Impressive review, must have taken quite a long time. Great work!
The set itself, however... I vote "below average". Sure, it has some good figs - but that's pretty much all I think it has going for it. The set itself is some weird, scattered builds that aren't really all that impressive and doesn't give us a fullfilling structure but rather a part from a movie scene. Might just as well have been and old 'Studios' set. And the sticker sheets, oh the horrow... so many of them!
Honestly, I think people are rating this set much higher than they normally would just because it's LOTR and they're happy to see these LOTR sets. If this was a Kingdoms set, people wouldn't be quite so impressed, I think. It's greatly overrated.
But eh, that's just my opinion. And so far, it seems like I'm the only one having such an opinion.