Ok, I'm sold. :)

JDR.. my experience with the different difficulty settings made the difference between liking the combat and hating it.
On easier settings I found myself completely focused on the flaming sword icon in order to know when to strike next. Consequently I missed all the "prettyness" of the fight itself and it felt too mechanical. On hard you have no visual cues other than Geralt's sword creating sort of a "flash trail" on his last swing, and a "swooshing" sound. This makes you actually watch the combat (as in a real-time game that you have to time moves e.g. Gothic), and therefore is more engaging. Another secret to playing more Gothic-like is by fighting in Third person instead of isometric. Instead of clicking to move, you have full real time control a la WASD. After getting the hang of it I found myself dodging blows, flipping over opponents and doing all kinds of Ninja-like junk and having a blast doing it. If you really want a challenge then learn to select signs and fighting styles on the fly (via hotkeys as opposed to using the active pause mode). Trust me, if you are doing all those things at once and on hard difficulty, combat is very entertaining. :)

Maybe, but not all that much. The monsters do, however, attack more quickly, hit harder, and defend better. IOW, you need to pick the right style and have better timing to beat them. Alchemy becomes a necessity rather than an optional extra -- you will be using Swallow, Crinfrid oil, Necrophage oil, and Spectre oil a lot. The "flaming sword" icon is gone, too.

The upshot is that you can't beat any but the weakest monsters by simple click-spamming; you have to pick your technique, use buffs intelligently, and use your signs intelligently to get there. But if you do, it's not all that hard.

Put another way, I got the impression that "Hard" was the way the game was designed to be played, but then someone chickened out and made "Easy" the new "Normal" and added a "Really Easy" mode below that.

Yes. Also voiceovers.

Edit: What Jabberwocky said. There's a surprising amount of depth to the combat -- double-tapping to flip over enemies, switching from group style to strong style to finish them off, using Aard to stun, then followed by a finishing move, and so on. You tend to miss much or all of that if you're just staring at the sword, waiting it to go yellow.

I also got the impression that hard was the mode that Witcher was meant to be played. Alchemy for exampe that is supposed to play a big role in witcher's life really comes alive on hard difficulty because winning those big group/boss battles is dependent on finding best combination of various potions and oils. Going to a big battle unprepared is like jumping from the airplane without a parachute :).

and like said above no flaming sword icon helping so you need to understand the flow of battle to corrctly time your fighting moves/stunts/magic usage etc :)

Would you say it on the same level(difficulty) as G2+NotR?

Same here. As soon as I heard of the EE, I stopped looking for it, so to say.

I haven't played NotR, so I can't speak for that. As to G2, I'd say that The Witcher is a fair bit easier in the beginning, but a lot harder in the end, which is a good thing, especially the latter. Towards the endgame in G2, I was swatting dragons like flies; I never got that kind of über-demigod feel in The Witcher -- the late-game/endgame battles were tough, but not overwhelmingly, hopelessly tough. The Witcher felt much better balanced overall.

It's not an open-world game, though, even though it does have some areas that are more open than others; this means that the areas that open up are progressively tougher as your character gets tougher too. IOW, you get less frustration but also lose the marvelous sense of achievement that you get beating foes that you've run screaming from before.

Hm, I think that Witcher on hard is a bit easier than G2+NotR, especially if you play NotR as a mage.
I´ve chosen the hard difficulty for my first playthrough of Witcher and even then it became rather easy somewhere during the third chapter. Some selected fights were still quite challenging but nothing Swallow wouldn´t solve. And with Owl and Igni, epilogue was simply too easy.
Hopefully the EE will boost difficulty somehow because I still had almost no need to use the majority of potions. Toning down the effects of Swallow might help.

I´m pretty sure that G2+NotR would be much harder for someone without any previous experience with Gothic games.

Out of topic, but please try and put spoiler warnings for people like me who didn't get the chance to play the game yet ;-)

Whoops! Sorry 'bout that Hedek. Sure thing.

@ JDR13: No, I wouldn't compare TW to G2+NOTR. TW is difficult at times, but not as brutal as NOTR was. Prima Junta hit the nail on the head.

A few people around here have bragged about not needing potions even on hard setting. I personally had to make good use of them, and I consider myself an average player.

What?!!!!!!


I'm going to just pretend that was a typo.

Yeah,.. What?! So you've played through the whole 2nd Gothic game and yet never managed to play the single greatest expansion ever created?

I know, I know.

I like to think of it as something to look forward to.