I just recently got the Witcher trilogy, and while I've only played 1 so far it was impressive work for 2007.
I only made it to the Swamp. Most decisions felt either heavily railroaded (e.g. witch vs villagers), or completely random (Fighting that green thing at the beginning or help in the laboratory.). The completely disproportional interiors, copy paste villagers and the awful card collecting game. Some cringe-worthy teen level dialog. Although there was some fine humor sprinkled in from time to time. Overall I found it over-hyped. Compared with TES games it may be fine, but we had games like Baldurs Gate long before that. 3D did RPG games a real disservice for quite a long time. Old man yelling at clouds over and out.
I agree BGII was a masterpiece.
Hah the Swamps what made me consider jumping to Witcher 2. Those damn plant things can't be avoided with that escort quest right at the start of it and I hadn't had a reason to put points in the fire sign or whatnot yet. I haven't done the city quests yet so I probably jumped ahead while exploring, but it wasn't clear if there was a preferred order of missions. After hitting swamp though I'ma do city quests and focus on the igni or fire sign or whatever it's called for those dang plants. Otherwise I'll have to bring a lot of potions if fire sign doesn't melt the plants pretty well. I could beat one without potions and eat some chicken afterwards, but the escort quest has you running into multiples and silver sword alone wasn't cutting it.
I decided I'll finish Witcher 1 because I think you can import the save like Mass Effect to later entries. You are right, though I would say because it is a dated game. I do think a more Ninja Gaiden style combat timing clicking would have been better instead of clicking on the little enemy character models. I've heard 2 is much better as far as combat and 3 moreso but haven't really tried them.
As for the story, I guess it's railroad sort of in that you progress from area to area. I don't think it's limited to one choice though. I picked Abigail because she offered to play cards immediately and I didn't know that stopped the dialogue. I never figured out why she was in that cave, for example, or why she let Alfred be captured... I got the impression she betrayed everyone but again I played cards with her instead of asking questions first. Also I never figured out what was up with the merchant's dog; Gerald points out the dog acting oddly and it suggests I missed something; perhaps killing the Beast can be avoided? I dunno, haven't read a walkthrough.
Browser doesn't like youtube or I'd watch the videos. I don't plan to get Cyberpunk for a while regardless of quality; I usually wait for sales for big name games due to cost unless I really really liked the title. I also don't know anything about the tabletop. If this was Shadowrun setting though I'd jump all over it.