DoD: I'd really have to disagree with you about whether it's fair to judge a game on how it plays early on. ALL RPGs I've played have a learning curve, and this one is no different. There's a part at the beginning when you're frustrated because you can't do a lot of the stuff you want to do. And you can't even remotely begin to evaluate balance and skill development until later on.
I'd just like to remind everybody that DD also starts with a huge dungeon crawl. Remember the Aleroth catacombs? Totally unrepresentative of the rest of the game. I liked it, personally, but in that respect BD doesn't really differ from DD.
