Let me start off by saying that this is one of the best designed and written games of the past few years. The world, characters, story, script and general atmosphere are off-the-charts awesome, and will make this one of the more memorable gaming experiences of this console generation.
It's a shame, then, that the gameplay isn't quite up to snuff. It all starts out pretty perfectly with some fun but basic hack and slash action, mixed with a cool "guitar solo" feature and some racing, leaving lots of open room for some cool... RTS action? What?
Although it's all introduced piece by piece pretty masterfully, the whole real-time strategy sections still just feel out of place, in addition to feeling overly simplified. The tools given to you to control your large force are rudimentary at best, and although I only had trouble with the final boss battle, it still ends up being sometimes frustrating to use.
Then you've got the free roaming, which is awesome because of the world, but the tasks you're given to do are the same 4 repeated over and over and over again. It would've been nice to see some variety. Plus, the map only allows waypoints on side quests and stores, and the navigation aid is reduced to "head for the giant column of light while checking your map every 10 seconds to make sure you're not heading into a ditch".
Still, these issues are mostly annoyances, and are certainly not game-breaking. It's just a shame that they're there considering the fact that this could've been an absolute masterpiece with some more variety and some better tools.
In a sentence:
Godlike design, characters, voice work and writing, but disappointing gameplay.
