Completed on normal difficulty. Attractive graphic, immersive storyline, lots of gameplay, and a very interesting character. Things that were not so great: * The quest structure can be confusing. Example (minor spoiler): even if you know that the private investigator is an impostor, you still need to agree to kill the gangster boss for him, or the quest cannot be resolved (you do not actually have to kill the gangster). I was stuck on this a really long time since I thought commiting to the kill would limit my options later. * The episode where you fight Dagon is completely unrelated to the rest of the game and makes no sense at all. The fight is also surprisingly easy given that your "monster knowledge" about Dagon tells you that he is an invincible demigod. * The battles in the final quest are too easy. After fighting the giant Zeugl in the sewers, which is just a "filler monster" with no relation to the story, I found none of the encounters challenging. Be warned that the sequel to this game uses a totally different engine and whether you like Witcher II or not seems to be completely unrelated to whether you like Witcher I. Personally, I gave up on Witcher II because of the extremely clunky controls.
... and I never got to the good stuff. In theory, this is a rich game with lots of classes and skills and spells and whatnot. In practice, at least while you are learning to play well, you will go through the same starter dungeons and quests again and again. If there was more variety in the early game, I would not mind having to start over so often. As it is, I gave up on it as too boring. I know this is heresy for a roguelike, but I really wished for the option to reload an earlier savegame, just to avoid having to do the quest for little girl's puppy again.
Review after one playthrough in "classic" mode. The good * Turn-based combat with lots of options. * You can save at any time, even during combat. * No random encounters, each battle is carefully staged. * Battles are hard and force you to be creative with positioning, spells, and environmental effects. * You can do cool things with environmental effects. * Compelling storyline. * Lots of quests and large maps to explore. * Teleportation as part of the story makes it easy to get around. * Nice graphics + sound. The bad * Controls can be a bit wonky. The game does not accept new input until the previous effect/attack is completed. Also, the boundary for selecting an opponent moves with the animation. If you time your mouse-click wrong, you may accidentally click next to an opponent and thus move your archer into melee instead of firing. * There were several cases where I ran into a TPK with no warning, had to reload and then let the party do apparently senseless things to prepare for what would come (deathtraps or scripted moves in a boss fight). For me, that breaks immersion with the game - I like getting an in-game warning which allows me to avoid the TPK if I am clever enough. * Battles are hard and many take multiple attempts. This can be frustrating and there is little feeling of progress in character ability. Example: I was shocked by the difficulty of the first undead encounter outside Cyseal, which was my first "real" battle after the tutorial. The skeleton archers can easily wipe out the party with special arrows if you are not careful. Also, I would not have managed the boss fights in the final quest without the ability to save every combat turn. * Missile combat, especially using special arrows, dominates the early game too much. * The character system is over-elaborate with skills that do little but allow you to learn moves from books. * Some effects are overdone, e.g., the lightshow you get for the basic "first aid" ability.
I really liked Witcher 1. Unfortunately, the game engine for the sequel has been completely redone in a way that made me give up on trying to finish. The first major issue is that the game controls are very awkward (keyboard + mouse). It started with the game not accepting keyboard input - although I had ticked the box in the setup menu. The solution I found for switching from game controller to keyboard was to open the dialogue for remapping keys, making some changes, and saving the result. Next, Geralt's movements using the mouse were so jerky I felt seasick - setting the mouse sensitivity to the lowest level and disabling some graphics options made it barely tolerable. The second major issue is the perspective. I played Witcher 1 in isometric view which gives a nice overview in battle. Witcher 2 does not have this option. Instead, the camera follows Geralt around from behind. So most of the time you cannot see what is directly in front of you because Geralt's head is in the way. The only thing that is even worse is if you back up against a wall and the camera suddenly moves up to look down on Geralt. In a fight, this can be lethal when you lose track of your enemies and need precious seconds ro readjust the view. I can accept isometric perspective or first person but not this. The jerky movement and random camera mean that combat is unnecessarily hard. You spend time struggling with the controls instead of actually interacting with the game and making tactical decisions. I nearly gave up during the tutorial because of this, but the game itself is slightly more forgiving. Other reviews also complain about the poor inventory management and how you now need to rest to use alchemy. While I also found Witcher 1 better in this regard, they are not game-breaking issues for me. The alchemy thing is even arguably closer to how Geralt uses potions in the novels. I am still giving this game 2 stars for having an interesting story (as far as I got) and good graphics.
