This game, taken as a whole, almost certainly doesn't merit 5 stars; such is the strength of the writing/story that I feel unable to give it any less. The story is epic, heartfelt and beautifully rendered: the quality of writing is sometimes staggering for a mere video game. It plays out like a Shakepearian play, with some lines that would not be out of place in one of the bard's sonnets. I'd break my praise down even further to simply the scenes involving Christof (the protagonist) and his forbidden love Anezka. The rest of the story is good enough and rarely dips to the level of being simply decent (although it does have a few of those moments). There are some memorable characters and some cookie cutter ones, but the price of admission is worth it simply for Christof and Anezka. I don't want to give any spoilers away: I can only implore anyone with an interest in literature to give this title a fair hearing.
Now onto the standard scoring.
Graphics: This is an old game but the graphics are suprisingly good using a high resolution on a modern system. 5/5 taking into consideration the age of the game.
Mechanics: There is a solid RPG under the hood with a nice variety of skills and stats to level. I didn't get a chance to fully explore them for reasons to come. 4/5
Camera: Was far too close to the action for my liking and clunky to control. A further zoomed out isometric view would have been wonderful, but poor design decisions make this impossible. 2/5
UI: Point and click interface with a party system. The point and click just didn't work with the tight camera. It was hard to control and as such I played the latter half of the game with god mode enabled in the console. This led to me neglecting the RPG side of things as levels simply became a tedious chore for getting to the next delicious cutscene. 2/5
Voice acting: Was pretty solid throughout - Christof and Anezka were worthy of any stage. 4.5/5
Sound: Considering the age again, they hold the test of time well. 4/5
Music: Subtle, but then I usually play with music in the background. Nice pacing to match gameplay but nothing particularly startling. As vampire enthusiasts are usually involved in goth/industrial scenes, I think that's where they were shooting for with the music. It does its job, 3/5
Overall, a decent game worthy of of a mid-range mark of 3/5. The at times frustrating gameplay really drags this down, along with some poor control design. Regardless, it's getting a 5/5 from me - that's how much I enjoyed some of the writing.