"Soul" is, of course, in the eye of the beholder. I agree in general about not escaping from post-Tolkein fantasy tropes--but that's nearly impossible if you want people to relate to your game immediately. (Also, re: Henry Morgan, just changing the names and shapes of the creatures doesn't get you out of it.) That said, I disagree that it's any worse than MoM--I think that MoM gains by (1) nostalgia and (2) not trying to flesh out the races either in text or graphics (8-bit and all that) so the player uses more imagination.
As far as the writing goes, it is, unfortunately, rather poor. Again, this is IMHO, but having read a large amount of, well, everything in my short time on this planet, the writing is par for the fantasy course, which is, tragically, not all that great on the literature scale. Not saying that I could do better, mind you, but Shakespeare it ain't.