If this had been the original Witcher I would have skipped over the sequel. The combat was bad, the maturity (beyond the language) was stripped out and the whole potion system was a mess. The only improvements they made were better graphics, slightly better story and better abilities. Everything else was average fantasy stuff. W3 is not on my radar unless they clean these mistakes up.
As the second game in the series I was hoping the bugs would be fixed but they appear to have gotten worse. Overall the story and graphics are good but the gameplay and bugs really tank this game. The concept of having 2 linked characters is great until you realize your partner is a complete idiot and won't do anything until you explicitly tell them to. The fact that if either of you die the game is over makes this concept broken from the start. Add to that the fact that the game is not well balanced (starting hard, getting really easy and then back to hard) doesn't help matters. Toward the end of the game I suddenly couldn't hit anything even though I was way above the creatures I was attacking and had excellent equipment. Sometimes just moving positions would resolve the issue but (especially the final battle) I only succeeded by summoning creatures (who were weaker and yet didn't miss) and then boringly drinking healing periodically. If you are looking for a Diablo fix then this game isn't it. The first one was better.
This was a fun little game but had a lot of annoying features. Firstly many of the quests were bugged. Some quests you'd complete and they would never register as completed. Other quests wouldn't trigger properly at all. Secondly the game was way too long given the content. At the end of the game when you're finally ready to go tackle the main guy you take a teleporter and...you end up on yet another set of levels that you have to slog through. Seems like it was artificially extended with little actual reason. Thirdly the balancing was all over the place. You could take on a troll and win but shortly thereafter get swarmed by insects and die. Saving often is a must. By the end of the game though you were unstoppable. Overall though it was a fun little Diablo-clone. The story was pretty good as was the world. Never felt like resources were being reused.
