I just finished it after 40 hours. The beginning is rough as it has always been since Gothic 1. You're more busy with figuring things out, getting to know the world, characters, which areas are basically off limits due to your character's level and weakness. You try to establish yourself and the character within the game world. Only after chapter 2 the plot starts to come together and you're involvment gets substantial. And boy, the plot is the best PB have come up with since Gothic 1. Not saying it's the same, although there are many similarities. It evens holds up against many other modern and AAA RPGs. I don't want to spoil anything, but the antagonist isn't that one-sided as it seems at the beginning, and they have a clear motive apart from being the typical predictable, sinister entity that wants to destory the world.
It took me about 25 hours to reach chapter 2, when it gets more interesting, plot-wise. Pace takes up since you're then strong enough to face many, if not any, difficulties. You don't have to carefully pick your quests anymore and just do them as you please. Behind that curtain of jankyness and unrefined gameplay and combat, quests are fun, offer some surprising consequences and the storyline compensates for the flaws, which are mostly to be found in the combat mechanics and dialogs, even for this small developer team.
Although my native language is German and I love the voice-over in Gothic 1–3, Arcania and Risen 1, it got worse with NPCs since Risen 2. I guess it's due to the amount of NPCs and the increasing world that they rely on more voice actors. Risen 3 and Elex were the first PB games I played almost entirely in English, and only for the first five hours in German. English translation was inaccurate on many occasions, but sometimes better though.