It could've been much better than it is, if not for some fatal flaws, and the fact EA games made it.
To start with the story, you already know about the LOTR series, but now you control somone named Berathor, who is attacked by Nazgul. Suddenly a elf comes to save you, and you start a quest one step behind the fellowship. I have no problem for that, but maybe knowing WHY would be nice. It's unfortunate to see the game's story is barely expanded upon, but that's not as bad as the characters. Their storylines, their personalitys, the are never expanded upon, it's as if they join you for no good reason, other than to fight, but even if they explained THAT, i'd be content, but they don't. Not only that, Gandalf narrates the whole thing, which starts kinda interesting, but after a few hours, you'll want to turn it off.
Which reminds me, the sound is excellent really, so is the music. It's the same music from the movies, also the game is THX suporrted (Read: It's LOUD and sounds awesome). Sotmimes the sounds downright blow you away. Unfortunatly, the voice acting does not, it'svery un-inspired, and sounds horrible to put simply.
The graphics are our next category, and they are fairly good. From the forests of Rivendel, to the depths of Moria, it looks and feels good. The character models look fairly good to, and the animation for attacks look spectacular. Not only the models, but really, everything looks fairly well... but...
The gameplay, first i'll list the good things, and the first good thingi s the actual combat. There IS quite a bit of customization in this game, i'll give it that. And in battle, you can choose 3 characters to have in your aprty, and switch through them whenever. Not only that, the combat is turned based, and will show which characters go next in a box like que, this to me is very good, as it was used in Evolution 2, Far off promise, which was a great RPG with the same style combat really. And yeah, lots of customization between items and stats, which you gain by leveling up. Which brings to the problems, the first one is, this game is so dang linear!. You have a path you can take, and pretty much ONLY that path, there are certain 'sidequests' but the just involve looking around. Not only that, you level up far to much, so may like that, but I personally don't. Also another thing, the game is far to long, mainly because even simple battles take forever to do, because everything is just so long... it can take about 30-40 hours to paly this game through first time, which is great for RPG's, but it seems to drag on. Not only that, the bosses really suck and don't give a feel of challenge either.
Overall, LOTR: The Third Age, was a decent attempt by EA games, but in the end, they really should have gotten somone else to make it.