Under some rough and ugly features, you may find a game worth experiencing.
Graphics: While the story shines, the graphics... Not so much. Words to describe this game's graphics are: low budget, muddy, ugly, outdated, and many other harsh words that are mostly true. The actual raw power is very poor in today's sense of graphics, the animations are stiff, the textures are all muddy and dirty looking, the effects are not top notch, and to be honest, I have seen better looking Xbox 360 launch titles. However not all is bad. Like I said, the voice acting isn't terrible, there are some decent lighting effects, the facial animations are actually half way decent to be honest, and the over all look and design of the characters, locations, weapons, armors, etc. all look and feel like it belongs in the Game of Thrones universe. While the over all graphics are poor, it does look and feel like Game of Thrones, just not the same triple A quality you would get from the TV series.
Gameplay: Alright this game is 1-1, does the gameplay make or break this game? I would say it makes it worth the while. Gameplay feels a lot like Dragon Age:Origins, just no where near as polished. You choose what class you want to play as and this will help determine how you fight your enemies. You engage your enemies using auto-attack and in mid combat pull up your attack wheel which will slow down time and let you choose which special attacks you want to use and in what order. There is a pretty deep upgrade system used to unlock many different types of attacks and abilities. Tons of different weapons and armors to collect and fit to your style of play. And both characters feel different in fighting styles, Mors is all about brute force while Alester is more swift and agile. Each character also has a different ability set that makes combat even more deep. For example Alester is a Red Priest and can manipulate fire against his enemies. Mors is a skinchanger and can take control of his dog, the dog can be used to stealthily kill enemies, find hidden objects, and will even help you in battle. Now that the combat is out of the way lets dive into the more calmer aspects. Getting to explore all the locations that I have read about and seen before is just great and really helps put you into the universe that Martin has created. Since the game is very story focused, there is also a lot of talking to NPC's both from the show/books or new. Getting to chose what you want to say can have a huge effect later on in the story and will either hurt or benefit you. This gives a sense of replay ability by wanting to choose different options and decide if you want things to go differently. My play through took around twenty five hours, and I skipped most of the side quests, which are also well done and have pretty good stories too. So with a 20+ hour story, side missions, and four different endings, there is a lot of content here. Now with all the good there has to be some bad, so lets dive into it. If your an action buff and you need constant action, this game is not for you, it has a much slower pace and will push away many mainstream audiences. The combat, while solid, is pretty easy to exploit and can become very repetitive after a while. If you don't like hearing characters talk for a long amount of time, then this game will probably put you to sleep after a while. And finally there isn't a huge window of players for this game. Due to hardware limitations, most of the cities feel rather underpopulated and empty Finally the only ones I can see playing it are either big fans of the show, or are huge RPG fans. So while the gameplay is far from perfect, I think that it is good enough to get the job done and kept me hooked until the end.
Verdict
Story: 9.5 A very interesting and complex story that is worthy of any person's time.
Graphics: 4 While not the worst I've seen, still would have helped this game in the long run.
Gameplay: 7 While flawed, still fun and will keep you engaged.
Personal Reaction: 7 to be honest most licensed games tend to suck, however I am happy to say that Game of Thrones does not, and I can tell that the developers really loved this universe, and I would love to see them try to tackle this universe again, but with a bigger budget. (and we could have a amazing game for this amazing show/book series).
Final Score: 6.8(7)