To all those who played or are playing Witcher 1 and Witcher 2: I want to make a small survey comparing these games.

Could you please post what you think of the following aspects for both games:

1. Core gameplay (attraction of story, character immersion, balance of game concepts, diversion of actions, strategic + tactic content, boring vs. interesting fights/talks)
2. Graphics and sound (quality of animations and textures, diversions of characters, impressiveness of graphics and sound)
3. Usability (interface design, ease of inventory, switching between different modi, getting information on quests, display of stats, control of movement/fighting/perform magic of player character)

on a scale of 5 possible grades in the form of:
XXX in TW2 is considerably better (than in TW1)
XXX in TW2 is slightly better
XXX in TW2 and TW1 is about equal
XXX in TW2 is slightly worse
XXX in TW2 is considerably worse

Thank you!

The idea came to me when thinking that sequels are often not better than the original and derivative works often failt to reproduce or excel their predecessors. I red some reviews but they rarely compare both versions of the Witcher, so I wanted to hear your opinion about this. :)

http://www.videogameszone.de/The-Witcher-2-PS3-234580/Bilder/The-Witcher-2-im-Grafikvergleich-mit-dem-ersten-Rollenspielteil-Ist-die-Optik-wirklich-so-toll-Bilder-Update-743502/galerie/1275366/
http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?/topic/31726-the-witcher-vs-the-witcher-2-graphics-comparison/
http://www.1up.com/reviews/witcher-2-review

Core gameplay in TW2 is slightly better
Graphics and sound in TW2 are considerably better
Usability is considerably worse in TW2

TW1 is longer with more content, but it sometimes feels a bit stretched out. TW2 has the better quests and the way the story is presented is fantastic. Also you have the 2 very different paths in TW2 (Iorveth and Roche) which made me replay the game right after finishing it. Still haven't made a second run through TW1 yet.
I'm still baffled how they could make the interface so much worse in TW2 than TW1, considering it is from the same developers. And there are (unpaid) modders who manage to do a better job than CDPR and fix most of the annoying UI problems in a matter of days, even though CDPR hasn't released any modding tools yet. They should just add this mod in the next official patch:
http://www.witchernexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=87

Is replayability of Witcher 2 really that high? Who else has replayed Witcher 2?

I sometimes start RPGs a second time but never finished one a second time.

To understand the motivations and story much better, it's pretty much mandatory to play TW2 at least twice :)

I have played it through 4 times now...

Core gameplay in TW2 is considerably better
Graphics and sound in TW2 are considerably better
Usability is considerably worse in TW2

I played W1 straight through and REALLY enjoyed it. Lost interest in W2 early in the game, QTE's, button prompts and dumbed down interface greatly changed the feel of the game. I doubt I will finish it as it just doesn't seem to hold my interest the way W1 did.

Great graphics though.