The idea that only having a €15M budget is what caused this game's issues is ridiculous. It's not a game that had good ideas and just failed to execute them properly; it's fundamentally bad on a conceptual level.

The setting and story concept are bad. When the game was first announced, I don't think I heard or saw a single discussion where someone was excited to experience playing through the story of Gollum in that time period in the story. Or even playing as Gollum at all - he's a great secondary character in the books and films, but he's hardly a character you want to play as in a video game. There's no room for character development either.

The game design is bad. It's just bad. No amount of time, money or polish is going to fix the terrible basic design principles the game is built on. And even if they had 10x the budget and hired a world-class lead game designer from the start, it still would have the issues with the story and character.

The whole project is one that shouldn't have left the brainstorming session it was conceived in.