These are some great answers so far, gives me a good feel for the game apart from videos of gameplay. While I haven't played the game, from watching a few Lets Plays of the first bit up to about Caed Nua (I stop watching as they start clearing out the place), I totally agree with MaxQuest on how the character creation and first few minutes of gameplay really draw you in, and I love the variety in race/class/culture/background being teased out in conversation in the first bit, that's a really great idea.
Also pretty glad I haven't grabbed the game yet in the sense that Ink Blot and Barbedbeat touched on re: patches polishing things up (plus since I'm waiting until I can afford to grab the game and the expansion 2 parter in one go, I'll get to experience everything as an integrated experience on my first go-through, which I'm pretty excited about).
And to Barbedbeat, I'm pretty broke and poor at the moment, but PoE is sort of a "next to buy" on my list of big game purchases so that's why I'm here scoping out people's perceptions and reactions to it. As with Black Isle games, I expect to be returning to PoE dozens of times, so I wanted to get a feel for the lay of the land, but I won't likely be picking it up until GOG does another sale (I keep being broker than usual when they do so, so I'm trying to squirrel away some extra for the next time a sale happens).