And yet at no point is this fact noted in the journal, and any mention made of him by the other Witchers in the Prologue is apparently easily missed; even then, the wiki only states that they saw the Hunt. None of this explains who the hell this King is or what role he plays in the universe; furthermore, it makes the effects of the amnesia on the game even dumber once you realize that Geralt needs to waste a talent in order to know how to pick herbs off of plants that he already can identify thanks to reading a book, that Geralt cannot remember details about any of the monsters encountered in the game, that he cannot remember basic historical data without reading a book, but apparently he has more knowledge of a vaguely defined entity that I am left scratching my head over.

I'm sorry, but this is bad storytelling. I had been setting time aside to try to work through this game, but it looks like I'll be going back to replaying Planescape Torment instead; if I'm going to invest a lot of time in a game, might as well be one that I actually enjoy.

I bought the game because it was on sale and it seemed up my alley; I really like RPGs, and the fact that it promised good value for my money certainly didn't help either. Playing the demo got me excited about playing the game, but the warts in the game didn't start showing until I had bought the game and invested several hours into it. I don't like to give up on videogames any more than I do with films or books (except for Dracula the Undead, which I finished due to the pleasure I got from riffing it on Goodreads), and for a while I felt a sort of weird duty to give it more chances to recover. Unfortunately, there are only so many second chances I can give in this regard, and The Witcher seems to have hit my limit.

Dude, don't stress about it :) Just go play TW2 and you'll be happier.

See my post about how I can't play it since my computer doesn't meet the specs.

Furthermore, given the problems I have encountered in this game, I am that much more reluctant to buy a much more expensive sequel; granted, I understand that the combat and research systems have been altered drastically, but I have no way of knowing whether or not the various other things that bothered me in the Witcher were addressed in the Witcher 2 (needlessly complex map and quest system, problematic storytelling, etc.). I suppose that I could try to look to reviews in an attempt to determine this, but I have yet to run across a perfectly objective review of the game, with people either praising so relentlessly that one would be forgiven for thinking that they were written by CDPR employees who were docked pay for every time they actually attempted to point out a flaw in the game's design, or pouring vitriol all over it as if it had murdered their family without any kind of analysis as to what about the game they didn't like; that's not to say that objective reviews for the Witcher 2 aren't out there, but if they are, then they are doing a good job of hiding themselves. I could look at a let's play, but I have found them to be an incredibly poor method (at least for me) of predicting whether or not I will enjoy a game.

There's actually a very simple method of doing this: Read a few professional reviews, a few user reviews, find parallels between them, and think about whether issues they agree on are worth the positives they agree on.

Edit: Or just ... you know ... Pirate the bloody thing and try it out.

The reviews I relied upon were professional and user written. Unfortunately, it seems that their standards differ wildly from mine, at least with regards to this game.

As to piracy... Let's set aside that pirating would be pointless as, once again, my computer does not meet the specs. Pirating something, even for the purpose of "sampling", generally has been held by the courts to constitute infringement; given that it's getting much easier to track infringement these days and the hefty sum of a fine for each instance of infringement, I think it an incredibly poor idea.

If the Witcher's inventory/journal/map etc. bothers you that much then there's no way you'll be able to play the Witcher 2 anyway, at least not without blood shooting out your eyes. The first game is a study in elegance by comparison.

Judging by how livid the things you're describing are making you I don't think you'll get any enjoyment by continuing to play the game.