The game has only been out a couple of days and I'm working my way through it, but my preliminary opinion is that Brett Todd pretty much nailed it in the official review. I'm one of those who played the original M&M when it came out in the 1980's and remember having graph paper strewn all over the floor of my Army barracks room, mapping each footstep grid by grid. It was so frustrating but so fun.
This version doesn't capture all of the nostalgia of the first have the originals but hopefully with a patch or two will at least up the score to a solid 7. What needs fixing:
1. I've found a few random crashes that shut the game down entirely, so save often.
2. The sound is on the lame side, as Brett noted, and more variety would sure help
3. The font size for the subtitles and the conversations with NPC's and store owners is WAY too small. They set aside a nice big space for this interaction and then fill it with tiny print. I shouldn't have to shrink screen resolution to 600x800 to be able to read the dialog on a 20" monitor that's two feet in front of me.
4. Loot drops need an upgrade and to be more appropriate for the character classes being played. I'm playing the default characters, one of which uses an axe, and haven't had a single one drop through a good deal of playing. If you don't buy it, it seems you don't often get it. Same seems to go with armor. Other than dropping gloves, little else seems to come my little groups way that they can use.
5. And finally (at least so far), the puzzling lack of "Dexterity" as one of the skills you level up leaves no obvious way to increase your characters ability to hit. My aforementioned axe wielding dwarf can't seem to hit the side of the barm and no matter what skills I add points to seems to help.
Is it worth playing? For $25 bucks, I guess so. But for a real blast, go to GOG and pick up the earlier copies of M&M that make up the World of Xeen, which I think was number 4 and 5. Google it to be sure. Those were awesome.