Great story, fun, worth the purchase. Only marred by bugs and long load times.
The story in this game is superior to its predecessor, Neverwinter Nights. It's much better tied together and makes far more sense than in your average RPG (not less silly, just better told :). It perhaps was the most impressive feature of the game.
The graphics are impressive but something of a mixed bag. While everything looks great, it taxes my system's capabilities a lot. Okay, I don't have the highest-end system, but one has to ask whether it's really that important that every room have an elaborate ceiling, when it doesn't impact gameplay. It was very rare that I bothered to lower the camera to look at the ceilings. So I was taking a performance hit but not always with good reason. Clearly the graphics engine was based on Knights of the Old Republic (and Jade Empire), but KOTOR was less ambitious graphically, without the highend requirements which tend to bog this game down a bit.
The camera also is a problem. Frequently it was blocked by some object or other. Even in the cut scenes, you're supposed to be seeing character interaction, but you might be looking at nothing more than a characters leg or something because the character happens to be standing in front of the camera. I played as a halfling character, so while the camera was supposed to be focusing in on him, it would sometimes simply be focused on empty air over his head. In gameplay, the camera was distracting and took some getting used to. It was a challenge to see what I needed to see at times. This was not such a problem in Knights of the Old Republic, because in that game the camera moved mostly just horizontally, not vertically, as in this game. You just didn't have trees blocking your view very often. Sure, the graphics are superior, but here they just don't always work right with the interface.
Combat is handled well. There are many varying ways to fight, and many character attributes that can be brought into play. And there are a lot of wonderful character creation and development options. I have not yet begun to explore half of them.
Gone is the warping back to base to replenish supplies and heal, but I didn't miss it all that much. Instead, you could have your characters "rest" and regain full hit points and replentish spells. Sometimes it was annoying, like when I had to have them backtrack a ways until they were far enough from enemies to be able to rest. However, it's more realistic.
The game was buggy too, but much better since they've been patching it. I had some problems with the sound until they patched the game to 1.04. After that it worked beautifully. But they still haven't fixed all the bugs, and this keeps the game from being as good as it could be.
And then there's the problem with load times. It's not just the graphics loading, it's the design. Just starting the game up you have to wait a bit and then hit escape like about a dozen times just to get to the main menu. Don't these people ever learn anything? Do you think I'm going to have a good impression of the game if I'm exasperated before I can even get it loaded? Bottom line, however, is that it's an incredible RPG, one of the best I've played, and I definitely recommend it to all those who can look past its shortcomings.