You'll finish the game before you can ever buy all that cool armor you had your eye on. Kind of unbalanced. Still fun.
Story, Graphics and Gameplay:
This is what was most fun about the game. Every interaction you made with NPC's were recorded dialog. No reading text on the screen. There are many different character paths you could take and experience, all with slightly different stories and dialog. You will notice that it steals from every RPG you can think of. LotR, Oblivion, WoW, everything. There is even a part where an NPC talks about "the gates of Oblivion" or something.
The visuals where sort of bland in the beginning, but after a while it really picks up. I thought the graphics where great. Some parts of the game world were so amazing looking I wanted to save a picture of it. My only complaint is that sometimes the framerate would get choppy, sometimes too often. Come on! The PS3 can handle Killzone 2 but not this game??
The Gameplay is what you would expect, a good Action RPG. The world is not as big as WoW or Guild wars at all, but you are always exploring new caves underground and temples in the side of mountains. So many side quests, you'll never finish them all. If it ever gets too hard, there is an "casual" difficulty that will make it easier to play.
Starting Off:
In the beginning, you actually have the option to enter in a DLC code and acquire the best armor and weapon in the game. I'd almost recommend doing it because there is so little other good armor and weapons to put on your other characters.
Party, Skills and Talents:
I found that Auto Leveling your characters only chooses skills you don't want later on.
On your first play through, it's kind of impossible to build a good party, because you don't know who's going to join later on. You could be a Warrior Champion, and end up having 3 more Warrior Champions join you by the end of the game. Or you want to make your Mage a Healer, only to have another Healer Mages join your party down the line. And you can't respec. What you choose is what you stay with, even if you don't know what you're doing in the beginning of the game.
You have to be careful what you choose for your Specialization, you might want to save your 2 points and use them later on in the game when you unlock new Specializations. But of course you don't know that.
My characters often got screwed up on their skills and talents. I was always regretting using a skill point and then realizing I didn't want that skill later on.
Buying Gear:
You will come across vendors who sell expensive weapons that cost up to 150g. The problem is that it will take you a very long time to get that kind of money. By the end of the game, I had maybe 400g that I spent on 1 weapon and a special ring. I had 140g left and I was planning on buying my other characters each some expensive gear, but I beat the game before I could ever spend it!
That's right, there are about 3 different epic weapons each character could get, axes, hammers, bows, but you beat the game before you can ever save enough money to buy them! And if you ever spend you money on regular gear, good luck on ever having money for a good weapon. It's very unbalanced.
Quests:
The quests are good and not like WoW, where it's "kill 10 of these". These quests actually have impact on characters and story, and you never do any grinding.
The only thing that got a little nerve racking is that the quests start to pile up. To complete this quest you must complete that quest and on and on. It's like the side quests have side quests of their own. If you ever took a break from the game for a few days, I doubt you'd remember where you left off.
End Game:
By the end of the game, I was almost upset that it was going to be over. I still wanted to go buy all the weapons I was saving for, but couldn't. The final boss was a challenging fight, but by the end I was just saying to myself, "Wow, that's it... I worked that hard through the game just for this to happen...?"
But I guess that's the difference between Single Player RPG's that end and Multiplayer RPG's that don't.
Still, it was an adventure the whole way through, I was hooked, playing up to 14 hours a day.