This is an amazing game if you have the patience to deal with all of the bugs, glitches, and overall poor game play.
This game has an incredible story, with deep characters and crazy plot twists. However, that's really the only good thing about it. That's not really a problem because it's a role playing game, and you play these games for the story, and not much else. The epilogue of this game is incredible.
The game play mechanics are terrible. I mean, they are really frustrating. It's so hard to get your character to go where you want him to. You put the cursor on the object you want to loot, and it just won't do it. You put the cursor on the area where you want to go and it just won't go. You really have to fight this game every inch of the way to get where you want to go. The fighting system is stupid. If you pick the wrong sword , you have to put it away and then pull out the right sword while five monsters are kicking you a$$. You have to chain your attacks and click the mouse when the little sword cursor is flaming. However, the animations have very little to do with the actual combat mechanics. This means that you have to watch the sword, not your character. Which is a shame because the animations are pretty cool. But they're pointless because, as I've mentioned, the animation has nothing to do with combat. it's the sword cursor that matter.
The story, though non-linear, is linear. let me explain. If you do a quest or mission out of order, there will be plot holes and other glitches. For example, at one point you have to conduct an investigation. It's very involved and requires that you collect evidence and talk to different people. it's really incredibly ambitions. But if you put the pieces together out of order, strange things happen. Things don't get triggered as they're supposed to. Suppose you're supposed to talk to person A before you talk to person B. If you talk to person B first, the conversation will proceed as if you've already spoken to person A. Then when you go back to talk to person A, he'll talk to you (and you'll talk to him) as if you haven't already spoken to person B. I'm sure it's very hard to program such a diverse and complicated narrative, but there should be some fail safes so that when you're conducting an autopsy even though you know who the guilty party is, your character doesn't implicate a person that you've already proven innocent.
Something else i can't stand is when developers waste my time. So many points in this game require that you run back and forth between two areas. Also, you have to actively switch between day and night to complete certain missions. Also, when you're drunk the character moves so freaking slowly. All of these things, while realistic, only waste my time-- my "real' world time. There are certain missions that require that you run back and forth between two areas to talk to different characters. They should let you just go there, without having to actually run back and forth. Think about it. In a movie, you don't watch the characters going places, unless something important happens during the trip. Specifically, there's a part in the game when you have to choose which woman will look after a child. After you choose, you have to tell the person that you choose. then you have to tell the person that you didn't choose. then you have to tell the person that you did choose that you told the person you didn't choose that you didn't choose them. In addition to the time it takes to run back and forth, there are multiple loading screens. You have to go in and out of houses, up and down stairs, through teleporters. It literally took about 20 minutes to accomplish this simple task because you have to run back and forth three times. It's stupid, obnoxious and ridiculous.
Overall, if you like role playing games, this game is for you. If you liked Final Fantasy 13, you won't like this. This game is boring and tedious, but the story makes up for it. This game probably has the best story of any game that I've played in the last 15 years.