While it's not as bad as most would have you believe, it's not exactly a great game either.
The game starts you off with a cutscene. Your sister has been wounded and you stop and set her down near a tree to tend to the wound. You turn around for a moment and uh oh, she's gone. This sets the tone for the rest of the game; you are off to save your sister. Sounds simple enough. The story is decent, and there's plenty of side quest material to also keep you busy. There is also a good amount of humor in the game, that will occasionally make you chuckle.
Let's talk about the side quests. There are quite a few to be found throughout the huge, and I mean huge, world you're in (seriously, the map is HUGE). The usual stuff, kill these bandits over here, deal with these orcs over there. The problem I have with the quest system is more often than not you will have no idea where to go exactly. Now I'm all for the game not holding your hand and pointing you somewhere, but at least a general direction of where to start looking would be helpful. Instead you are just sent on your way, with no clue of where to go to actually do the quest. And as I mentioned, the world is enormous, you will easily get lost in no time.
One good point about the quest system, is that there is quite a few (about 10) different factions that you can do work for. The more you work for the faction the better discounts you get at their stores, amongst other perks. It's a cool system and it really fleshes out the world you're in by providing you with different content from all these factions. If you can figure out how to complete some of the quests, you will find yourself having fun working for all these different groups.
But alas, you will end up building up a mass of quests that go unfinished as you blindly search around for ways to finish them. In the meantime you will be doing lots of fighting enemies. And I do mean a lot of fighting. This is another problem I have with the game, it's very repetitive. Kill the bandits in this camp, plunder their goods, rinse and repeat. Sometimes it's groms instead of bandits (groms are this game's goblin creatures), but the end result is the same. Kill a few of the bad guys and steal what's in their locked chest. Get used to doing that because that is what you will be doing for the next however many hours. Whether it's in a cave, on a hill, or in a camp, you will be killing things and plundering them for everything they have, then moving on.
Combat is OK, it's typical button mashing hack n' slash. Enemies do not scale in level with you, so if you stumble against some strong ones they will kill you, unless you run away. I can see why the beginning of the game turned alot of people away, because you start off very weak, and will likely die numerous times on the very first enemies in the game. This can lead to frustration, but if you stick with it you will be rewarded by leveling up and getting stronger. Also, dieing doesn't really hinder you in any way, you are automatically revived at the nearest cross, and you don't lose anything in the process, which is very welcome.
Leveling up consists of putting points into your core attributes of strength, dexterity, etc, and also points into your skills such as lockpicking, parrying, swimming, etc. It's not the most exciting system, but it works. Your character will be rewarded by a feeling of becoming much stronger, and you will be taking on waves of groms and orcs in no time. The same enemies that caused you trouble at the beginning will be swatted like flies before long..
The loot system is kind of cool. There are tons of weapons and armors to be found in the game and you can equip them freely, if you meet the criteria. A cool element in the loot system is that you can combine 2 of the same weapon or armor, and create a stronger piece out of it. Also, each piece of armor and weapon looks different on your character, and you will find some particularly cool looking armor in the game. Overall there is enough loot to keep you going, you are constantly picking up better and better gear as you progress through the game, and it's varied enough to hold your interest for awhile, until you get the next best thing later on.
There is also an alchemy system which is pretty cool to use. You can brew potions that permanently increase your stats which is a much welcomed addition. There is also a system that allows you to enchant weapons with certain gems that do damage of a particular element, such as fire, poison, etc. You can keep pouring gems into the same weapon to really power it up, which is pretty cool. There are also 5 schools of magic, each with a large array of spells that are fun to use. Overall there is enough content of this type to keep things interesting in one way or another.
The graphics are pretty nice, with decent draw distances and when you stand on top of a hill, you can see for miles. The weather effects are particularly nice and convincing. Occasionally there's some pop in and some frame rate stutters, but nothing too out of the ordinary. The sound is fine too, with faint background music and plenty of sound FX that don't sound out of place in the game. I must mention the voice acting, since this seems to be the thing most people can't stand about the game, but to me it didn't bother me much. It might be a little stiff at times, but overall it did it's job. I'm not too picky when it comes to things like that, so it didn't bother me. If you simply can't stand less than stellar voice acting, then just stay away from this game.
Overall, if you like games like Diablo, Morrowind, Oblivion...this game may be of interest to you. It's not the worst game ever made, make it through the first hour or 2 of the game and you may be pleasantly surprised. The world is vast, there are plenty of creatures to slay and treasures to be found, if that's your thing this game has it in spades. Just be prepared to be doing it over and over again for hours at a time. 6.5/10