There's a deeply spiritual nature to Tolkien's writing that apparently goes over the heads of most people. They notice only the superficial aspects of humans, dwarves, elves, and orcs. The Lord of the Rings is about resisting the greed, corruption, and wickedness that surrounds us everywhere we go, remaining pure of heart when everyone is trying to drag you down to their level. None of the shamelessly derivative works even scratch the surface of this idea.
Absolutely.
The people of the past conceived of the world as a descending line of the ages, from an age of purity, to one where the truth was more obscured by the forces of darkness. Wherin heroes could rediscover the metaphysical force that had powered the Golden Age, and bring it to the people anew. Totally the opposite conception of the progressive one of a constant incline. Modernism is the abberation; most of the world still believes this.
A lot of fantasy these days is just modernism wearing a medieval skinsuit. The whole point was to enter a different world, where people thought differently to you, and actually doing their alien perspective justice. So medieval concepts like Golden Ages of purity were given their due unironically. They would even try to mimic speech patterns of Middle English to aid the feeling of another time. Developers were once capable of putting aside their own conceptions momentarily. Now social assumptions of today are current in all epochs. Fantasy without a spiritual perspective of some sort is pointless. A modernist fantasy, with valley girl slang, is beyond pointless.
Real fantasy succeeds in entering a different time mentally, then doing it's alien assumptions their own highest justice. It's not meant to be a critique. Just to use one very small example of the difference in mindset, take labour and chores. Medieval people had to find ways to enjoy their work. To make it spiritual. They wouldn't have survived if not. So finding the sacred in everyday life would have been essential. Many religions see such tasks as having teaching value. However modernists, unable to conceive of life in a different mental paradigm, may write their fantasy to be full of toil, social ill, injustice, unable to give the overall conception of another way of life, it's due, because their conception is that 'the past' is an inferior point on a graph.
Do you ever see a JRPG in which the people of a town look unhappy doing essential chores? It doesn't matter if this is a realistic commentary on 1600s Japan; it's a fantasy. Shinto emphaises ritual purity and cleanliness, as akin to cultivating cleanliness of spirit. Zen Buddhism emphasises mindful labour as a potentially sacred insight into the nature of things. On the other hand, you see morbid views of medieval life everywhere in Western RPGs. "Ooooh, I've got the pox, I'm bleeding out my arse, I have sores exuding puss, but I've gotta fuck three more smelly clients today to meet my rent." People think this is clever, like a fool who loves their own stink, but it's just dragging attitudes away from higher meaning, into the dumb and the profane.
So you decide to create a fantasy setting in which people worship 12 pagan gods, each symbolising virtues, say Law, Justice, Bravery, etc. Their overall philosophy is a fantasy analogue of Platonism. They take their devotions to Law, Justice, Bravery, Cleanliness, Honesty, Compassion, seriously. Then what is the highest good that could come about in such a society? What would it's towns look like? Assume good people existed, who really followed it's values. Would they create slum towns covered in shit? What form would their enemy take? If they are dying out, what causes their metaphysical "fall"? What should the highest ruins tell people of the past? If instead, everything is crooked, shit-covered, to begin with, what is the point? Critiques are antithetical to fantasy, the whole point of the genre is spiritual.