Quote: "I too felt that the witcher 1 began to drag a bit after the tutorial, I think they just gave far too much far too earlly to the player."
I couldn't disagree more... Interesting. I thought the beginning dragged on. It was linear, filled with boring cutscenes and quite badly written. Actually thought of just abandoning it.
I loved it once I was allowed to explore and get side-tracked on my own. The way it introducer the core mechanics and then let you learn them, master them even, as the game progressed. The two swords, the stances, etc. It felt fresh and genuine, compared to most RPGs.
So far, The Witcher 2 is similar. I just wanted the introductory sequence to be done with, so I could get to the meat of the game.
Now, when I'm a few hours into that, I just love it.
Granted, it's a different beast to the first one in many ways, but I think it gets everything right. The combat is all about your own planning, mixed with a large bit of skill. It's no longer a click fest -- every strike counts. This also means that you die quite a lot before you get the hang of it, however... But every piece of equipment and every rethought strategy makes a huge difference. Something RPGs usually fail, simply because they rely solely on statistics.
There is a lot of that here, too, but skill and strategy are always more important.
Simply put, it's a great game. It has managed to drag me in in much the same way that the older Ultimas did, 10+ years ago.
