Where do I start with this magnificent game? Let's start with the good stuff:

1. The story(ies): A winding path based upon your decisions that can take you to many a place, from a military camp, to a dwarven city and beyond. Virtually every quest has multiple decisions for you to make, each decision leading to a slightly, or larger different outcome. Characters are richly detailed in the story, from elves, to sorceresses, they all have their own personality and back story and their own parts to play.

2. The graphics - seriously, nough said.

3. The music is awesome, especially the menu screen theme and the first battle theme you come across during the prologue - really gets your blood pumping.

4. Combat: the basic concept at least; left and right mouse button, signs, it really gives W2 a very dynamic, and action packed combat system, that makes the game a lot of fun.

But, now we come to the bad:

1. Shani! What the hell happened to Shani! Why am I stuck with this bitch I don't trust half as far I can throw her!

2. Potions: they're pretty much pointless. Even with a mod to increase duration to W1 levels, virtually all potions are useless. And the few that are useful, you rarely use because you have to drink them before combat. Result; you have to be clairvoyant, or you won't use them. Even the useful ones, you rarely use.

3. Collision-detection; I've had multiple times that an enemy missed by a mile, and yet I still got hit.

4. The crafting system: the crafting system itself is okay, I like it, but the fact you're limited, very limited, to what you can hold, rather breaks the crafting system. Often you find yourself running around trying to find or buy critical crafting elements, only to craft something that is an element for the next crafting; why? Because you weren't clairvoyant and either sold off useful stuff, or didn't pick useful stuff up because you reached your weight limit. This is just plain annoying. Back in W1, you could put stuff in a trunk at the end - and thankfully this will be implemented with patch 1.3.

5. Enhancements don't work on silver swords!!!

6. Inventory and equipped items reset between prologue sections.

7. The final chapter is awefully short, and what happened to the Lavalette duchess? She went with the Nilfgaardians in the prologue. Did they kill her? I didn't see her anywhere in the Iorveth path in the final chapter, I suppose I could try Roche's path with her going with the Nilfgaardians.

8. The console GUI! Seriously! For the W3, make sure you have a PC optimized GUI. I don't care if you make a console GUI as well, just make sure you have your engine set up you can just plug in and plug out different GUIs.

9. Poker in Vergen is broken; Skalen Briggs IIRC, and the smith apprentice both give you things if you win other than coin, or at least they're supposed to. Skalen does give you the quest item in Roche's path, but the additional items... a princess's sword, some special armor, do not end up in your inventory, even though Skalen tells you he's handed to you the item. Similarly, choose to take the meteorite ore from the smith apprentice, it will not end up in your inventory.

10. This is a small nitpick: I saved Adda in W1, and all the characters indeed talk such that you saved her and she's now the wife of King Radovid the Stern of Redania. However then I came across a book dealing with Adda, and in it said Geralt killed Adda. I don't know whether another book wasn't written, the engine can't load different content for a book, or somehow the modifier flags don't reach the book, but this isn't exactly correct.

11. The aspect ratio; dealt with in patch 1.3.

12. The tutorial/the inability to pause the game without removing the game screen. The latter directly influences the truly abysmal tutorial. Since the action continues when a tip arrives on screen, you often can't read it, since you're in the middle of a battle trying to keep your ass intact, indeed, the tips may even make the combat difficult to see.. On top of that, the lack of contrasting colors with the game world in the tips, and small lettering and small tip screens, to keep at least some of battles you're fighting visible, makes them extremely difficult to read. The tutorial definitely needs to be done better for W3.

13. Stennis gets crowned king! Animated flashback! "Stennis the poisoner" - wait, what? Where was that established? From what I gathered it was Olcan who did it with a poisoned cup, made by Storak. So how come they talke about Stennis the prisoner. Suspect: Thorak quest did for some reasson flip from succeeded to failed, though. But still where was the evidence to show it was Stennis that supposedly did it? Also disdain for the peasants, said by Geralt as if that was bad, and less of him? They were going to linch him without a proper trial; you'd think disdain is very understandable and even right reaction to them; yet, I didn't hear or see any disdain coming from Stennis when he's talking. Also; I completely the quests to find the real killers before the sequence with Stennis in front of the crowd, and yet, I could not interject all that I learned in it; why not?

