Dishonored is beautiful to look at, and a lot of fun at times, but falls short of the classic games it pays homage to.
Still, so far I've played through the game twice in two very different ways: once fighting and killing (high chaos), and once sneaking and not killing (low chaos), and neither really gave me the satisfaction I found in many of the earlier classic games Dishonored is loosely based on.
Dishonored is a tale of revenge that takes place in a very cool pseudo-steampunk world set in the past: a port city/empire that depends on the whaling industry for its technology, and is trying to survive a horrible plague. Your character sides with an underground movement of "loyalists" who use your particular set of stealth and killing skills to help them regain power. They are the brains, you are the brawn. You go about your missions following their instructions, acquiring information to help them, and eliminating those that stand in their way.
The characters are a bit cartoonish, but detailed and animated and voiced well. There are many conversations with NPCs, but they serve to advance the story, as does the abundance of (optional) reading material laying around that provides much more detailed information about everything that happens in the game as well as back story about the history of the city.
After a series of cutscenes and simple training time, you begin the game in earnest, slowly acquiring weapons, ammo, money, health and mana as you explore, and then eventually earn skills that you can customize a bit to suit the way you want to play.
Although the game developers try to create a false sense of openness in the play (you always have multiple options and paths to get from point A to point B), the basic story itself is linear, and the goals and missions progress a set way no matter how you play. Despite the illusion of variety, the various parts of the city you travel to for your missions really seem much the same. At least they did to me. But the art direction and design is good, and everything is a joy to look at.
The game seems to end much too soon (even if you drag play out by using stealth) and the story offered no real surprises. Even the one or two "twists" in the plot were sort of expected and seemed cliche.
I wish there had been more optional "side" missions like more open-ended games such as Fallout and Oblivion. There are some optional missions, but not many.
Yes, there are choices to be made, and depending on how you play, how you respond to character interactions, and most importantly your level of violence, the game itself and the final mission unfolds in slightly different ways.
More killing is considered 'high chaos', and the dead body count simply means more rats and Weepers (zombie-like plague victims) flood the area. This is more of a nuisance than anything, and doesn't really add much to the game play.
Less killing is 'low chaos' and ultimately seems a bit boring, where you sneak through and nothing much really happens, action-wise.
The stealth system works well enough, and without giving too much away, you can acquire supernatural skills to aid you as you move around and hide, but I agree with a common complaint I've read: you have no way of knowing how well you are hidden from foes. Places that seem dark and safe often aren't, and yet you may not be noticed sitting on a rooftop out in the open. Sometimes your movements are trial and error.
To be fair, if you decide to be a killing machine assassin, the game allows you to do that in many fun, creative ways. You can be a "sniper" taking out enemies from long range or a high vantage point, either by shooting crossbow darts, firing a pistol, or hurling grenades. You can also kill your opponents up close in fights, adding the blade to your arsenal. You can set traps and rewire enemy machines of destruction to turn on them. Good fun, and you can mix it up for variety.
Being discovered means guards will go nuts trying to get or find you, but there is always the option of running away or hiding until things calm down.
But something is missing. My other favorite stealth/action games (Thief, Splinter Cell, Deus Ex, even the hybrid Max Payne) all involve a lot of good dark humor, and the character narrates or talks in an often funny way. This game has neither of those great elements, and it shows. In Dishonored, Corvo only makes a sound when he's being tortured, and there is very little humor. Yes, the guards and enemies have comical conversations, but for some odd reason that gets very repetitive, and you will hear a lot of the same one-liners in the first mission as you do miles away and many hours later in the final mission. It doesn't make sense, other than they simply didn't want to record a larger variety of voice files.
As much work as went into this game, I'm just not sure about the replay value. A few times through seems to be enough. You can play multiple ways, but for me the game still seems the same.
Maybe if they allowed more variety in the character development. The range of powers and weapons isn't that great, and they only give you two levels for any single skill. This means you can only build your character a limited number of ways, and skills are either good for stealth or fighting. The runes and bone charms you need to find to upgrade skills and weapons give you a good incentive to fully explore the Dishonored game world, but I think they make it too easy to upgrade nearly everything for the style you decide to play.
I hate to use cost as a factor in reviewing a video game, but in this case, if I had paid the original full price, I think I would have been disappointed. If you can pick this game up at a discount, it's probably worth the time...
BTW, I should also point out, as others here have, that I did not have a single technical issue with this game, and that is a rare treat. It loaded fine, updated fine, and ran fine every time I played on my normal system (Windows 7). A small miracle in this day and age...