9/10, 10/10 I mean really??
Now I'll play devils advocate and tell you why I feel this way by comparing it to Skyrim. Why compare it? Well because they both came out only months from one another and both seem to be garnering similar praise and I for one absolutely love Skyrim.
First both games do in fact have alot of load times, which can sometimes distract from the gameplay and I also know if you install the game to your hd you can drastically decrease these load times but unfortunately for me I cannot as I don't have the space so I was left to deal.
The world of Skyrim is huge, you have almost endless land to explore and things to do. The world of The Witcher is not, you have three areas to explore and all three are rather small and limit the things you can do with a few monster killing quests, your run of the mill "help the person in distress" quest and "fetch me this" quest along with some dice poker, arm wrestling and/or fist fights, not nearly enough. The townspeople also repeat themselves more than any rpg I've ever previously played, it actually started to get pathetic. All of which is pretty shocking considering the game comes on two cds!? :s
The game of a mess of gliches, I've heard Skyrim is as well but lucky for me I didn't come across any. In the Witcher the game froze more than once, texture pop in occurs often, but these things are forgivable but what's not is when a group of enemies just suddenly appear in front of you out of nowhere and slaughter you. Hell sometimes they disappeared.
And speaking of enemies they will in fact slaughter you. They don't mess around I find myself running around in circles quite often casting spells because swordplay is absolutely terrible, I just can't believe in reviews I've read there is no mention of the truly awful combat system. I cannot tell you how many times I was focused on one enemy only to have another kill me from behind because I was unable to simply turn around, just awful!
Let's continue with the map. Skyrim's map? awesome, not once did I question where to go or how to get there. Witcher's map? useless, most of the time it doesn't point you in any direction and when it does you still can't find your way as the marker is in the wrong place or frequently moves.
And finally the boss fights are just too hard. Plain and simply even on the normal difficulty there are fights in this game that just aren't fun, they're an exercise in frustration. I love a challenge, I always play games on their hardest difficulties after a normal playthru but only when it's actually fun and this game just was not.
Well why did I even bother to play it you ask? Because it does tell a good story and with the exception of the previously mentioned pop in it is pretty to look at. I should mention you can play thru multiple times and choose different outcomes by saying different things or deciding who lives and dies but I just didn't care enough after one play thru to go back again.
I didn't play the PC version maybe it doesn't have these problems but I know when I read the review I was dying to play it. When they announced it was coming to XBOX I was excited, but after playing it I am incredibly disappointed :(