You might be thinking of The Two Towers, Jerma played that as well and got stuck for a very long time on the last three levels because of it. In fairness to the game though, while Jerma is very entertaining, he's also not very bright. I think his Two Towers gameplay shows that best, some parts had me laughing harder than I had in a long while, other times I couldn't believe when he didn't figure out he was supposed to save a family and the game was waiting to give him a chance to put out the fire that was blocking them from running away (he assumed the game was glitched because it would let him through when the family died). As for how many LotR games there were that were also hack and slash: a lot, probably over half a dozen, and they were all pretty good. Even the hack and slash games on the game boy advance were good because those were basically Diablo: Lord of the Rings edition, complete with their own inventory systems and skill trees. I unironically think the game boy advance had the best Lord of the Rings games on it for that reason, and the GBA strategy game The Third Age was great as well, enough that I recently went back to play it on an emulator.

If AAA developers kept putting in extra effort, that would become an expectation. If that expectation wasn't met, that would immediately mean loss in sales. Additionally, like you said, it makes the production more expensive. It is better then to just keep doing the bare minimum. People's expectation is managed, so the sales aren't hurt by low quality, and the production ends up being cheaper. All of this is stupid when looking at this as a consumer. As a member in a board of directors, it makes perfect sense: Condition people to expect slop, so we can keep making slop and so they don't mind buying slop. Most gamers don't compare qualities. Most gamers don't notice extra details either. Most gamers are not people watching reviews like Mandalore's. Most people just look at the IGN score (or even worse, buy the same game yearly because it is comfort food after the 10-hour minimum wage shift) and proceed accordingly. It is the average Joe and Jane that helps EA, Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard break even on their investment, while whales with too much disposable income spend on microtransactions for additional profits.

I sucked at this and at the Two Towers game. As a dumb kid, I just picked random upgrades and never realized you could parry.

Never played the games.