The good:
It's not as buggy as Bethesda games usually are, the world is huge, the main storyline is well done, the graphics are gorgeous, so many quests it's not possible to do them all.
If you played Oblivion, they fixed a bunch of the really irritating features it had. Monsters still scale, but not to the insane degree they did in Oblivion, which means gaining levels actually helps you instead of hurting you in this game.
It also supports heavy modding, so if there's a certain aspect of the game that bugs you, you can probably download a mod that will change it. The amount of modding also means fans will be making addons, some of which are nearly as large as the official ones. The ability to customize was one of the main selling points to me.
The bad:
Balance issues (Magic sucks while stealth is massively overpowered. Both fixable with mods).
Fewer bugs than Oblivion or Fallout 3/NV, but the bugs that are there are really irritating. (Fast travel crashes, invalid objects, non-loading textures, etc)
NPCs sometimes have pathfinding issues (You can kill giants, mammoths, and dragons at level 1 by kiting them around a rock if you're patient or bored.)
Some of the crafting sucks and isn't worth it. (Fixable with mods).
The stat system is completely gone, replaced with a talent system that's more like The Witcher than anything else I can think of. You no longer gain carrying capacity by increasing strength: Instead you use the skill (Pickpocket, IIRC) until you can spend a point on it.
If you're playing it on a PC, you're probably going to be enraged by the menu system. They didn't even bother to hide that it's a half-assed console port. It's easier to play the game with a gamepad, since that's what it was designed to be played with.
It's a mixed bag. Not the greatest game ever made, but definitely worth playing.
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