Slow starter, but a fantastic game after it gets going. Great use of the license and great artistic design.
Gameplay is modeled after the "Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance" series, which itself is very derivative of Diablo co-op hack and slash but this one has the benefit of the Middle-Earth mythology and they use it very well.
The characters and story elements they add are fantastic. They do too much exposition about Tolkien's world, most of the stuff they reference could be left out or just left as subtext for the player to explore on their own. As a HUGE Tolkien nerd I think they did some great work dovetailing the game events into the Lord of the Rings and feel that they created a great story in their own right. I do not think the game did well enough to merit a sequel but it totally deserves one.
I own this on the PS3 and the PC and recommend the PC version. PC has overall better presentation and you can choose your control method. It ran great on my PC but there were some areas where the game jittered but I feel that is more to do with the port since my PC is more than powerful enough to run this at max settings. I had no crashes and no bugs that stopped me from playing. As a PC gamer the UI is a bit crap but you get used to it fast and it doesn't get in the way of the game.
It took about 15 hours to beat the game on Normal difficulty by myself. This has unlocked a new tier of difficulty which I will be trying out but to be clear Normal kicked my ass some times. You will die and you will become frustrated so if that bugs you drop it to Easy mode and just run through it because the game is fun and worth the time and effort.