5-10 hours... I've seen one headless person, and when I first started the game I saw flickering at windows inside the first house. Then I tweaked settings (everything to full - but no ultra settings, no AA, and no HD texture patch) and everything's been solid. I'm sure the game has bugs... but I haven't run into any other than those mentioned.

@r10k

That is encouraging. You could help out by reporting back with a final assessment after you complete the game.

What has kept me away so far has been the large number of people reporting broken quests and progression-halting issues. I consider broken quests as an example of unacceptable bugs.

Visual glitches can be unwelcome, but one expects the underlying mechanics to function correctly, and expends time and effort in-game according to that assumption. Such systemic issues make me feel like my time is wasted, whereas a good, properly-functioning game makes me lose track of time altogether.

Sure, that makes sense. I hope I don't run into anything game breaking (or corrupted saves).

There are a lot of quests that are beyond the main storyline, and the game itself is massive! So, I might report back if I hit any problems.

Well, I just tried this game again with the 1.7 patch and everything seems to be working fine. I believe now that my infinite loading screen was due to a mistake I had made when faced with obtaining 10 charcoal near the beginning of the game. I used some sort of cheat at that point that maxed out the money in my inventory to 999k. I believe when I was burying my parents and was knocked out by that thug in the cutscene that me being filthy stinking rich at the time could have caused the infinite loading screen. I just went back and started all over. This time I used no cheat for the money and everything is working just fine. I can actually proceed with the game.