I rented it. If you like Baldur's Gate DA or Champions of Norrath, there's nothing really to quibble with the gameplay. The textures are nice, sound is good. There is a fairly cool magic / monster summoning system (they attribute it to your musical abilities, i.e. Bard powers) were you can summon creatures and then direct them. The actual gameplay is a wheel with various button inputs that increase in complexity with the type of summon. This is a lot like the button-input ring on Samba di Amigo or more specifically like making patterns on the Ratchet & Clank weapon selector.
I think its definitely worth renting. Much of the dialog is funny, and depending on your love of self-referential game trivia type jokes it's quite clever. The world seemed large and the story progression is well done.
Disclosure: I played for about 4 hours in total. If you like Cary Elwes you're going to love the Bard, but if you dislike him then that will be a deal breaker.
