Sounds like you were just plain unlucky to me, Luvian. And I can see just fine, thank you.
Whilst I don't have a powerful machine and did experience some slow-down in heavily populated city areas, it wasn't enough to make the game unplayable.
I actually like the fact that the characters you can choose from aren't altogether stereotypical for the genre and tie in with the races of the gameworld.
Whilst punishment for death is negligable in the game, there are enough big encounters scattered around the world (dragons, giant spiders) to make combat feel very epic at times.
Might get stuck into Underworld next week - has anyone finished it here?