djenkins: I agree with the OP. Combat is too difficult right off the start, TW1 eased you into it a little. TW2 has no tutorial, it just throws 5 enemies at you from the very start. It's more click spam like diablo than TW1 where it was more tactical, the stances were much more artful and also a lot less player skill oriented and a lot more Geralt's skills oriented. Worse it's boring. Run away, run away, run away, turn around, use sign, whack whack, run away, run away, run away......
That last battle in the temple courtyard is just brutal. You have no room to cast signs or place traps and there's 7(?) enemies. Took me about 20 tries, too many tries it was a lot more frustrating than rewarding.
I think a lot of the problem is the tight third-person camera, restoring TW1's overhead tactical camera would be a major improvement. I'm constantly getting stuck on walls and everything feels so much more frenetic ( and not in a good way ) because I have so much less situational awareness.
The QTEs suck. Plain and simple. Who on Earth has ever liked QTEs? Really, click the left mouse button as fast as you can to crank the ballista? That's fun? That's immersive?
I also dislike the camera change for a finishing move, TW1 you retained your camera control, you just lot control of the character while he did his thing. TW2 feels like they were so excited to show you their finishing moves they made them their own little mini-movies, a separate portion of the game not directly related to the combat.
The UI is so poor and console oriented it's difficult to use signs or items effectively. Did any of the devs play using a keyboard & mouse? I think they were so excited to release this on consoles they must have only played with joysticks. Keys 3 is next sign and 4 is next item, no previous cycling, so I have to go all the way around to get to the previous sign? No mouse wheels support at all?!?! I'd love a hotkey bar on the bottom of the screen just so I could remember what keys maps to what signs & items. Oh, I'm sure I'll remember the keys for all the signs eventually but they're not even remotely intuitive. Using the 5-9 keys for a sign casts it immediately instead of selecting it, boy does that reek of joystick carryover. No using an item key directly from a pocket without cycling through it to select it first.
I sure hope the non-combat portion of the game lives up to the hype because right now, I'm pretty disappointed.