Graphics are beautiful and sound design is nice. Story is sometimes difficult to understand but it is good. This game has some things that are better done here than in the Witcher 1 but, UI is worse. I loved Bestiary in W1 because it was simple in design and understandable and in one place. In here there are two places you need to look if you want to learn all about monsters. Weaknesses are not underlined and I did not like it, it was not simple to catch. Inventory system interface was too big and sometimes confusing and you need to scroll a lot to find what you need to find. But in W1 done simple and you had everything in one place and did not need to scroll anything. Combat is different from W1, not sure it is better or worse. Fight smart, roll a lot or you will die. I am not joking. That is something that you need to do, especially in first few hours if you play on normal difficulty. I started on normal difficulty but had to switch to easy on some occasions. I don't know what happened but sometimes normal feels like hard, very hard. Opponents feel like sponges sometimes. You hit them and do minimal damage and when they hit you back it hurts like hell. For example in first fight in La Vallete castle and in fight against Endrega queen. There is a lot more politics and can became boring from time to time but characters feel alive and interesting. These are things that bothered me during my playthrough but were fixed in W3. I want to give this game 4/5 but cant because I did not have fun like in W1.
It may seem like a boring game in the beginning because of repetitive combat mechanics and outdated graphics and movement system but when you get pass the first hour or two and get accustomed to it then fun really begins. Surely it is not a game for everyone because it's not action game but an RPG or has a lot rpg elements. It is a game for people with patience and people that will appreciate good story and story in this game is the best element of it. I remember playing it for hours just because I wanted to see what will happen next and before you know it day turned into night. It is that good. There are moments where you need to make a decision and that decision will have consequences down the road. Pacing is good and fluid. I didn't feel that there were moments where story felt rushed. If you like to read then you will be satisfied because there are a lot of books and scrolls to read and it will be really useful down the road. For every monster there is a book and you will learn about its strengths and weaknesses which will be really useful in combat. Fighting becomes better as you level up and unlock new moves and there are 3 styles. It is enough. Sound design is good, graphics are outdated but there are some mods that will help to make it look sharper and it will look better. It's a 2007. game so dont have unrealistic expectations. It needs to be looked at from that period of time and there is no point to compare it with today's standards.
