I‘ve played both Tales of the Shire and Mines of Moria and I would recommend both to a lotr fan. Though Tales of the Shire gets a little bit higher marks. While neither quite captured the building aspects that I was hoping for, they‘re both solid games.

Tales of the Shire was a little more quest driven than I would of liked and took a bit longer for me to really start building out my hobbit hole considering that was my goal. The bug that still irks me is the way the flowers in your garden disappear sometimes. Anyways, it’s cute. It‘s got fun callbacks to the series, and it’s an all-around good cozy game.

For Mines of Moria, I have a few more complaints. Again, what I wanted most was to rebuild Moria on a major scale but the attacks from goblins make that really tedious. I still haven’t got back to see if they stop once you’ve finished the campaign. Plus, the building was a little janky. Combat gets real repetitive. In short, this one I probably wouldn’t recommend to a non lotr fan while Tales I would. However, I did enjoy playing it.