It’s not that the story is bad overall, and I can forgive a certain amount of fan service in a Lord of the Rings game, but the larger issue with it is that you spend about 95% of the journey, which took me nearly 45 hours to complete, jogging through dark corridors and beating up irritating goblins, so it’s easy to forget there’s any kind of plot to follow to begin with.
That said, most of that story is little more than a series of excuses to reference the events of Fellowship of the Ring, like when you find the stone Pippin threw down the well or walk through the room where Frodo’s Mithril saved him from an otherwise-fatal blow just about every other room finds a way to remind you that the Fellowship traveled through here.
After an opening cutscene that throws you into a dark hole, the story slowly builds to a confrontation with a powerful entity that’s corrupted Moria with dark magic.