All in all, despite several problems, the game is still fantastic; and if I had to rate it I'd give it an 8.5; 9.5 if it didn't have so many small but significant bugs.

Stennis is the poisoner, I think It's quite a fact.

1. I miss Shani too. But she wouldn't fit in the story, and even if she did, she'd be redundant with Ves. And I wouldn't consider for an instant writing Ves out. If you think Triss is untrustworthy, it's probably your Geralt who has trust issues.

2. Potions are very useful. Just because they're not game-breakingly uber from the word go the way they are in TW1 does not make them useless. Work on your alchemy to make them more effective; that's what the skill trees are for.

9. No, it isn't broken. The princess's sword Skalen gives you is about what you'd expect from that pint-sized cheapskate. (Check your inventory for a Rusty Sword.) The cloak is a quest item.

11. Small monitors with low contrast do have problems with text. Especially if you're in a sharply letterboxed mode. I think the patch will help with this. It's much less of a problem on a good monitor.

12. The evidence that Stennis is the poisoner is clear enough, if you uncover enough of it.

You have two number nines :)

The other things Skalen gives you don't appear if you exit out between games, but if you win everything in one long successive series of games before quitting out, you should have the extra items in your inventory.

Amen to those. The thing is, the devs started with a not very canon TW1 when in fact, Shani was a pretty minor character in the books. I imagine the devs are trying to change course and try to be more faithful to the books and hence canned Shani, although the fact that nothing was mentioned about her in TW2 shows that it's quite poorly done. From what I've observed (see thread here), upgrading Catalysis skill makes potions much more useful in terms of enhancing your combat abilities. True, you need to be clairvoyant to know when to drink potions (given the short duration and that timer runs in meditation / cutscene / dialogues / finishing moves). There are 2 ways around this:
a) Keep potions up all the time. This is possible given that ingredients are weightless and can be picked up in great amount. There are some general purpose potions which are pretty useful regardless of your opponent type - swallow, tawny owl, rook, wolf, golden oriole, or maybe gadwall - those are useful even prior to upgrade.
b) Subsequent playthrough. Those who have time for subsequent playthroughs will probably know which part is difficult and which part is easy, and skip dialogues/cutscenes, pretty much negating the difficulty. Haha, I know. Fatal in some cases too. I made a thread here but seems like most forum users are not bothered by it. True, without knowing what monster parts do, it's hard to know whether to keep it or sell it, and some parts are just useless (not used in any diagrams). Although a lot of things can be purchased from merchants. For shame! This is a pretty big oversight. Seems to be mentioned in the changelog for 1.3, although it only mentions your sword. I agree, and what happened to little Boussy that poor bastard (pun intended)? Yup GUI is unnecessarily clunky and hard to navigate, in terms of look it is a major improvement over TW1, but in terms of functionality it is a few steps behind. Probably just some average equipment, haven't seen that many great items from mini-games tbh. And with the orgasm of top-tier gear in Chapter 3, I'm not too concerned. True, very unintuitive and at times dangerous tutorial. Why talk about W3 when they can still fix it in TW2? I'm quite puzzled too. Evidence indicates that Stennis is involved, or even ordered the poisoning of Saskia. He is unwilling to donate some blood to save Saskia, treats the Vergen residents like cattles, and talks to Geralt as if the latter is a dog. And yet... the cutscenes that shows him crowned says that he is a good king that understands his subject's plight?

