I got a chance to give the 360 version a spin (it leaked a few days back-
http://gbatemp.net/t...__fromsearch__1 and I posted a quick first impressions there)- I saw 6am this morning because of it and have had similar late nights several times now which is better (worse?) than skyrim which so far has only seen a few marginally late nights. Alas I have only been doing emergency calls these last few days rather than something booked so I am not sure if I would play knowing I would be tired the next day (the previous title to properly manage that was Two Worlds 2) and TV show wise it was the wire.
Going for the staves and chakrams mage with mage armour route right now (earned the first dodge replacement last night/this morning) but have given the other weapons a spin (the hammer is pretty good and I like the faeblades). It is getting to be a surprisingly deep combat engine (I will refine my earlier comments to still sub ninja gaiden but better than any Zelda I have played) with a nice magic/abilities system* which is awesome as I have wanted that for years but on the flip side the being troubled by small drops/only jumping at jump points when walking around thing does raise an eyebrow following skyrim. My inability to block in any game might not help but hard mode does manage the Ninja gaiden bit of if you are on low health it is almost certainly your fault. It is easy enough for me to keep stocked up on potions though as ingredients for small healing potions are everywhere and still largely sort my health (the healing spell takes a while to unlock and is not that useful in combat (a while to be effective/cast and recharge) which is good) so dying is not much of a problem. The camera occasionally gets confused but I have pushed through far far worse (in many games my thumb is on the camera stick shifting to be buttons when I can where here I can quite happily have it on the buttons instead).
*not entirely convinced by the progression system but if I were doing it I have to admit it would probably be very similar.
The voice acting has dropped a couple of times (switched from one character to another) but is actually pretty good for this sort of thing. I am sure someone will probably wish to note the borderline stereotype UK accents being assigned to races thing but it works well enough (it is far easier on the ear than my spins with fable though).
Story- I have not done much on the main story (still yet to see the first fateweaver although I did play past it and revert) but loads of sidequests now most of which I enjoyed and were varied enough to hold interest (I do get bored of fetch quests) and although there is a moral choice thing in effect there are no morality points to speak of which is awesome and some of the choices are interesting/lesser of two evils types (by no means an amazing system and will probably be a "I waited ? years for this and it passed without me really noticing" moment but definitely better than what came before).
Art design still reminds me of a prettier world of warcraft or fable which I am not entirely sure about but faced with the choice of sinking silly money on the uber graphics route (to say nothing of modelling everything to go with it) and a solid design like this I can not fault them.
Got a chance to fiddle with the blacksmithing and potion creation (trained up to the milestone allowing four ingredients and the same for the blacksmithing (no gems though)- works quite well and you do have to work a bit to find components/ingredients. Not had much chance to game the economy though (storekeepers vary even in the same building, have unlimited money, have the option to buyback items you sold) and beyond a sword I found I have nothing in the mercantile but I am still broke (training, the odd weapon, a backpack, components and such) which means it is doing better than most RPGs in which I could probably comfortably retire after the third hour of play.
I got a chance to see a bit more of the world which is nice as the forest/swamp thing was getting a bit stale (although I will note they made the effort to mix that up a tiny bit). Got a house as well.
So far I got back into country in January with Skyrim and Dark souls to play (along with my usual list of RPGs to finish) and this has pulled focus from both so Big Huge Games should be bloody proud of this one.