4 Years Later...and now I'm mad I waited.
It got mediocre reviews (gameplay)
It was buggy (BIG downer for any game I look to purchase),
and, at the time, I was pretty sure my system would not allow for a good gaming experience.
Now it's 4 years later -- the Source game engine & Doom 3 game engine (the buzzwords of the day) have more-or-less come and gone...and I've finally gotten around to playing through this game...
...and I'm kicking myself for not having done it long ago.
This is not an FPS -- yet you can play it as one.
But that isn't what you play this game for:
You play it for the world, and the story that takes place within it.
The atmosphere to this game is deeply enthralling; the world is believable, and the characters are well-developed. You really never know quite what to expect in this world.
Since so many reviews cover the story, I won't go into specfics...I'll just suffice to say that the characters you meet, you will miss when the experience is over. I would definitely agree with many of the reviewers in saying that the first stages of the game are much more developed and polished than the later ones, but this doesn't at all mean that the game isn't worth playing all the way through -- it just would have been nice if the entire game had the same sense of depth and polish.
What held me back from purchasing the game back in 2004 is mostly due to the bad bugs the game originally shipped with, as well as the slow patch releases. Amazingly, even after 4 years, unofficial patches are STILL being released, which address bugs and add in cut-out content. If you buy the game...be sure to download the unofficial patches.
As far as the visuals, I'm absolutely astounded at how well they hold up. The above-mentioned "unofficial" patches add widecsreen resolution options for both 16:9 and 16:10 monitors, and the results look great. While very powerful game engines push current hardware to [or beyond!] their limits, this game still looks amazing: turn up the resolution, turn on anti-aliasing & filtering...and the game looks - and runs - like a champ.
In some ways, the artistry of the game reminded me a little bit of American McGee's Alice, insofar in that it's a very dark world that you'll just want to walk to through slowly and simply enjoy it for its artistry.
I'll address this quickly: many people point to the ranged combat as a major flaw in the game's combat. I really didn't notice this at all. I focused more on melee attacks, but considering the points I invested in ranged combat, things worked just about as I expected...and there were definitely plenty of situations were ranged attacks were the best solution.
I hinted at intriguing characters earlier, and just want to go a bit more in-depth:
I've read that the character facial animations are not as robust as the often-compared-to animations in Half Life 2 (since they use the same engine). This may be true, but the characters still come across with wonderful personalities, and the voice acting pretty much ALWAYS comes across wonderfully, fitting the character they are portraying. The only oddity here is that some characters will say the exact same lines, but be different models (ie: prostitutes on the street). Overall though, you will love the characters. The only downside is that when your "business" is done with them, you typically don't have many further dialogue options with them later on in the game (if they show up at all).
The soundtrack and sound effects to the game are wonderful. They released an official soundtrack to the game back when it was released, and I can see why; there's some licensed tracks by big bands that fit the mood perfectly. The orchestral soundtrack is wonderful as well -- very dark and moody.
The sound effects are very sharp & pleasing, though not including positional audio (5.1) was somewhat of an odd omission, as I think that was pretty much commonplace well before 2004 (at the very least, 4 channel).
Overall, I have to say, you really owe it to yourself to play this game if you enjoy a good RPG with intriguing characters. I've only played through the game with one class (sect) / sex, but re-playability is supposed to be quite high, with conversational options varying significantly.
I'm really sad to know that Troika, the games creators, went out of business soon after releasing the game, especially because I can see what they set out to do & know how relatively close they really got. They fell a tad short in overall, full-length polish, and Activision shot themselves in the foot in sales by publishing/releasing before the game was thoroughly debugged...but with the new patches that address many of the technical issues, the game really does become a wonderfully memorable masterpiece.
Perfect? No.
Worth playing? Definitely!
In the end, you'll really just wish the game didn't have to end...and that, in my mind, is the best compliment you can give to any game.