Don't get too caught up in all the negative comments, play it and make up your own mind!
Now that we have that out of the way we'll look at the good and the bad.
---Good---
The games visuals are fantastic. The world looks fantastic, you have a huge draw distance (distance you can see), the lighting is great, although the shadows could have been a little smoother, and provide from good HDR to completely burning-my-retinas HDR. The former is better :) The weapons and armour are beautifully detailed along with basically any item / object in the game.
Now, talking about weapons etc - the level of player customisation is great - there are so many different weapons and armour that you can use, and the way the drops increase in level wherever you go means you are ALWAYS checking bodies to see if there's that one piece better than what you have yourself. It keeps you stuck to the game wanting to play for 5 more minutes to kill the next group for some loot.
The magic system is quite well done: The spells you are able to use (after learning the skill for that particular school of magic) are found via spell cards. These cards are stackable which allow your spells to increase in damage / duration / healing level etc etc as you get more cards. Also there are "booster" cards that you can apply to your selected spells that again, will increase duration / power etc.
The combat system is ok, not fantastic. It has fluid looking movement and you can really FEEL the hits with your criticals. There are also a lot of options for skills which is great, gives some variety to your combat
The quests are quite varied which is great - including some "faction" wars kind of quests - which is good considering the game world is HUGE. Like, really really huge. As in good luck finishing the game. Because it will take years. Including side quests. Eek. But it's great to have that size. The enemies don't really vary enough, but occasionally you stumble on that one enemy that will kill you in one hit - meaning you have to dodge every attack it throws and you and just pepper it with blows.
--Bad--
Well i'll start off with the combat section i guess - while it does have its perks, it's not all great. While there is a blocking system in place - you do not control it. Which can be a pain because a lot of the time instead of backing out of combat you would prefer to just weather the blows until you can strike back. The balance (not necessarily good) to this is you have a "jump back" button - which you learn from early on to be vital to surviving this game. Also even on easy, combat to begin with is HARD. It's amazing how quick you go down the first time because you just aren't expecting to take that much damage so quickly.
The loot / backpack system is alright but nothing awesome - quite often you will only be able to see half the item on the right hand side of your loot screen because it overlaps to a "next page" kind of thing. It's annoying, especially for when you are trying to do alchemy.
All NPC's are named and are able to be spoken to "cinematically" (ie: it goes to a close up between yourself and them with dialog options) - which makes things a bit difficult when you are trying to sort out the important from the sheep - especially for quests.
On the note of talking.... the worst part of this game. The script and acting. Oh. God. I don't think i've encountered any game with dialog this bad. Yes. It's bad. No. I'm not over reacting. It's horrible.
--Overall--
In reality, this game is actually pretty damn good. As soon as you learn to ignore the crappy dialog and various little niggly annoyances in the game, the quicker you'll begin to enjoy it. The combat, loot and quest system will keep you stuck to the screen always wanting to play for that little bit longer, finish that one last dungeon. I would recommend the game to anyone, especially those that enjoyed oblivion.