Wether you're a fan of D&D tabletop games or just the average guy, this game will suck you in.
Let's start by whats wrong, basically there's two main flaws, the first is the ridiculous config you need to be able to play it at max settings. And even when you have a comp that can run full settings it's not really that impressive the comp i now use has 6 months at most and STILL has slowdowns in certain cases.
The second main flaw is the AI, both that your enemies and those of your allies, they're just utterly brain-dead, there is absolutely no other way to put it, your spellcasters if you dont stop them will spend their entire arsenal of spells in a flash no matter what behaviour you give them. Thus the only way to get anything done is to handle the spellcasters individually, as i like giving individual orders to all my characters i dont mind, but when you have to do it at nearly every fight it doees get tedious.
There's another flaw i saw though this one is more personnal and doesnt really affect the gaming experience as I see it, the crafting system is far too complex and unintuitive. After my first play through the game i didnt even bother with it, sold all recipes and all crafting materials and did well anyhow.
The good aspects now, and fortunately there's more of those. The first is the smooth way the D&D 3.5 edition rules are implemented; if you're a D&D fan you'll grasp all the mechanics quickly and you'll have no problem choosing character orientation, skills, feats, spells and so on, thus diving right into the action. If you've never been acquainted with D&D rules you're in for a rougher start, as at firts you won't understand ANYTHING luckily there's plentu of websites that can get you started on the basics of D&D. When I first started playing this game I had no idea of what a d20 was so frankly I didnt like the game at first, but as i kept pushing on it became clear enough for me to start really enjoying it.
The second is a consequence of the first, you can play any kind of character you damn well please, from an all-out melee fighter to a frail but deadly mage. There's a huge amount of races and sub-races, each with his or her own abilities and disadvantages (like say the Shield Dwarves which have increased Constitution but decreased Charisma), over a dozen different classes and at least as many prestige classes (which you can only choose if your main character fullfills certain conditions). Character creation is at first overwhelwing due to the amount of choices you have to make you can spend nearly half an hour if you really take the time trying to see whats the best character you can make and fully customising the physical appearance. During gameplay you'll come up with even more options to customize your character such as feats, spells, skills or additional stats. The downside of this is you're likely to make some characters that aren't as useful as they should be, but you'll quickly learn how to ensure that doesn't happen. Furthermore you can play as a righteous hero, who goes out of his way to help people and uphold the law, a sadistic scumbag who goes out of his way to mug, kill and rob people or a more neutral character, that acts with a moral relativity. This alignement choice changes some of the options for character development as being good can for instance forbid the character from getting warlock levels.
Another great point in the game is the storyline which i found to be among the best in all the video games i've played. And although i've heard people complaining about the ending i really dont get the reason for it, I certainly enjoyed it.
However durring the course of the game you dont only get to play a single main character, although this main character will be present throughout the whole game, you get an impressive amount of characters that join your team, each with his own personnality, such as my personal favourite a dwarf who wants to become a monk (who wouldn't want to have that guy). The options for customisation of these additional characters are , it's true, far more limited than the ones given to your main character, but it's still when you take it as a whole pretty staggering what you can change between games. The personnality of your allies is essential, indeed if you act in a way they consider right you'll gain influence, by saying what they want you'll gain influence; on the other hand acting in a way they disapprove will make you loose influence, if you have a high enough influence certain characters will intervene mostly in dialogues with NPCs in your favour. I dont want to spoil the ending so all i'll say is that you have better treated your allies well because it WILL matter.
Finally what i love in this game is that it has given me some of the most awesome and difficult fights in any RPG yet, some the optional fights in the game will force you to plan very carefully because they're bloody tough, chief among these is the fight atop a mountain against a red dragons and a trive of angry giants.
As a last note i'll say that this game isnt perfect but for an RPG it's pretty damn close.