I've grabbed this version of The Witcher in preperation for the release of the sequel and had high expectations in that it would differ from most more American-influenced RPGs and The Witcher realy did provide a wonderful, mystical tale. It is more mature in that characters are more twisted, embedded into a socio-political context, etc. There's different groups in the game, like elven/dwarf rebels, or terrorists, depending on what stance you take on them. There's the "Order", crusaders fighting for the protection of the human race or downright fascists, that sort of stuff. I do not advise newcomers to the genre or really young gamers to pick this as one of their first games, not for the content, which is I think actually a very ripe but also accesible work, I do however think that the way you advance through quests and figure out how to solve riddles and whatnot is something that requires that you engage with the NPCs and the game's fantasy world. I have not given 5 out of five stars as I felt it was rather hard to fight your way through to the last two chapters out of 7 of the game. This of course very much depends on how you play the game yourself. I did however end up cheating my way through the final levels albeit having set the difficulty to easy.
