Reviews and Previews

The Armchair Empire
"Big-time Tolkien fans that can tolerate the generally poor gameplay features in order to get a interactive romp through Middle-earth may want to give LotR a rental, but absolutely don't consider this for a gaming buy unless it can be had around the holidays for under 20 bucks." Review by Lee Cieniawa with overall score [5.1/10] and screenshots.
http://www.armchairempire.com/Reviews/XBox/lord-rings.htm

Cincinnati.Com
"The game suffers from some repetitive missions with a lot of "fetch this and find that," plus many of the camera angles are finicky." Review by Marc Saltzman with screen shots and score [4.5/5].
http://cincinnati.com/freetime/games/reviews/110502_rings.html

ign.com
"Did I have high expectations for the game? Sure, but even if you were to strip the license away, the games lack of focus, sub-par AI, and unbalanced gameplay make the game mediocre at best." Review by Kaiser Hwang with overall score [6.7] and screen shots.
http://xbox.ign.com/articles/372/372406p1.html

TechTV
"The heavily flawed combat drags this title down to a great degree, effectively making about half the game into more a chore than anything else." Review by Matt Keil with screen shots and overall rating [3/5].
http://www.techtv.com/extendedplay/reviews/story/0,24330,3402889,00.html

GameOver
"There is an initial rush and glimpse of Tolkien's novel in the early going. The ensuing action lacks punch and never arcs to a point to make any of the combat substantial." Review by Fwiffo with overall rating [60%] and screen shots. <small>(December 2, 2002)</small>
http://www.game-over.net/reviews.php?page=xboxreviews&id=43

GameSpot
"The Fellowship of the Ring is ultimately an average game at its best and a frustrating and boring one at its worst." Review by Brad Shoemaker with score [5.5] and screen shots. <small>(October 23, 2002)</small>
http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/adventure/lordoftheringsthefotr/

PlanetXbox
"The die-hard Tolkien will get a kick out of slugging and spell-casting their way through the first book of the Rings trilogy, but the casual gamer will only be disappointed by an otherwise generic action / adventure title." Review by Steve Steinberg with score [68] and screen shots. <small>(October 20, 2002)</small>
http://www.planetxbox.com/features/reviews/2002/lotrfellowship/

The Electric Playground
"The game is also pretty short--somewhere in the neighborhood of 8-12 hours to finish, and your desire to replay it will likely be minimal." Review by Bonnie. <small>(October 8, 2002)</small>
http://www.elecplay.com/reviews_article.php?article=9822

GameZone.com
"For gameplayers, linear is not good. Though a game sports a variety of puzzles, they should change up a bit for the sake of diversity, something that this game doesn't appear able to do. The enemy AI is suspect." Review by Michael Lafferty with overall score [8.0] and screen shots. <small>(October 8, 2002)</small>
http://xbox.gamezone.com/gzreviews/r18670.htm