So no game can emulate an entire genre and Traveller is no exception. I would not expect Lord of the Rings, Conan, and Norse deities to all be run in the same game system.
What was nice to me about Traveller is that it shifted the emphasis from character strength to exploration. Rewards were the ability to keep your ship flying despite all of the insane costs. Character generation meant you got a lot of hooks as to character background with no very little focus on character improvement. The stuff there was, early one, was stuff like trying to stick to an exercise program. It was really neat. You didn't level up your character, but instead explored a strange world. Now we know all of the secrets but, at the time, the alien races were really alien (not elves/dwarves but very different social organizations). The ancients were a much nicer feature before we knew their secrets.
It was like the old west and exploring a strange and different set of worlds. As a teenager I loved it. As an adult it was ok. If I did it again it would be in the context of a totally new and strange universe, with secrets still to discover.