Well, after reading the rest of this website I’m sorry for my rude comments.
I still believe that people reviewing this game are very objective, saying that “there’s no health bar” where it is, “the jurnal is convoluted” when I find it simple to use (I mean how else would you deal with all the info?) and that “the game doesn’t make the combat controls obvious (when it does, in the tutorial).
It’s not because I like the game, but because they show me the sun and say that “it is the moon”.Still don’t get it.
Well, the author of this site is a good writer, better than most blogs that I have read and his posts are long enough to give me something to do.
And some ideas of his, like those about Me are logical and well presented.

@ Zel:

I really think we need to send developers a message that we don’t mind if our famous hero character starts at lv 1.

@ JKjoker:

Thanks!

@ agamer:

Combat seems counter-intuitive. How about that? Different from what I expected.

How did the combat system make you confused?
The tutorial tells you that you need to wait for the cursor to change in order to click again, and the witcher doesn’t stand there if you click later or earlier, it resets the combo and starts it again.
Learn how to write a review, you noob, it’s not the game’s fault that it’s your first time playing a video game.

im pretty sure this was one of the officially recommended mods, use at your own risk

http://www.moddb.com/mods/flashs-the-witcher-mod

the cdprojekt site (its been highjacked by the witcher 2 hype right now tho) had a few “favorite mods” posted a few months ago including some “official” ones

google revealed a few mod databases like witchervault.ign.com

sorry i cant recommend any of them, i finished the game a long time before they were available so i never used them

As stated, make sure you are playing the enhanced edition, you can download a huge patch for free if you don’t have it. It fixes many issues, the biggest one being the long loading screens between areas. It is also supposed to fix the voice acting but I hardly felt any difference, it seems they only improved minor characters and left the major characters unchanged. It’s not the worst I’ve heard, but it’s obviously not comparable to Bioware’s famous actor cast.

I didn’t really like Geralt being amnesiac, if only there to justify the lvl1 status, but the usual cliché feels different because throughout the course of the game, you’ll meet many people who do in fact know or have heard of you. The game starts out slow but picks up later, and you’ll get to see the consequences of your early choices.

Combat is boring unless you play on the higher difficulties. In normal mode, you can just attack enemies and defeat them with ease, even with the wrong blade or wrong stance, and the only potion you’ll ever need is ‘Swallow’. On the hardest, you have to choose the right oil, sharpen your blades, use the right weapon, choose the correct stance, change targets mid-fight, and generally pay more attention to the alchemy component of the game and its many potions with various effects.

I don’t see how this game’s alchemy discourages experimentation, you can try and mix elements as you like by dragging the ingredients in the substance slots, no need for recipes. Unlike Oblivion you don’t see the immediate result but have to drink it first, which is good. I would refrain from letting the game fill ingredient slots, it often chooses expensive components with rarer substances and doesn’t try to match the secondary properties (nigredo, albedo and rubedo) to make stronger potions.

@ JKjoker:

I think I have the enhanced version or whatever. Voice acting is still horrible. IMHO Geralt is the worst offender – possibly because you hear his voice all the time, while the NPC’s come and go.

This is especially evident since I just played Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 side by side – two games in with voice acting was superb by comparison.

Any links to the mentioned mods? It would be interesting to check them out.

the story picks up once you are inside the city, irc its something like ACT2>ACT3>ACT4>ACT0>ACT1>ACT5 (its been a while tho and your millage might vary i didnt like the ending act, others did), the choices change little things but they add up, and the game is LOOOOOONG

you get more than fetch quests/kill X after act1 (but youll still get a lot of them), and there is more room for exploration

there are a few parts near the middle of the game you dont have a clear objective and you are forced to wander around talking to everyone jrpg style (probably the worst part i remember from the game, it hurt more at the time when the loading times were unbearable)

Combat does kind of suck and in the swamp area youll visit often in act2 and 3 enemies respawn even tho you can kill them just by looking at them after leveling up a bit, using the hardest difficulty helps a bit but it gets old way too fast for a game as long as this one (there are mods that make combat more interesting but i didnt have them back on the day), try fighting many enemies at a time and using the double click on ground dodge move to spice things up

well im a bit mean to the game but i did enjoy it even tho some parts dragged a bit, i’d say its a great game for a dry gaming season (like right now or around xmas last year), i was not able to replay it farther than act2 tho, i got burnt out by the fetch quests but different choices did change things, different important npcs, some enemies were different, etc, much better than Bioware’s “illusion of choice” in DA and ME1&2 where changes very contained imho

about the Voice overs, i played it in the original English release (without any patch, the loading times were MURDER, ugh) both the translation and the voice overs sucked, in some parts the same character even changes voice actors making me think he was possessed or something, they say in the new “enhanced” version all the voice overs and the translation were redone but i havent played it

also watch out, the savegames add up pretty fast and might end up filling up your hd causing the game to crash (one of the patches might have fixed it)