It may be a bit cartoony and child-based but Tolkien fans like myself will enjoy it from start to finish.
It starts out in Hobbiton and Frodo is sent with Dwarves on a quest for the dwarves rightfully owning gold, which was taken by the powerful dragon named Smaug. There are a total of 10 levels, but each are VERY long considering all the missions and side-missions you might get distracted by...
The graphics are pretty amazing at first glance, everything has a sort of "cartoony" look to it and small items you collect such as courage points (are collected to buy things after level is completed) and health (small, green floating mushrooms. This is not implying that if you eat floating green 'shrooms' you will be healed in real life... :lol: ) have a '2D' look to them.
You can upgrade your weapon (a staff until you finally find the elven sword, Sting) ONLY if you find that certain upgrade. If you miss it or don't feel like risking the chance of falling into a pit to get it, then you will just have to live without that upgrade...
The enemies aren't too hard to defeat most of the time. The only hard ones to see are the small poisionous spiders in Mirkwood Forest (by far THE longest level). These spiders blend in with the background most of the time and you don't see all of them coming at you until you're already poisoned, which it is a pain to get rid of poisoning.
This game is definetely worth a look at and if you don't feel to sure about buying it then just rent it for a week or two and you'll probably have it finished. The only downfall with this game is that it has no real replay value... After you've beaten it you can't just walk around like in some games, it just brings you back to the last place you saved before the credits, which does you no good really.....