mute and they "remember" the things you did to them before. They feel like a nemesis and not just some randomly generated grunt.

If you tried it and didn't see the appeal I'm guessing the game was too easy. I wasn't impressed by the nemesis system until the orks had a chance to escape or I was forced to retreat or I got killed. The system really opens up and gets interesting when the game gets so challenging that you're no longer certain what will happen in any encounter.