So I'm hitting this up now, about 15 hours in (part way through chapter 2 I believe) and I'm honestly really on the fence about continuing on or not. 's not even me trying to rag on The Witcher 2 or not, it just might be my tastes kinda moving on from this type of RPG.
On the plus side, the game looks great and the story (both the main plot and the subquests) is dang unique and interesting. But I just find myself engaging is some really repetitive behavior that seems pretty disrespectful of my limited gaming time budget. For example, in chapter 2 so far I've played like four hours or so, yet in that time I've only cleared like two areas, only battled with like three actual monster types and I've had to run back and forth over the town and surrounding area for probably half the time. I get a message to go find something, I go grab it and have to bring it back to report in. Then I have to find someone else in town, talk to them, then they send me out to the same area to grab item B. So annoying, especially with the layout of Vergen.
And the combat seems like it has tons of potential, but really has not been engaging to me. As of now the skill trees have not really unlocked anything that changes my basic combat routine. I still have all the same signs and most of the same sword maneuvers, just with increased levels of effectiveness and small changes. 15 hours in and even at medium or high difficulty levels all that really seems required out of me from the combat is to keep my Quen up and roll out of danger when it falls, then I just hack around at the enemies when required. The bombs and potions subsystems have the potential to make this more interesting, but they both A. Involve somewhat big time sinks of finding items in the wild, finding or buying diagrams, finding the correct person to craft things for you and B. As of now nothing in the combat game has required me to make any use of those abilities. I'm not about to try to work at making the combat more dynamic if the game is both going to make it a fiddly process to do so and not require that ability in the game.
Honestly, typing all that out and I sound really negative. I really have enjoyed some parts, particularly when they are going for an interesting setpiece. But when my gaming time is sometimes just an hour or two a week I just can't stand all the annoying time sinks that I keep running into with this game.
