Thank you for having went out of your way to enlighten me. I have to admit you made me check.
Also, I am baffled "opuses" is accepted according to wiki ; what an horrendous word !

Sounds like plural of amputee octopus.

and all I'm saying is a decade old in gaming history is NOT EVEN CLOSE TO OLD

let's say 40 years is video-game history

10 years in 40, is YOUNG, hell, I consider it RELATIVELY NEW wayyyy before I'd consider it OLD

I've started all 3 Witcher games but only ever finished Witcher 3 (prior to the expansions coming out).

I had started Witcher 1 twice prior to The Witcher 3 and while the combat was awkward and quirky I thought the game was cool. It's a matter of adapting to the awkward controls via repetition and patience, then assuming one can adapt, one can enjoy the game for what it has to offer. I've since restarted Witcher 1 another time and got further in it than previous times. All 3 attempts I got sidetracked by life or some other game rather than by abandonment. I think the next time I sit down to play I will restart it so all the story and characters are fresh in my mind, then complete it all the way through.

Witcher 2 I started once just to check out the engine and graphics etc. and played it for some number of hours just trying to wrap my head around the uniqueness of the game and game world. I found it enjoyable, but hadn't yet gotten used to it to feel completely comfortable. I look forward to taking another crack at it once I eventually complete the first game first.

Witcher 3 I started the day it came out, played it non-stop until 6 weeks later every single day until I completed it. It was amazing, easy to learn the controls and use them, etc. and IMHO by far the best game all around in the series.

Nonetheless even though I believe each game in the series is a substantial improvement over the previous games, each has their own good things to offer both as a game and as a part of the larger underlying story of the Witcher universe, which is all worth playing to anyone who wants to fully immerse in the world.

Big mistake, BIG mistake. The combat system itself has no depth whatsoever, what DOES have at least some depth are the signs and the alchemy system and only on hard difficulty is their use really required to get anywhere. The combat isn't polished either way and even performing the exact same maneuvers you may win a fight almost unscathed or get torn to pieces. However, you WILL see your odds improve massively if you take the time to utilise all these other mechanics and systems. I'm not defending the combat system but it is far more bearable if you perceive building combos by clicking at the right time as a base requirement, not the thing that you have to master (just like quick reflexes aren't the key to mastering RTS games but are required to make good strategies work).

I never played the game on easy myself but after my first approach I never even considered to play it on normal difficulty ever again, the only way I can get any joy out of the combat is by playing it on hard and depending on alchemy - well, and my character build (although you can't really go wrong there in TW1). Well, I really think the main thing to consider is the context the game was developed and released in. Keep in mind that the game was made during that transition period where RPGs were still evolving from pen and paper adaptations to action games with RPG elements. The Witcher 1 was one of the last titles from that generation of RPGs that tried really hard to look like action games despite being actually powered by stats and random numbers. Keep in mind that TW1 was released just before Mass Effect. Plus they decided to abandon various genre tropes, like loot-centric progression and reward loops, to support a more believable world and narrative and sadly that makes the game lacking in some areas as they clearly didn't have the time and/or resources to make up for the holes these decisions left behind.

Well, and then there's this ethnic thing. TW1 was developed for Polish gamers, a lot of that stuff that feels just weird and amateurish to western players in the first agme was actually perfectly spot on in the Polish version and in my opinion an amazing adaptation of the source material (much more faithful than the seuquels). I guess as a western player one should approach the first Witcher game like foreign cinema. It's weird but for cultural reasons that one should respect.

That said: I got The Witcher almost day 1 and only finished it in 2014. It really IS tiresome and botched in a number of ways...

You can pause it at any time and give orders to your party members...may not be perfect, but it's a lot more complex and satisfying than the Witcher's simplistic clickfest imo.
The Witcher 1 isn't a bad game, I quite enjoyed some parts of it (story and characters are quite nice...even though in the end it lost steam imo), but its combat isn't that great for an RPG.

The thing is, though, that The Witcher 1 was released at roughly the same time as many other games that have barely aged, both in terms of design and presentation so one shouldn't have to approach this game with these kinds of expectations. A much better excuse is the fact that Witcher 1 was in development for a very long time and it shows, with design choices that can be traced back to an even earlier generation of RPG.

I honestly think Witcher 1 aged very well. I don't see it as looking any worse then most games released back then. And I mean visuals, I don't see how it aged in terms of design at all. Unless by that you mean that it's not a streamlined console slasher like it's sequel.

Ok, with games that makes sense considering how much newer the medium is, and how rapidly they change, but movies? Books? I think it's my turn to SHOUT RANDOMLY in disbelief of what I'm reading :D

There are mods that change the combat and make skills for Silver/steel blades count as a single skill. they also rebalance the combat and make Alchemy far more useful. The mod is Rise of the White Wolf. Polishes the dated graphics a little and gives some weight to the combat.

The first Witcher game is a flawed gem, but like so many other flawed gems out there, there are elements raising it above most games. The atmosphere, the music, the gray morality. The long loading times and unreasonably large save files! Heh. It hurts to play at times—I've never wanted to punch my computer so badly as when I first faced The Beast—but sticks with you in a way most games don't.

It's one of those imperfect pieces of gaming magic that elitist gaming snobs like me tend to hold up as an example of all the little things gaming has left behind in the pursuit of mass-market accessibility. The sequels were designed to appeal to a wider audience, though, which actually makes them worse games (that's the elitist gaming snob speaking), but they have a better shot of inspiring that annoying "10/10 best game evar" zealotry in any given gamer. The second game in particular is a great middle ground between 1 and 3 and arguably has the best writing of all three. Hearts of Stone comes close, though.

The 2nd and 3rd witchers ruin it and make it "normal". By the time you reach the end of the first one you'll love it. :P

Its repetitive. Its essentially timing your attacks it almost reminds me of Paper Mario and Super Mario RPG where you time the hit to double the damage, but it gets repetitive especially in a real time combat.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/definitely ;)