NOTE: This thread isn't specifically about Middle Earth/Lord of the Rings RPGs, licensed, fan created or otherwise. it is about emulating the feel of high fantasy as exemplified but Lord of the Rings and, to a lesser extent, The Hobbit.
The full Lord of the Ring trilogy was recently on sale at Audible (the narrated, unabridged versions, not the dramatized versions) and so I have started listening. Not only am I reminded how much I love Tolkien's prose and world building (yes, I know some people don't, but this really isn't the thread for that discussion) I am reminded how much I want to be able to emulate the feel of Tolkien's work in an RPG and have had, at best, fleeting success doing so. By "feel" I mean the tone of the work that balances the mundane, the wondrous, and the horrific all at once; the sense of a deep history reaching up to produce the drama of the Now; the archetypes and ideals that yet hold on to humanity and even grittiness to some extent; and, most of all, the tug-of-war between hope and despair.
I can get some of those sometimes, but never all of them in a single game. I am not sure it is even possible in a game because the GM is not the author as such, but I do strive for it. The closest I have ever gotten is during the sequel D&D 3.x campaign to a highly successful 2E campaign, where the PCs were the children of PCs from the previous campaign (largely the same player group) and all the history, both background and played, really mattered. It was really wonderful, and I don't expect i will ever feel that way about a game again.
If you look at Tolkien's work and see it as a thing you would want to emulate in play, have you ever managed it? Did it require a ME/LotR game or campaign? What elements were hard? Which seemed to come easily? What do you think makes game "feel" like Tolkien?