This is an awesome game!

Story: The storytelling is rich and makes some really great commentary on the nature of stories and the roles of NPCs encountered by the hero. Tho some of it stuff is pretty standard fare but it does tend to pull it off with a nice little twist that keeps it refreshing.

Characters: NPCs range from incredibly well written to largely forgettable but while many may be the latter rather than the former this is more down to the absolute shear number of NPCs you encounter rather than them being poorly written (seriously it gets to the point where you can feel a little swamped by the number of NPCs you can strike up a conversation with).

Quests: These range from awesome, large scale and well written affairs to your regular fetch this or kill that numbers that we're all too familar with. What really is praise worthy, however, is that they've seperated the type of quest you can recieve into 4 sections: Main Story, Faction, Side Quests and Tasks and once you catch on to the fact that you don't need to do all of the quests to progress in the game and that Tasks are just repetitive stuff you can do to make some quick cash if your hurting for it you can start to weed out the repeative stuff in favour of the awesomeness with ease.

Combat: It's always fast, it also requires you to think and strategise a bit when it comes to dealing with the various enemies(rather than just button mashin' as most ARPGs do) and it can also pull off some truly epic moments, ie. when a combo pulls off just right exterminating a small group of enemies or when you catch yourself pulling off multiple hits on a mob to had launched into the air. I also love Reckoning mode, that's freakin' brilliant!

Graphics: Even for it's time it doesn't have top range graphics (it was released the same year as Skyrim so you could compare the two and find it wanting) however despite this the game does manage to create some truly beautiful areas and scenery. Quite often when playing games like these one can forget to properly look around when blinded by the persuit of the quest/experience bar/loot, but i really think you should take the time when entering a new area/city to have a good little look at the enviroment cause it can be very pretty (not Skyrim stunning but certainly pretty).

Gameplay: I've heard many people compare the way this game plays to an MMO but for me the gameplay in fact feels most like the FABLE games, which i love so for me it's great. I've also heard complaints about the camera being crap or that it's horrible to play on mouse and keyboard and, yes, i did have to fiddle with my mouse's sensitivity a bit to get it to feel comfortable but once i did that i had absolutely no problems, in fact i rather like the camera, it seems rather intelligent at times pulling back when you're engaging a large group of enemies but not when you're dealing with fewer or smaller (that's smaller in body size) mobs. The only critism i will levy at it is that the interface can be a bit clumbersome to get around, but considering i am using a mouse and keyboard as always that's not much of an issue since a mouse literally can over come any obsticle.

In summery i do recommend this game for all who have a love and passion for RPGs. Don't be put off by it's ARPG look and gameplay (if you're against such a thing) for this game has a lot of depth, a mega ton of NPCs and a whole heap of story telling, all of which makes it an ideal RPG in my book. The DLCs are top notch stuff too, expansion pack worthy imo.

It was a real shame this game was overlooked (largely because of Skyrim's release that same year) and that the devs failed to make any money on it and then closed due to bankruptcy, for this is a game i could've seen turning into a great series (much like TES or DA) and now i'll always feel a little bit of emptiness thanks to the knowledge that'll never be.