Strategy yes, RPG no.
Controls are sometimes a little confusing. For instance, most of the time X serves as "ok" and O as cancel, except for using the intermission menu to buy stuff and save your game, where their roles is inverted. Also, you have to press R to switch between your units and L to switch between targets, when one button would have been enough.
Last but not least, SELECT lets you choose which info is displayed when highlighting a character, which is good. BUT you cannot see a unit's HP and its name, which is lame. Also when you look at info on a unit (via square), you get its main characteristics but not all, so you have to remember what you saw in the intermission screen.
Scenario and atmosphere is for me where the game fails. Between maps, you get an extract of the movie, which serves as scenario. But what you will perceive is more that these short extracts (maybe 12s?) serve as a reminder of the movie and you memories is what is supposed to serve as scenario. It is thus hard to get some tilt for the characters and care for them, unless you are a LOTR hard fan. Also, you only get to play on the course of the movies, no extra "new" story here.
The graphics are nice to look at. The camera can get in the way sometimes though. (For an unknown reason, the game will always reset the camera after a phase has been executed, even though you cannot see your unit when it does that.)
Sound is ok, but the music is quickly repetitive - in fact I only got to hear 1 score this far during combat, which is a good one but unfortunately I got tired of it.
Overall, this game is an ok strategy game. If you are a LOTR hardcore fan or if you are not looking at the RPG elements or story telling elements in a strategy game, you will have fun here. Otherwise you will probably, as I did, get mixed feelings.