I finished LEGO The Hobbit earlier this week. As expected, this game had a lot of features similar to Lego Lord of the Rings, such as collecting items that any character can use, collecting mythril bricks to forge into special items, and collecting designs to be able to forge those items, but from that previous game structure, this game expands on it quite significantly. Breaking objects gives you not only studs, but also various materials called "loot" (like wood, stone, metals, gems, or food) that you have to spend on crafting tables (which work like the instruction builds of the Lego Movie Videogame) and in addition to the mythril bricks to forge the special items (but unlike the previous game where you just had to spend the mythril bricks, here the forging process is its own minigame, with a goal of timing the button prompts just right to get a "perfectly forged" item). When it comes to exploring the hub world, the previous game just had everything always available so long as you have unlocked the necessary abilities, but this game has mostly quests, which not only are unlocked as the story progresses (not an issue for me, as I typically wait until after completing the levels in both story mode and freeplay mode before exploring the hub world) but also often come in numerous series, so that completing one quest unlocks the next one (a little more troublesome for me, as it prevented me from immediately obtaining some of the red bricks that I find useful, such as stud multipliers, and also forced me to go back and forth across all of Middle Earth a few times rather than just slowly progress from one side to the other). Some of these quests even required you to used the custom character creator, a feature that has always been part of every single Lego game, but never really required for game completion, so this was my first real experience with it (the only previous game to require the use of a customizer was Lego Indiana Jones 2 with its level builder). Although I will acknowledge that the story content is incomplete due to covering the events of just the first two movies, I found the loot system and the challenge of completing series of quests such an interestingly unique experience that I would consider this a good Lego game, but again since its for a franchise that I still have little interest in (let's just say this game made it much easier to tell apart each of the 13 dwarves than the movies ever could), I'll rank this one only just above Lego Lord of the Rings. Oh, and I should probably mention that in addition to reaching 100% completion with this game, I also unlocked all 39 achievements (as listed on Steam).
Next on my list of Lego games to play; LEGO Marvel Super Heroes
Much like with the previous Lego game I just finished, I'm aware of the story content of this game (totally unique and not based on any movies), but not with the freeplay content or much of what there is to see in the massive hub world (which apparently covers much of New York City), but now that I'm finally done with one of my least favorite franchises, I'm definitely looking forward to see all of what this game has to offer. (It is also now the only Lego game prior to the Lego Movie Videogame I have not yet played, so I'll be glad to finally close that gap.)
My rankings of all Lego games I've played so far:
The LEGO Movie Videogame
LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean - The Videogame
LEGO Batman 2 - DC Super Heroes
LEGO Indiana Jones 2 - The Adventure Continues
LEGO Star Wars III - The Clone Wars
LEGO The Hobbit
LEGO The Lord of the Rings
LEGO Batman - The Videogame
LEGO Indiana Jones - The Original Adventures
LEGO Star Wars - The Complete Saga
LEGO Harry Potter - Years 5-7
LEGO Harry Potter - Years 1-4