So here's a game I missed completely. I remember when the game came out I kept seeing the name pop up. Mostly in regards to some Kmart promotion or something. At the time, however, I didn't know anything about the game. That has since been remedied.
One day my friend messaged me asking if I'd be interesting in getting it. He had convinced somebody else to get the game and they needed a third since the game is 3 player online co-op. The price had dropped to $20 and so I bought it. I still didn't know anything about it right up until the point we started playing.
My friends and I were all expecting some silly game to laugh at and make fun of because of it's incompetence. We were mistaken. While the game is very far from perfect it certainly exceeded our expectations. It's a real co-op fantasy RPG with a Bioware-esque dialog tree (without the moral ramification, though). There are various places like Bree and Imladris and some Dwarven town to visit and chat with people and pick up quests as well as several familiar locales to explore to perform the quests.
It was actually quite a positive experience. The game is pretty well made with character customization, character persistence (your character can be played in single or multi-player) and a 10-12 hour journey. The biggest and most noticeable issue is enemies tend to be out of sync a bit. They move around erratically from time to time and sometimes just disappear entirely as the other members of your party have killed them already.
The Bioware influence doesn't end at the dialog trees, though. The voice of Harbinger from Mass Effect is in the game as "additional voices". I'm almost certain he voices the dragon Urgost since Urgost sounds exactly like Harbinger. Far more interesting, however, is that Commander Shepard herself - Jennifer Hale - does the voice for the elven player character Andriel. The catch is it doesn't sound at all like Commander Shepard nor does it sound like Bastila from Knights of the Old Republic (Another character by Jennifer Hale). I didn't learn it was Jennifer Hale until half-way through the game when I looked up who voice Urgost to see if it was the same guy as Harbinger. Even knowing it was her I couldn't tell. Nolan North also makes his obligatory appearance in virtually every game with a male voice.
Probably the biggest issue with the game, though, is the story. It's not that the story is bad or anything like that. It just doesn't fit very well if you've read Lord of the Rings. You do have interactions with Aragorn, Gandalf, Frod, Bilbo, Elrond and various other recognizable characters. Naturally the player characters are never mentioned in the books, though. This presents a small disconnect. It also has some lore issues like people teleporting, people casting magic (when they aren't wizards) and other minor errata. Overall it didn't really affect my enjoyment of the game. It may even lend itself to some of those silly moments my friends and I were expecting if you happen to be in a group familiar with the lore.
I had a lot of fun with the game. I can't speak to how it is in single player but it was enjoyable playing it in co-op with friends. If I had known what this game was back when it came out I would have probably bought it at launch. As it stands I think it's easily worth the $20 I paid for it and I intend to run through it in single player at some point. It's not a super long game, either, so it won't consume too much time.