This single player RPG game simply rocks.
I have been inmersed for a few days and most of the time with my jaw dropped at the gorgeous landscapes, the artists who worked on these games really earned the title. The level of detail is really mindbogling. Words and screenshots simply dont work, you have to see this in action.
Its a fantasy game with the truest sense of the word. You will meet several races, amazing alien cities like nothing you have ever imagined, and creatures that will leave you believing that the people who worked on this game have access to the most potent drugs mankind has ever tried.
As for the RPG elements, this game is HUUUUUUUGE. The map is huge, with many cities, each very unique in style down to the single individual buildings. And there is so much you can do, I never thought possible a game could be so dynamic, in character creation and storyline progress. You can be good, evil, you can follow the main quest or just go by yourself and do what you like. There are TONS of side quests. So many choices, that I am sure no gamer will be having the same experience.
I am still a newbie, level 9 character, and have spent around 18 hours on the game. According to the people who have already "finished" it, it takes close to 100 hours to complete throughly. This may be a downside to many, but to me its good, since I am very critical of video games, and when I find one I like, I really suck the juice out and play it till the CD-ROM melts and my computer screen explodes, with crystal shards flying into my eyes.
The only downside so far to me is the performance. In big cities this game crawls even on my computer (1.5Ghz, 512 DDR, GF4 Ti4600) but its understandable, because when you lay your eyes on those landscapes, you will wonder how its possible its being rendered on real time on your computer on this year.
Character animations could use a little more work, and the dialog is mostly text based, also understandable, since you spend hours and hours just talking to people. You would need two DVD's full of compressed MP3 audio to convert all the dialog to sound.
But what the heck, some of you guys played your first RPGs on text only, so you will actually prefer it this way.
The only thing I can compare this game to, is reading a very long but engrossing fantasy book.
Buy at your own risk.
