The Dwarves

Now, this was a pleasant surprise. I followed the game pre-release, then never checked it out after seeing how disappointing the reviews were. And I was kinda wrong. It's not a masterpiece, but it's pleasant and fun to play, and just about the right length too (i feared some Pillars of Eternity-like super long thing).
The plot is nice, taken from the books, and so is the writing. The game sometimes feels a bit "incomplete", but that's probably what makes it shorter and enjoyable too (sometimes I don't need to explore every single boring same-y city in an RPG). Fun times, i liked it, a 75/100 from me.

Verdict: Amazing story, totally atrocious combat system. Get it if you are a fan of the books.
+
Steam achievements (34, single playthrough + challenges)
Faithfull adaptation of Markus Heitz's book The Dwarves (Die Zwerge (2003))
The in-game cinematics are pretty damn amazing
Unique take on Dwarven mythology
The game didn't shy from the more brutal elements of the books (like gouged eyes)
Pretty decent soundtrack
Amazing narrative experience (fully voiced)
A lot of companions and they all feel and play different enough
Boïndil is top notch dwarf
-
No steam trading cards
RPG elements are basically non-existent
Really boring loot
Merchants are literally running from you
One of the worst combats you will ever experience
The camera is a bloody mess
Your heroes may suddenly die because Ai pathfinding decided they need to walk off the cliff
Pretty repetitive in terms of enemies
The game crashes and has a lot of bugs
Linear (move from A to B and then C)
+/-
Friendly fire is always on and you can throw your companions to their doom

Finished "The Dwarves" on Linux.
The Dwarves is inspired by the successful novel by Markus Heitz with the same title. In that, it follows the story nearly 1:1 with a few deviations. You play Tungil Goldhand, a dwarf who has been raised at his master's place Lot-Ionan, one of the wizards of these lands. You have been called to make an errant to a once former student of the wizard. Along the journey, you find the lands overrun by Orcs and Albe and soon a "road movie"-like trip unfolds in which you plea to become the high king of the dwarves to fight the great evil Nod'onn. You are joined by a host of different characters from which you can pick three to join you in battles. You gain experience and new skills.
King Art made here a decent game. The story has some turns, the game design is great, and the animations are smooth and these are the great pros of this game.
However, the gameplay is a bit lacking. There are 3 setups: a travel map on which you have sometimes some encounters you solve with multiple choice answers. This is where the story proceeds. Then there is some "discover" mode in which you walk around a closed area and interact with items, and finally, there is the battle mode in which you and up to three companions are fighting waves of orcs and sometimes bigger or more dangerous foes.
It is this battle map mode which the weakest, but you play the most. In essence, normal attacks do marginal damage. You have to deal with special skill attacks, which do cost several action points. These action points do regenerate over time and when you have some success on the battlefield. Basically, you just stop, issue special attacks to everyone, and wait until you have enough action points again. That's it. And this is repeated ad nausea.
Plus a good collection of bugs. E.g. I could not get Tungil to equip any health potion. The game started I had, but when the battle started Tungil had no potion at all. I tried this several times. Tungil always missed the potion. At some times I could not convince any of my characters to move. Path finding is abysmal. My characters always tend to block each other. All no real blockers, but painting a weak image. One particular thing is: when you want to load an old save game, the button to load is placed right. However, the game asks me "Do you really... ?" and places the commit button now left! It's not a bummer but hints that quite some issues are a bit amateurish.
7 out of 10.

Loved this game overall but hated the overly-complicated and unintuitive combat mechanics. It was a joy to play and explore and experience the story but I dreaded every combat scenario because they are mostly exercises in frustration and bad design choices. Still - if you can stomach the combat - it's really faithful to the book which is a huge plus.

Quite interesting game - story is interesting, little predictible but enough for keeping to play till end.
Game works on latest mac os with silicon.

Don't pay attention to negative comments. The game has a few issues with the combat, but that doesn't stop it from being a good game with a story that's fun to follow.

The good about this game
Fantasy dwarves are cool, I love them, there aren't enough quality games with this loveable race in them. If you like dragon age origins dwarf playthroughs you might like this. The story in this game is based on a best selling book, so the story has some good characters and interesting elements and plot twists. Although I'm sure the book would be better storywise. The combat is quite challenging and the normal difficulty may be too difficult for a lot of people. I do quite like a challenge myself. Its an easy game to get 100% of achievements on, only took me 20 hours and a little bit of reloading and guide reading. Got most of the achievements playing the game normally. I actually love this game.
The bad about this game
Generally not that many hours of gameplay compared to many other videogames. I assume maybe 15 hours of actual content if you didn't get stuck on certain battles and refuse to lower the difficulty like I did. Part of why this game is so challenging is its strange combat system, being not turn based, but still using abilities and multiple characters in a kind of fashion that implies it should be turn based. You cant queue up abilities, you have to babysit each character, very often pausing it, making sure they are using abilities (They dont passively use any) and aren't running to their death stupidly. Combat is chaos that you have loose control over. There aren't any choices you can make that change the main story of this game, though I do feel bad for not strongly advising a farming family to focus on building a hiding bunker instead of harvesting their crops.
Should you get this game?
Do you love dwarves? Get it
Is it on sale for 10-15 dollars? Get it
Do you enjoy a challenge? Get it
If none of these apply to you, maybe take a pass on it.