I think my local Wal-Mart here in eastern Kentucky will be getting the game some time around Labor Day . . .

Tease!

I''m with ya on this one.

I keep reading all the positive hype, but I just can''t get interested.

Got it. Will play after dinner.

I got a copy as well but my TV is dismantled...
I was hoping to ""game vicariously"" but this thread is pretty quiet so far.

Maybe they can''t peel themselves away from the tube?

I be wanting this.

Dance monkeys dance! *cracks whip*

I''ll be playing tonight assuming EB is right about it showing today. Impressions guaranteed.

I got to play a bit only so that I can load the bonus character that came with my LE edition. However 15 min is not enough to post any impressions.

One thing that bothers me so far is that there is no way to get out of conversation. Like in old RPG''s I had a choice to ignore the person even after I started to talk to them. Maybe it''s just because it''s only the beginning and they don''t want me to miss anything important.
There is no intro movie...!? Perhaps I didn't make to it yet because so far everything is more or less is a tutorial. They''ll tell you briefly how to attack and use Chi to do + damage and heal.
Graphically is good, but some how it reminds me KOTOR. Loading is not that bad so far... 20sec max. The frame rate is silky but during the scenes it seems to have a hiccup as if it is loading in background. It''s not a bigy and honestly can be unnoticeable...

Unfortunately I would not be playing the game for the next 2 days... need to finish Doom3.

This is the longest ''impressions'' thread with no ''impressions'' (nei''s don''t count because he only played for 15 min)

This is the problem with number ratings. Sometimes while reading magazines, their reviewers may give a ''7'' range for a game. This is supposed to be ''good'', while the high 8 and 9 are ''great''.

At what point did we stop buying ''good'' games? Talk about Pavlov''s dogs...

Man, I was going to spend today playing it but the local game store didn''t get it due to a shipping mix up. Stupid Game Crazy, must waste time off with something non-productive!

Picked it up last night, but only got to play it for about 2 hours. Just long enough to get in a few sparring matches at the school where you start. Got my first taste of combat against real enemies (not sparring partners), my first death , and 2 main quests along with, I believe, 1 or 2 side quests.

Story wise it starts out like almost every RPG. You dont remember much of your life before coming to the school. Your teacher has not told you everything about your past because he has been waiting for the right time to tell you, but he believes you are destined for great deeds. Bioware usually turns out well written stories for its games, so I have pretty high hopes this one will be pretty decent as well.

The dialog works almost exactly as KOTOR did. When you talk to someone you usually get a bunch of conversation branches you can choose from, and you dont have to go thru all of them, you can come back and continue a branch of conversation at a later time. Not sure how long into the plot the same conversations are available, but I imagine it will work the same way as in KOTOR.

The combat system seems to be everything it has been hyped up to be. Lots of variety, but also fairly easy to master. I was just starting to get the hang of it when I had to turn in for the night, but was already having loads of fun with it.

The character creation/customization reminds me of both Diablo 1 & 2, and KOTOR. You have the choice of 5 (if I remember correctly) different characters that cover the different fighting styles. You can take the character with his default point allocations or change it to your preference. As an example my character had 4 point to allocate between his 3 stats (health, spirit, focus). Its basically an RPG lite just like its been described.

Thats pretty much all I can think of for now. Like I said, last night I didn''t get a chance to invest much time into it, but I definitely enjoyed what I got to discover of it. For me at least, I think it will be the type of game that keeps me wanting to discover the next plot twist or new area and that I wont truly feel satisfied until I finish the game.

Reading over this post I just realized that my impressions can actually be summarised this way. I got in 2 hours of play time last night. Loved it and cant wait to get home and play more of it.

This is Tom Chick''s 7-9 effective point rating scale at work. Ostensibly, review sites and zines have a 0-10 point scale, but only a statistically insignificant number of games ever recieve a score outside of the 7-9 (really 7.0 - 9.5) zone, so the average game (i.e. us) is forced to conclude that anything below a 9 is largely not worth his/her attention.
Rating systems need a massive overhaul. It''s going to take a really ballsy site or magazine to say, ""This game is average, so I''m giving it a 5"" as opposed to the 8''s that average games are scoring these days. It''s going to completely f*ck up Metacritic and Gamerankings, and probably make that site into anathema, so it''ll take someone big like GameSpot or IGN (yeah right) to do it, because only they can act with impunity and not fear being cut off of the review copy gravy train.

I''ve noticed this...even Gamespot is careful not to torch big releases. They have to know ahead of time that they don''t like a big game, but they still hype the h&ll out of it. Then when they do release a negative/lukewarm review they will sit on it and let the hype last a little bit longer to allow a few more impulse buys.

I still use Gamespot as my primary review site, but I usually try to find other reviews too. And if the review is not out soon after release...DO NOT BUY IT!