Creating (PC) gameplay videos (software recommendations)
 

I want to start making"let's play" videos of CRPGs I play and possibly video reviews, too. I've never attempted to make a game play video before and have no experience with video recording / editing software. Can anyone recommend any software that you've had good experiences with? (Preferably something that has a free version or at least a free trial). I just want something that's relatively easy to use and won't severely impact the FPS, etc.

Also, if I'm going to do any commentary, I'll need to buy a microphone so I'd appreciate recommendations for those as well.

Fraps is great. You can edit the movie with windows movie maker, if you want something easy and free.

I think there's some external device by Hauppauge which grabs FullHD videos in realtime and allows on the fly audio recording. The name escapes me at the moment. Costs ca. 170€.

If you have a nVidia graphics card, you could just use GeForce Experience which comes with every driver release. GF Experience has a built-in capture tool called ShadowPlay (SP). Maybe check the official forums for tips & tricks. As far as I know, the big advantage of SP is near zero performance impact since the recorded stream just gets dumped from the video buffer to disk.

There are numerous other free tools that have capture functionality as well like Xfire or MSI Afterburner (no MSI VGA card required).

In the end I guess you're just going to have to find your preferred tool trial & error style. And then there's always this resource for probably almost everything you need to know about your first steps into LP land.