Beyond Good and Evil is a polished, enjoyable action adventure that includes Metal Gear-style stealth puzzles, action RPG-style clickfests, and even a not-insignificant amount of racing. It's tied together with an engaging but fairly generic plot, decent voice acting, and a believable if small world. Overall it's very playable (smooth restarts) and memorable, but a bit short.
I would have liked more places to explore and a bit more depth to the combat system. (it's pretty simplistic) The controls were annoying at times since the camera can be hard to control and there are a lot of keys to remember. (in the heat of battle you generally use the mouse plus both buttons, 4 direction arrows, and as many as 5 other keys) Also, you cannot invert the mouse Y-axis! Clearly it was made for consoles.
The game bears some uncanny resemblance to Little Big Adventure and its sequel (plot, characters). I'm too lazy to check but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the same folks worked on both games. It also reminded me a lot of Anachronox (minus the RPG elements).
Recommended to just about anyone.