The Witcher 2 is a strong sequel to the original game, but I feel it has higher highs and lower lows. In terms of general presentation it is a huge leap forward and is very comparable to first party RPGs of the early 2010s. NPCs look much better and there is a very solid voice cast. Like the first game the writing is the strongest point, with compelling characters and, in my opinion, an even stronger narrative hook. Quests can be adventure-game like, requiring the player to investigate people/areas without always using a big glowing "go here, do this" marker.

One of the main downsides I see with this game is that it feels made for console, rather than for PC. The introduction of some radial UI and the constant use of doors to hide loading, making areas claustrophobic. Maps are, for better and worse, more intricate, mostly being a series of many corridors. Traversal feels like even more of a slog, you will have Geralt rollin' rollin' rollin' rollin' (what) everywhere.

Gameplay is a mixed-bag. The first game was fairly mindless, with simple rhythm-based combat. This game introduces, essentially, Dark Souls-style dodge roll combat (this did come out before the Souls games blew up, so I have no idea if that was actually an influence). Giving the player more control over Geralt does make it a much more engaging experience, but there are some fundamental flaws. One being that the dodge does not have I-frames, so you will get hit when rolling and must essentially use it to only create distance. The combat also bears some similarity to the Batman Arkham games freeflow style, in that Geralt selects attack animations randomly. So there are no combos or deliberate moves. These factors in combination with the Quen spell for blocking one enemy hit means the most straightforward method of fighting is spamming attack and dodging backwards to reapply Quen. Rinse and repeat. So now combat requires more of the player's attention, but still cannot support player expression or in-depth mastery.

That seemed like a lot of complaints, and they were, but as I stated in the beginning, the writing and narrative are very strong to make the tedium of combat worth it. If you enjoyed the first game then this one is a must play.

The Witcher 1 is a relatively modern RPG that, like Dragon Age: Origins, also shares many qualities with the CRPGs of the late 90s and early 2000s, particularly in its writing. The story, characters, and world are the real stars of the game and carry it quite heavily. Although the writing has a pretty large variance in quality, with some dialogue feeling out of place, with characters speaking like people the modern period at times (references to psychoanalysis and therapy in a clearly medieval world?), and some pretty terrible and stilted voices for npcs, although I hear the original version of the game had even worse voice acting. That being said most of the main quests and more elaborate side quests are interesting with believable characters and motivations. The detective/mystery quest in Vizima being the part that actually drew me in and convinced me to finish the game. Starting the game, outside of the main city, is pretty dull and is what caused me to drop the game years ago. Once inside the city, the game improves dramatically. Other than the starting areas, the only part of the game I greatly disliked was Chapter IV, where the game breaks its pacing with what feels like a filler arc. It interrupts the flow of the main quest to dump you into a new area that had little to no significance to the main plot threads (and also has an obscene amount of backtracking across big zones).

It has been said a million times before, but the combat in the Witcher is not very good. While functional and not broken, it is mindless, essentially being a rhythm game where you click at appropriate times and Geralt will do long animations of attacks. There is no impact or real feedback, and it quickly becomes an unconscious ritual where you tune out mentally for the majority of your time with the game. As long as you level up enough, you should not have trouble 99% of the time, because there is a lack of gear. You will be using your default equipment for most of the game, only getting a handful of new weapons or a better piece of armor via a couple quests in the latter half of the game. So money becomes kind of useless, only being useful for gambling, a few bribes, and paying the cheap toll to rest at inns. Alchemy was strangely not as important as the game implied it to be. Perhaps it was because I played on the medium/default difficulty, but I only found myself using the night vision and health potions. I used oils a handful of times and never touched the bombs. By doing the majority of the content in an area I was almost always overlevelled for combat encounters.

Admittedly I had been quite biased against the Witcher for years. When the Witcher 3 blew up in 2015, I saw it as a "reddit/HBO" game and wrote the series off. Now that I have beaten the first game I can say that it is quite a good and well-written RPG, I don't consider it to be flawless or even one of my favorites, but I think it is one of the stronger role-playing games of the 2000s era.