I paid full retail price on release day and enjoyed the game "for what it is"
a Strugatsky brothers story transposed as best as possible into an rpg.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_to_Be_a_God
I played it straight through till the end, yes there are some large holes in the game immersion but if your a 'play all genre styles' gamer like me you can't really hate the game. I played on hard setting.
Wearing all the pieces of clothing to a faction set, say a thief for example meant you could mix among thieves, then by removing one item only of the set, your identity defaulted back to a mercenary and vice-versa. By carefully going with the flow of the main storyline you would see that a full wardrobe of all disguises need not be carried, only a few (three perhaps) outfits.
I had a low cost horse waiting at each game world change boundary post and could gallop across the world areas freely as required.
The main quest areas i remembers best were....
1. The boar hunting quest (time-out)
2. Fighting the spirits world opponents.
3. The great dual with the master swordsmen.
4. The stupid ending.
The game suggests there are several endings, but in a most stupid implementation, the ending were all together....at the end...you could to try each one!
Here's the rpgwatch listing of diaries, demo's, screens, news, previews and reviews.
http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/news?ref=0&id=89