Apparently, the company that made this had the rights to make a game based on the books, not the new line cinema films. So it was more directly inspired by the books. I remember borrowing it in high school for the GBA and thinking it wasn't bad. Wandering in Moria for ages. There's something charming about it and the graphics are more fairytale inspired which is interesting. If you google the PC version there's a lot of that early 2000s charm. Obviously most people would have played the EA published two towers game which featured events from the fellowship.
Funnily enough, I have ROTK high up on my GameCube "to play" list after playing LOTR on GBA. The GBA game was pretty dang güd.