A deeply satisfying RPG fix. All in all a game you really should play. Thankyou and congrats Bioware.
I'll start by saying I liked Mass Effect and I absolutely love the Baldur's Gate series. I wouldn't call myself a Bioware fan per se, but I have enjoyed their stuff in the past so I had high expectations for this.
I haven't been disappointed.
STORY - well I'm still barely started really, as this is a huge game and I'm taking it kind of slow, soaking up the atmosphere and whatever. So far the story is engaging but not amazing novel. It won't win any awards, but it is presented well and I am driven to keep moving it forward which is rare in a game for me.
GRAPHICS - These seem to have got a lot of negative comments and people whining, and I really can't see why. OK they are not equal to the best looking games out there, but they are by no means bad. I would say as good as Oblivion - the landscapes are not as nice, but the buildings, objects and characters are all better. Character models during dialogue sequences and cinematics vary from not-so-good, in brightly lit or large crowd scenes, to Mass Effect like in the darker scenes (I guess moody lighting is more beneficial). Of course I can not comment on the Xbox or PS3 graphics. But I am only playing on a low/mid range PC and it looks good, and runs brilliantly - no stuttering at all.
DESIGN - I love it. The area design coupled with the lighting effects make it really pretty and atmospheric. Environments are not overly decorative but they are detailed enough. The worst is the outdoor areas - trees, distant landscapes etc look quite budget compared to indoor areas and castles/villages etc. NPCs are okay and the monsters (that I've seen so far - pretty limited) are better, in my opinion. I play mostly in the tactical view and things look very nice from there; everything is very smooth and solid.
CONTROLS - Because the game combines a tactical view with a third-person view, the controls took me a few hours to get used to, but now that I have I think they are great. You can move both your character and the camera with both the mouse and the keyboard. Once I figured out the way I liked to do it, it became quite intuitive.
CHARACTERS - I like them. All of the party members I've acquired so far have been well constructed and have distinct personalities. A couple of them I have got really fond of, which is rare in a game. More surprisingly, there have been a couple of situations involving NPCs that I have found quite affecting which is a good achievement I think.
OH, DRAMA - The voice acting is a bit hit and miss. I think partly it is just weird to hear so many British accents in a game (I'm British and even I find it odd). At least there is a large variety of voices, unlike some other RPGs I could mention ;) The cinematics have been good so far. One especially, at a major moment in the game, felt like watching a scene from LOTR or something. Very dramatic, lots of action and emotive music.
The game is pretty brutal and has some really sad and dark moments in it. But there is some genuine humour as well, some of the NPCs are really sarcastic and funny. The dog is also quite funny and cute, despite being the ugliest dog I have ever seen. The blood effects are unfortunately a bit over-the-top and ridiculous but they don't detract from the game. I've kind of zoned them out now from seeing my characters pebble-dashed in red so much.
OTHER NOTES - Pathfinding is altogether excellent in this, MUCH better than Baldur's Gate (I know that's to be expected as BG is 10 years old, but it was such an annoyance for me back then that I am delighted to see it's gone)
I am playing on normal difficulty and it is challenging but not too hard. Most battles with 8 or more standard enemies tend to leave my characters pretty beaten up, but as soon as you go out of combat they recover very quickly. At first I thought this made it feel too easy but it would be really annoying if you had to keep buying endless potions or reloading, so now I quite like it.
So far I have only had one Big Bad Guy fight. I got repeatedly owned about half a dozen times and in the end finally survived with one character who only had about 3% health. So it is not an *easy* game. But if you think, and use all your characters' skills, and don't just try to hack n slash your way through, it is really satisfying.
There are some minor annoyances which stop me giving it a 10/10:
1. Party members tend to insist on running into a fight even if you are trying to get them to hold back and lure the enemies towards you, so you keep having to bring them back manually. There is no 'stop/cancel' button as in Baldur's Gate for making them stay still and await orders.
2. Sometimes I have issues with party members not responding to my orders, or 'forgetting' my orders, and i.e. ceasing to attack anything, and just standing next to an enemy until I order them again.
Neither of these things is really a problem as I am a pause-addict during combat, they are just a little irritating.
I have not experienced any graphics glitches, dialogue bugs or broken quests yet that have been mentioned in other reviews. Time will tell if I am just lucky.
So to cut an epically long story short, I would recommend this game to anyone who likes RPGs and isn't turned off by the tactical combat system. I think by the end it will be a far more rewarding and involving experience than a heck of a lot of games that have been out recently.