Highly recommended traditional fantasy
I'm a huge fan of single-player games. And this is the best. Traditional fantasy setting with castles, dungeons, goblins and etc. With enough strange stuff (daedra, and other creatures) to keep it original.

There are no arbitrary limitations. My main character wears heavy armor and sneaks around. Though he wasn't very effective at the sneaking until reaching much higher levels. The point is that you can have combinations that aren't allowed in other RPGs as long as you are willing to accept any penalties until your character develops all his skills.

A lot of great quest lines through the guilds that are mini games in themselves. A lot of surprises in the wilderness and in towns. The alchemy system is easy to follow and use. Even though my character is always decked out in heavy armor and can sneak around adequately, he could also cast spells. But as I said there is a trade-off. The spells I cast are basic, but enough to get me through tough scrapes. If I want more powerful magics, I just need to start training it up.

So character options are practically limitless. But you can also play as a straight-up fighter, mage, or rogue type. This gives even more replay-ability.

Very stable. The game has frozen on me twice with many months of game play behind me. Both times was right after I saved, so nothing lost.

The only thing I wish was the ability to create more characters and have control over them - a la Baldur's Gate. The game does give limited control over having a few allies, but it is very difficult to outfit them. The game was not designed to have a party of adventrurers, however.

Fun
This game has an excellent environment to explore. The religious references and darkness of the main storyline gets a bit old and disturbing at times. Toward the endgame, nothing really rewarding happens. There is nothing new to apply your wealth or new abilities. Overall the game is a lot of fun for those who like quests.

Almost rivals World of Warcraft.
This game almost rivals World of Warcraft. It keeps you on the edge of your seat most of the time. I do wish, though that you could play with other players at the same time. I would reccomend that you purchase the guide book to go along with it as it is a great help with it's maps of the dungeons and gates and the different guides through the quests. Sometimes they can be confusing. Other than that, It's a great game.

An excellent game but has serious problems with load times.....(Problem Solved)
I really enjoy the game and give it a 5 star rating on everything but load times. There is a serious amount of time spent waiting for things to load into memory with this game. At least half of my playing time is spent in loading. For this reason I can only give the game an overall rating of 4 stars. A couple of times the game has frozen up on a load and I have to turn off the XBOX and start over from my last saved game. I don't know why there is such a problem with load times and I don't know how to fix it if there is a way. Anyways thats enough about what I dislike. What I really like about the game is the depth. It could take you months to maybe a year to finish this game depending on how much you play. There is so much you can do. I also like the fact that it seems almost like artificial intelligence. This game is smart and reacts to how you play it. I only wish the creators would have put more opportunities to earn lots of gold in the game seeing how everything you want to buy is so expensive. As a result I succombed to only one cheating method (duplicating items) in order to get extra gold. Once you have completed the quest about the vampires (The Order of the Virtuous Blood), you can duplicate the vampire dust you collected from the quest and get 250 gold pieces for each one. Just make sure you don't give your last one away. I keep 25 vampire dusts in a chest in one of my houses for this purpose. Anyways I feel overall this is a great game and I will continue to enjoy it for days and months to come.

After writting the above review I found out on the internet why I was having such problems with load times. In order to cheat in the game you have to delete the cache which I had done. This procedure removes the patches from the game and allows you to cheat in various ways. I used the duplicate items cheat to get extra gold because everything in the game is real expensive and gold is hard to come by. Anyways when you delete the cache it also effects the hard drive causeing major fragmentation of the hard drive to occur as you play the game more and more. To defrag the hard drive you can either repatch the game which can be done by installing the Shivering Isles and The Knights of The Nine pluggins or by holding down the A button on the control as the game loads. Either way you won't lose any saved game info. If you decide to keep cheating you must do the above procedure quite often or your game will go back to having the problems. If you get to a point in the game where you no longer feel cheating is necessary like I have you can install the pluggins and this will permanently fix the problem. You can't play the pluggins without fixing the cache and the pluggin disc does this for you. Anyways that's just a tid bit of info that I picked up off the internet that might help a person who is experiencing the same problems that I was.

not for the faint
this game will tax on your energy, and is virtully impossible to beat due to the longevity of the game. from the start of the game you have choices too many choices of which you don't know how it will affect the outcome of the game. i gave it three stars because it is still a great game just not my style. if you are not an avid rpg player this games not for you