It's a long rant so the short version is:
Cons:
-Lack of choice
-Bad quest design (too much running and disguised fetch quests)
-Unbalanced skils and fighting system
-Unfinished feeling (maybe they wanted to patch it later?)
Pros:
-Great art-style, ambiance and audio in general
-Story and many of the sub-quests' plot are interesting and often well thought.
A game that could been good with just some more polish, maybe a few mods or patches could solve the most glaring problems but with the little attention it has received so far I doubt it will happen.
Now the whole rant:
-Lack of choice
My main complain with the game is the lack of choice, for an RPG and a game that speaks of your choices, there sure is a ridiculously few times were you can actually choose something, sure, depending on if you are friend or not with someone a few things might change and a few choices in the main quest-line fork depending on who you side with but that's it, there are very very few moments where you are presented with an option, and what's even more infuriating is how more often than not the game just decides for you what the character does, a few times I even got negative reputation with someone because the game just willed it (ex. one companion wants to investigate something, off you go, all of a sudden the companion wants to screw with other faction and you are not even given the choice of going along with them or refusing them, off you go), what you want to do rarely matters, this kind of forced quest-lines is prominent, you get quests arbitrarily with no choice of refusing them.
SPOILERS:
You discover the Alliance is behind torture and experimentation on the Nauts and to top it off, they are guilty of causing Constantine get the Malichor, yet, you can't either tell the Nauts' Admiral of the discovery nor tell your cousin who poisoned him... as if that wasn't enough, I just came back from telling the Alliance Goberment I would expose him and him washing his hand, insulting me and saying he hopes he never sees me again and what do I see when I naively want to tell Constantine of his poisoner?? the Alliance beging for help... infuriating. This kind of things are commonplace, this is just one of the worst of them.
-Very bad quest design:
My second issue is the bad quest design, quests are extremely linear, the are some really interesting quests yet they are completely wasted because a cool story is boiled down to kill 10 guys and run from here to there, I don't know how many times I thought "hey this is something X should know, we should tell her" nop you can't, or "A and B factions are fighting, let's go mediate and side with B if must be" nop, you sided with A and threw oil to the fire, or someone is going to escape by ship, so you think "hey I'll go to the port to prevent that", no one there and no ship to stop, "let's talk with the Admiral to avoid it then", no talk option, ok... let's backtrack and get him on the way, nop... ok..., do the sub-quests and then get him then? they run away.... wtf?
And that's another thing, there are some quests the designers thought you should do in a certain order, which is not explicit, if you do it in another order? you loose out or you just can't or run into a bug,
And finally, most quest are just a disguised version of fetch quests, it's go here, go there, bring this, talk to someone and come back and so forth, you send more than half of the time in the game just running from one place to the other, the rest is either smashing 1 button because that's all that's needed for combat or watching a cut scene. I have lost count of the times I had to run 10 minutes to get somewhere only to be told there that I need to craft something, I had to run back 10 minutes, craft it, return and then oh, goodie! you have to go back to craft another thing!! we didn't tell you about it before because running is so! much! fun! Being able to fast travel from anywhere, a few extra camps along with a fast travel in each throne rooms (and the ability to pass time anywhere) would be a patchwork but it would help a lot.
-Unbalanced skills
After going here and there and watching a cutscene you usually get to pick a dialog option, unfortunately the limitations are so basic that other in the prologue there is absolutely no reason you wouldn't be able to pass any skill check, you spend one skill, get one from gear and one from a companion, and you get to the max lvl of 3 with just one point; not to mention that most choices are lvl 1 or 2 so you don't even need lvl3 for the most part, also, in the case you don't pass the check it's just an extra go somewhere and pick or talk step and come back or fight them.
By the way, maybe other disciplines are better balanced, but as a mage, you need only smash one button and except bosses there isn't a battle you can't win, I just used other skills to make it more interesting but it was unneeded and actually made most battles longer, I went from being a weakling to be OP in just a few levels, with half of the magic skill tree I can already beat the crap out of anyone or any group in extreme difficulty.
-Unfinished feeling:
Quite often it gives the feeling that the end-product was rushed, corners were cut, animations skipped and even whole places left unfinished, like Hikmet (room after room of nothing, not even chests and people just standing there doing absolutely nothing), it's clear they released the product without all the intended content, as if release date was upon them so they decided to release and patch later or dlc or whatever but the public had a lukewarm reaction at best so it was just left like that, there were a few patches but for bugfixes (I played the last version, don't want to imagine the state at launch)
+Impressive graphics
The art-style, design, atmosphere, character, clothing and the world in general are very nice, great job in that area.
+Great sound ambientation and soundtrack:
The sounds above all are great, you go in the forest and the string or drums start playing foreshadowing an hectic battle with an atmospheric crescendo and the sounds change depending on the area you are in. As for voice acting, it's very good but alas the MC's male voice is too effeminate for my taste, specially with all the "dear one" word-phrasing with Constanstine.
It's interesting how both artistic aspects of the game, sounds and art-style are the best of it.
+Story:
It's actually very good, and the role of the MC is very well chosen, as a legate (ambassador) it's actually justified that you go pocking your nose in every other person's business. Likewise, some quest's plot-line are very interesting, it's just a pity that as I said before, other than the quest-giver and the 2 or 3 people you need to talk to the rest of the world is oblivious to whatever is happening, even when they are concerned.