Brilliant concept, but falls short of its ultimate vision.
It was an ambitious game that hinted at what could be done with storytelling in a video game. Having beat the game, I have to say that the action sequences (which seemed to be inspired by The Matrix) are pretty entertaining, though I found myself not paying as much attention to the action as I would have liked to due to the necessity of keeping my gaze locked on the prompts lest I miss one too many and have to restart from the last save point. It's not too distracting, but there were a couple of times that I was grateful that the main menu lets you watch the action sequences once you've completed them.
The biggest problem I have with the game is not that it wasn't fun - though twitch gamers and people who prefer constant player-defined action in their games might find the game a little slow. Indeed, I applaud Quantic Dream for their focus on story driven games. It's almost as if they've reincarnated the old style PC adventure games with Indigo Prophecy, giving them new life with a modern makeover. No, my main problem with the game lies with a the team not taking enough time to fully flesh out characters and the story line. It gets the job done, but some factions in the game are in some instances only vaguely hinted at until so late in the game that it feels like they were added as a sort of deus ex machina. The same can be said with character arcs - one character seems like his only real role is to provide comic relief since he barely pulls his weight throughout the story. Without spoiling too much, there is a romance that develops very late in the game that comes totally out of the blue simply because what time, energy, and thought throughout the game that the two devoted to each other had absolutely no romantic overtones or undertones.
In short, the problem I had with the game lies fundamentally that the project was a little too ambitious for the technology of the day. The characters are expressive, but not nearly enough to convey the kind of emotions to truly sell the story at the level that it needed to be sold. The story is good, but it had the potential to be amazing, and it needed to be fleshed out a whole lot more. As a result, it was a little disjointed at times, leaving the player wanting a lot more information and story depth than they get.
That said, the game itself is still very enjoyable, and I particularly appreciate the focus on creating an engaging and entertaining story, even if the final project fell short of the development team's ambitions. After all, how does that old saying go? "Reach for the moon, and even if you miss you'll land among the stars."