Friendly warning guys, I'd hold off on buying this game for at least two months. Firstly, it'll be cheaper to buy, and secondly, by then they might actually have gotten around to patching it.
Of course, that won't fix the biggest issue with the game - the fact that you're sat staring at a ten minute long loading screen for every three minutes of gameplay. But it might speed up the loading times slightly and, who knows, maybe eliminate the fact that there's presently a 50-50 chance during each loading screen of causing your PC to memory dump, blue screen, and force you to reboot.
In short, I feel slightly pissed off. I've apparently paid full retail price for a game that CLEARLY needed to push its release date back until Valentine's day because it JUST ISN'T FINISHED YET. It's got more bugs than a James Bond film.
What little of it I've managed to get through (compulsory tutorial, and awesome scene where a zombie cyclops rips down the gates of a city and you have to run away, then man a ballista and kill it) are unbelievably good. No kidding, the bit with the cyclops was extremely cool, and all of the gameplay I've experienced thus far has been truly amazing. The problem is that the amount of gameplay I've experienced up to this point is TINY next to the amount of staring at a loading bar WILLING it to progress another pixel across the screen, only to feel let down and dissapointed when the whole thing goes belly-up and you find yourself staring at a blue screen.
In other words, this is a game in desperate need of a patch, and I pray to the spirits of my bruised wallet that said patch arrives soon. So, hold off on buying it until after New Years. you won't be able to have fun with it until that point.
Buy Neverwinter Nights 2 to tide you over.
