Interesting...I never expected this.
The gameplay: brilliant, frikkin' brilliant. It plays like Rise of Nations in that certain units come in battalions of 3-5 units. However, the building system is different, involving building from pre-determined building foundations, certain one's can only generate resources. There's no population limit, but there is a limit to which your command can go, and you can't train any troops above this "command point" limit. This game really simplifys RTS, but not in a bad way.
The graphics: The game has admirable graphics and is hard to fault when it comes to visuals. Also, the game, depending on whether or not you have a good video card, runs pretty well and can seriously drag you into the story.
The other stuff: there's the usual options like skirmish and a world builder of sorts, but one of the cool things is the factions you can be. They're not different to an incredible degree, except to the other team. For instance, the Rohan and Gondor units are much stronger, but only have half the number of troops in their battalions, whereas the Isengard and Mordor units are really weak and are toppled easily, but there're tons of them, about ten per battalion. There're also the different siege weapons, the forces of Middle Earth can only build so many siege weapons, but they're strong like hell, whereas the dark forces can build huge armadas of siege weapons, but they can't dish out or take much.
In short, this is a game that all people new to RTS games should try and all veterans deserve a shot, it's tweaked slightly, but it's still got the same principles as a normal RTS game.
-Zim