Looking good.

Nice, one of the games I have been watching.

Yea, it's a surprise. I was wondering why Sony was promoting it during conferences. I thought it was "just another LOTR game", which have, mostly, been average at best

Not really a surprise, previews I read the last half year were pretty positive and videos I saw were also very good. It's not a game which had to be based on a movie releasing at the same time so that it wasn't automatically a "will be bad" for me when they revealed the game. 

This generation started with Wii U nearly 2 Years ago.

Great reviews, can't wait to check this game out.

Yes it is a surprise, people. There hasn't been a good/well-reviewed LOTR game in like forever? The best was Return of the King and even that was short. Battle of Middle Earth 1 and 2 were ace, but that was a different genre. All the action LOTR games weren't much liked by critics. I played all of the them and enjoyed them, but whenever a new would come out, I expected low scores no matter how good the trailer or some gameplay vidoeslooked.

And yes, there might have been a few people who expected it to do well, but most didn't. Hell, look at how badly it did last year at the "most anticipated game of 2014" thread. I think I was one of the few that voted for it and no one even bothered with it (it survived most rounds because everyone was indifferent to it). And even though I voted for it and was my 2nd most anticipated game, I still didn't think it'd do well. .

I expected to enjoy it (though I was waiting for some non-scripted gameplay that you get to see from reviews and to hear their thoughts on what it actually played like) but I thought it would get mediocre reviews due to being a new franchise (LoTR but still new character and design) and yet being similar to AC and Batman.  Those things don't bother me but reviewers seem to want every new IP to be something revolutionary (see the Order previews and Destiny Reviews) so they normally dock a game for stuff like that.  

This is great though (still gotta wait for it to be $30 BF due to budget)

SURPRISE OF THE MILLENIUM MOAR LIEK IT!

I've been hoping this game would turn out like this, but I was expecting the worst. It didn't exactly have a lot of factors that instill confidence (Tolkien game, little-to-no-coverage, etc.)

I was expecting the game to be decent, but I thought the reviews will be around mid 70's to low 80's, and thank god it exceeded the expectations with all the 8 and 9. It's now the highest rated game based on the lord of the rings, and became the sleeper hit of the year. Also, I'm happy it's an M rated game, which will the material its justice. I all we need now is for the game to turn into a commercial success and sells enough to justify another high quality game in the series.