Which still equals broken. You could argue Dandellion was redundant in both this game and the first, and he was still there. For a person who engaged him/herself to Shani in the first game, she'll never be redundant. Potions aren't useful, it's the reason I and hardly anyone bothers with the alchemy skilltree, and people created the duration mods. Once again: NOTHING APPEARS IN MY INVENTORY. No sword, awesome, crappy, or otherwise appears in my inventory. The same goes for armor, etc. etc. My monitor is a magnificent 16:10, 1680x1050, 10,000:1 19inch monitor. There's nothing small, or low contrast about it. Besides which; if a minimum level of monitor was required to play the game, it should be in the requirements. No such requirements were given, therefor the game should be made to be playable "on small monitors with low contrast" as well. I couldn't ask Stennis for his Royal Blood since he was already in prison. I went to get other ingredients first, so I never went to Stennis to ask him for blood before the commotion.

Slightly OT but I'm in the first chapter and would love to understand one thing: Is there a third way to finish the game? A neutral way I mean, that would be most faithful to the spirit of TW novels. In TW1 there was the option of remaining neutral, is there a neutral way in TW2?

To be fair, I'm pretty sure Triss is supposed to be pretty ambiguous. Not to spoil anything, but (for instance) the dialogue options when you're playing her when talking to Phillipa vs. Dethmold are at least consistent with the idea that she knows a lot more than she's letting on. And she's clearly not telling you everything in the first game. Not to say my Geralt didn't trust her in the end - but she's not exactly as straightforward as she seems at first glance. Sort of. Not to spoil the ending too much, but in either path (in Act 1 going into Act 2 you have to pick one of 2 sides) you have a choice between a political goal and a personal goal in the endgame. The personal goal is the closest thing TW2 has to a neutral path.

I wasn't saying it's not broken, simply offering a solution for that particular problem since it didn't sound like you knew that in your original post :)

The play through for neutral path are encountered all along the way till the end, either you follow Roche's path or Iorveths; both are just means to Geralt's objectives (find Letho or recovering his memories). But the choices made along the way, defines Geralt or the way one plays it. (like choosing to pursue personal goal in the end game as mentioned above)

Also one gets to roleplay the minor elements it entirely upto that climax, interaction with the game (that is what the game is all about; Roleplaying Geralt).

When Roche's ask about following Kingslayer, Geralt can say he doesn't bother..same to Dandelion when he says you gotta stop being a prick (or something) and choose a side.

Four more minor criticisms and suggestions I remember:

1. Invisible walls; I can forgive them if they have a game function, however, when, for example just south of Lobinden it's just forcing you to walk a little to the right alongside some bushes, then circle the bushes back to Lobinden it gets annoying. Especially since a human being can usually push through some bushes, especially when they have swords with them and can just cut the bushes down. As a Witcher, Geralt should be able to jump over the bushes as well. One should really work to remove all of them that aren't the end of game area.

2. Jumping; both in combat and elsewhere, I really miss the ability to jump. It always takes so much time getting to a ledge, waiting for the jump icon, and then clicking left; a button for jumping/somersaulting during combat would remove this entirely. It would else help with finding yourself surrounded in a combat situation right after a cut scene; rolling doesn't allow you to go through enemies, and when they've got you corner you're pretty much screwed. Jumping over enemies would solve this problem.

3. A small nitpick: Anyone notice that by game mechanics alone, you can't actually escape the mental asylum in the "In the Claws of Madness" quest with the guy you find inside? When you look around down there; the only way game mechanic wise you could leave that lower section, is up the ladder in the ghost's room. Of course, the weak floor won't break until you enter the hospital a second time; also, the ghost would kill the guy if you brought him there. I suppose the real Geralt could have climbed up a pillar and then jumped over to a ledge, then hold out a hand and help up the lost guy, but the game won't allow for it.

4. The cut scene finishers, I really wish The Witcher 3 goes back to Witcher 1 style finishers: in the middle of the gameplay, or hell, maybe in a patch 1.4. The cutscene finishers really take you out of the game, especially when the finishes happens in entirely different terrrain then where you were.