Originally Posted by JDR13 
I've been wanting to give these a try… is any particular one better than the others?
The first one is much, much more "tolkienesque" and has much more role-playing features than the other two games.
I did an review for the RPGDot for I think the last of the three games.
From the perspective of an role-playing gamer, I clearly prefer the first game, personally.
The others have other strengths which the first game doesn't have (especially the editor, which doesn't exist for the first game).