Nice review of The Witcher; I've never been too interested in it due to the criticism surrounding it stating that it plays too much like an MMORPG (senseless grinding), but the other aspects of it sound mildly interesting. I'm still not sure about a game that has pornography trading cards, though.

@Talonfire: I guess witcher's work (slaying monsters) could be considered senseless grinding, but the game usually breaks things up rather well. There are some areas where almost all encounters are of the hostile variety so you need to fight for extended periods of time, but they are small in number compared to other areas. Personally, I never encountered areas as tedious as NWN2 orc caves for example. Not even the final area, which was quite combat heavy, is that grindtastic.

"I'm still not sure about a game that has pornography trading cards, though." - The whole sex card thing is given far more attention than it deserves. Suffice to say that you will not get them (except one if I remember right) if you don't go looking for them.

@Talonfire; The game does not play like an MMORPG, I've been playing WoW and Aion alongside it, and trust me The Witcher is anything but 'senseless grinding' compared to these games. Actually I'm quitting mmo's because of the timesink and mindlessness of the gameplay, The Witcher is a welcome relief to these grindfests.

Nice review, very informative. I've been playing this game for a couple hours and I felt it was missing something, I agree with what you said about lacking character customization and the click an enemy till it dies combat style. While the story is great and having consequences for your actions is something I love in a game, I feel the game deserves the rating you gave it.

@TJamesA: Thanks for reading and commenting. Much appreciated!

@fastpunk: Wow, I completely missed this blog from you but better late than never, right? TW has been on hold for the past month or so and I'm not sure if I want to continue with it. I liked your review and the game isn't bad but it does suffer here and there. You can go explore as you like but you may kill creatures that are needed for a quest you haven't gotten yet, and they will not respawn. Combat can get a little boring with it's constant clicking at the right time and often you must have a specific spell to defeat a boss like the fire spell against the giant plants in chp 2. The alchemy is nice but often you need 3 ingredients for a potion and you have a lot of 1 and 2 but the 3. is nowhere to be found so you can't make a potion. I do like the dark setting and the mature tone. I also like that your actions have real consequences but often you are not given enough information to make a valid decision and you end up making it based on gut-feelings. But all in all it is a good game and I probably should force myself to play it.

Good luck with TR. I guess I will try TR Ann. at some later point to see if maybe I will enjoy it a little more than the first time now that I know it's a puzzle game and not so much an action game.

Take care, matey!

@jepsen: Well, if it didn't get you hooked thus far I doubt it will later, even though the story gets better and better as you go. Shouldn't force it just for the sake of completion.

I do have two small observations though:

1. "The alchemy is nice but often you need 3 ingredients for a potion and you have a lot of 1 and 2 but the 3. is nowhere to be found so you can't make a potion." - Eh, alchemy ingredients are overly abundant, as long as you read books and know which is which. Nothing inherently wrong with that. I love the fact that it makes you look for information in order to get what you want. The biggest problem I've had was finding high-quality potion bases for some of the more powerful concoctions.

2. "I also like that your actions have real consequences but often you are not given enough information to make a valid decision and you end up making it based on gut-feelings." - Yeah, sometimes they keep things a bit too ambiguous. I'd actually attribute part of the blame to the not so stellar english translation. But other times it works out, it's not unrealistic to be forced to make decisions right then and there. The game actually caught me off guard a few times in this regard.

The game has a solid foundation, the setting is very good and some of the gameplay concepts are simply great. But the sequel needs to improve on combat and do a better job with translations. Hope they do it right next time.

Peace!