By far the biggest disappointment has been the use of quick-time events during some combat scenes (generally fistfights rather than the regular armed combat). I hate QTEs, I think they're lazy and cheap and ruin any sense of immersion, and I'm not about to give TW2 a pass on them simply because I'm a Witcher fan. I don't know if this game has a similar boxing mini-game to the first Witcher, but if it does and they use the QTE mechanism, I'll be very disappointed. I know QTEs let the designers chain mocap or whatever into a more fluid and cinematic visual experience, but it is absolutely at the expense of gameplay. You definitely lose marks for it, CD Projekt.
Anyway I've only just reached Chapter 1, which is where the "proper" games appears to begin, after the extended prologue/tutorial section. The new combat system took a bit of getting used to; it's not really any better or worse than the old "click to chain" system but it took a while to learn the rhythm of it. Although at worst it just turns into a parry/strike/parry/strike loop. Once you get the hang of it (and the fact that you now have to meditate to drink potions) it feels fairly fluid and natural.
As I'm only just getting to the more open portion of the game there are a lot of aspects I have yet to encounter, like crafting, quests etc. It's definitely a pretty game though, and has the same authentic feel as the original. I'm still not sold on the Geralt redesign, he's too much of a lantern-jawed jock now, but at least it's the same voice actor as before.
Anyway, assuming I can get my machine to behave itself, and if I can tear myself away from a recent obsession with SWAT 4, I'm looking forward to getting stuck further in, QTEs aside.
