A solid game, built to last
I had played Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel before this one, so I was pretty used to the style of gameplay. Those who haven't experienced a basically turned-based DnD style RPG like this before might be the slightest bit lost.
Basically the game is like any other beat em up RPG in the respect that you wander around different areas, beating up enemies. The main differences here being that:
A. Your travels are frequently interrupted by meetings with various characters/creatures that can go in different directions depending on what you say and how well you say it (purely determined on skill in conversation)
B. You can pause combat to give yourself time to give commands to each of your characters in thick of things.
I'm not a HUGE fan of this play style, but it definitely is a break from other types of games, and the game itself is quite a bit of fun.
You're allowed to guide the path of your character's class, and this is somewhat interesting. There are a ton to choose from, for one thing, and they provide a good amount of variation to how you play for the most part. Unfortunately, many of the classes are far too similar to others, and some are pretty useless in general. For the most part, however, there is a lot to be seen here.
The characters in the game are all pretty much locked into the class that you find them in, except yourself, and you can have a great deal of interaction with them, finding out about their background, and having 'conversations' with them. Like anyone else in the world, they will react differently based on what you say, so be careful. It's hard to please everyone all the time, so, based on what you do in the world, you're bound to have a couple characters that really like you, and a couple that really don't.
Continuing the comparison with KoToR, I probably didn't enjoy this _as_ much, but admittedly that probably has a good deal to do with the fact that I'm always up for anything set in the Star Wars universe, and I was only marginally interested in this games storyline.
The storyline, however, is not without interesting moments. The main problem, albeit completely unavoidable given what the game is, is that you are guided in a single direction (basically) no matter what you do. Yes you can often take different paths or options to get to the next part of the story, but there's nothing really huge that you can alter. I know, this is no free forming game or anything like that, but after a while you start to feel a little boxed into the storyline.
There are also a ton of side quests and side areas to be had to provide a little bit of extra variety to the game, but some of these, in my opinion, just turn into more tedious work to do.
The graphics are still pretty good for a game that's beginning to show its age. Not that I'm a graphics whore, but it's always nice to be greeted by a pretty picture.
Definitely a game worth checking out if you're an RPG fan, or if you're not completely against the combat system.