Well, at the time it was pretty cutting-edge. You've gotta remember that the game was designed a good 40 years ago now. The heart of the game was really the character game anyway; the armies were more of an add-on to complicate the Dark Lord's tasks, and also to give Isengard an outside shot at a win. Obviously the design was flawed by today's standards (e.g., it's really hard to stop the Fellowship from getting into Mordor), but it was the first time anyone had tried to turn a fantasy novel into a wargame and for the day, it was a pretty good effort. Also, the graphics might strike today's players as bland, but again, considering we were used to two- and three-color maps, they were totally amazing for the day. Lots of the innovative features of the game have become completely standardized nowadays.
Could it be done again and improved on? Absolutely. But the state of the art is a lot further along today too! Remember this game was designed about 20 years after the first board war game was commercially published in the USA, and more than twice that length of time has passed since then!
On a separate topic, another game that is perhaps easier to find and acquire for a TFT army conversion is the old SPI magazine game Crusades, which covered the first and third Crusades in the middle east. Finally, for those concerned about the cost of acquiring this (or any other old SPI game), consider visiting
this site and seeing if you like the game enough to consider finding a hard copy at some point...