In certain case, such as for swamps, not only is it hard to tell that's what you're wading through, but it is downright ugly to boot. Of course, with all the combat you don't often have time to stop and notice the scenery, and in a game like this perhaps some problems in this areas should be forgiven. After all, it's difficult to imagine that with a game world this large all of the textures could look good or even that there could be enough textures to model everything well without an install size of a couple GBs and many more than two CD-ROMs. Still, I couldn't help but be distracted by the ugly scenery on occasion. There are also problems with the 3D engine itself.
Scenery tends to suddenly become visible in odd ways.
Mountains pop out of nowhere in front of you for example. Clearly there is some limitation on what is visible based on the parties' distance. This works well in the dungeons, where the site distance is short, but outside it often detracts. On the sound front, effects are unremarkable. They sound all right, but aren't anything to get excited about.