RPG with your hands and feet tied
Well, that depends on the kind of game style you enjoy. In my case I feel overly linear games where you are forced to do exactly what the game designers had in mind is not a good RPG. And, The Witcher is exactly that. Extremely linear.
First of all I was put off by the many limitations on how you can move your character. Find a small stone on the ground, and the hero who possess amazing acrobatic skills in the cinematic scenes can for his life not pass over it, but needs to walk all around any kind of tiny obstacle. There's no jumping, so god forbid having anyone jump down from the last two stairs. There's none of that. There's invisible walls everywhere, so you better move where you are told to.
The quests are also very linear. You have to do the quests in the exact way they are supposed to be done. For example, in the opening scene you are supposed to open a gate. I fought my way to the gate and tried all kinds of things to open it, but it just would not budge. Then it turned out there's some enemy left behind. I had to go all the way back, kill him, then return. And, like magic, the damn gate could be opened easily. Where's the logic in that?
And, what kind of four year old kid designed the user interface? It's overly cluttered with all kinds of useless icons, it's confusing and inefficient. It will give you a headache if you look at it for more than ten minutes. About the graphics, yes, its quite nice. However, the engine seems to really enjoy loading. And it seems for every 10 meters passed you have to load a new section of the map, so you have plenty of time to do something else while playing. The cutscenes are quite god for enhancing the atmosphere, but there are just too many of them. You are constantly interrupted to watch the characters play out their pretty boring dialogue.
The fighting system is awkward, so is the camera modes. It's frustrating as it is very hard to make your character do what you want while fighting, and the feedback from hitting an opponent are weird at best. Sorry, this game is just not fun to play. I have no clue why anyone would like it, unless they are the kind of players who enjoy to click a couple of buttons then see a lot of cinematics unfold. In my case, I would rather rent a b-movie, and hit the pause button sometimes. It's way more satisfying. I hope this is not where the genre is heading, please give us back the sandbox RPGs...