Complete disrespect for player's time. Amazing attention to detail, amazing story crafting, amazing immersion - it will absolutely waste your time. I don't mean this in a pleasant way where you lose hours of time immersed - which you would - but you will waste way too many hours just reloading a super old save because the save mechanic is utterly cruel. I'm a teacher, I don't have 4 hours a session to devote to a game. Having to replay 45 minutes of garbage over and over because I couldn't reach an appropriate save pint prior to a crucially difficult point in the game means: I just stop playing it. Which is a shame because its really well done but its saving mechanic makes this utterly unplayable because it just doesn't respect the player's free time, which for most people is very limited.

Had a horrible time with this game. I can't see why people seem to love it so much! It seems that everything that can break WILL break.
The story is really good and based on real history but I think there is a bit too much emphasis on realism over fun. That is to say:
Pros - Draws you into a beautifully realised world with characters, locations and artwork all based on the real history of the middle ages.
Unfortunately it's short-lived when you hit the:
Cons - Badly designed quests. You will be tracking along a quest nicely until something stupid happens like, getting trapped in a building, being forced to continue a section while you are overloaded with gear that you need to sell but the game won't let you stray from the path or simply (due to lack of guidelines) ending up in a situation that is much too difficult or a quest that will break if you do didn't do it exactly how the devs intended it. - A good example is if the game throws you into a fist fight sequence where you're supposed to help someone but accidentally hit a villager that walks between you and your opponent and a guard comes and throws you in jail. Quest broken! You will have to load up again which:
- The game only lets you save by sleeping or drinking saviour schnapps (which on paper is a good idea and adds to the immersion) but when something goes wrong, which it will then be prepared to lose a load of progress. Very frustrating!
- The combat can be really frustrating too. I often found myself facing 3,4,5 opponents at once. Sure you can try to sneak etc but when you are just riding your horse on the way to a quest and suddenly you get jumped, (unless you have spent 2.5k on a good horse) your horse will panic and throw you and before you know it, you will surrounded on all sides, being attacked from all directions. You can block people attacking from your flank, but when you do, the target focus will switch which makes you lose your baring, then when you try to attack the new target he will block you and you will be attacked again by another flanking opponent. It is so difficult to get an upper hand in those situations unless you have high level and good gear, Something which the game doesn't seem to care about with regards to combat. Then when you die you will no doubt lose a load of progress due to the saving system.
- Bad game design choices. Although I appreciate the devs approach of immersion and realism. It has to be balanced with accessibility and a good learning curve to get the best experience. I suppose it depend on the type of gamer you are, if you are used to Skyrim or Bethesda RPGs, then you will struggle with this as it doesn't have the quality of life features that other RPGs have. But if you like a more hardcore experience and have plenty of time to invest then you'll probably appreciate what the devs we're going for here.
Conclusion - Beautiful game world, likeable characters, stories and events based on real history. Let down by a lack of direction, clumsy rigid quests that must be completed "the right way" and a difficulty / learning curve that seems to be all over the place

If you get this game now a days, make sure it is on a full sale. I had 25-50 crashes and bugs on the main story line alone that kept me jumping back and having to reload from 10+ minutes from where I was. They didn't update these bugs in the many years since release and it i sad. The game could be great otherwise. For now, it isn't something you should get into without knowing about the bug issues that are still persistent and throughout the game.