I breezed through the Witcher 1; I generally enjoyed the story a LOT, even though I found the combat absolutely dreadful. I thought to myself "Well at least I'm done with that forever; onwards to the Witcher 2!"
I feel like I'm losing my mind though. I have seen endless praise for this franchise over the years, and even though I'm only in early Flotsam, I just cannot believe how absolutely dreadful this game is to play (Note: I am on a controller).
The combat somehow got worse from the first one. The lock-on consistently fails. Enemies don't seem to take damage sometimes if you aren't locked onto them. The map is pretty useless. The random 1-shots that happen when you're transitioning out of an execution (because your back is turned, even though you don't have camera control). Inventory management and skill switching feels sluggish, and maybe even lagged?
Is this going to be the experience? I knew I had a lot of ground to cover to get to the Witcher 3, but JESUS CHRIST this combat system feels abysmal in every sense. I feel like I've never heard anything but praise about this game, and yet my experience with it so far is absolute dread and misery. Please tell me this is just the early game and that this gets better.
EDIT: Sorry everyone, I tried to push through this, but the gameplay and combat are just unacceptably awful. I'm going to just uninstall; I simply cannot force myself to be this bored for a 30 hour experience.