Having to meditate simply to drink a potion made no sense. Nor did potions only lasting 10-15 minutes. The section in Chapter 2 where you're going through those dark mines nearly drove me mad. Had to constantly stop and drink another cat potion. Over and over and over again. Annoying as all hell.
It's kind of following the lore... it's like that in the books (or so I've heard), and you can see that as well in Witcher 1's intro. Geralt drank a potion in his little base, and then wait for sun down.
See, in the first game, that made sense. I'd wait 'til sundown, because that's when the monsters came out. Then I'd chug my potions - Cat, Swallow, maybe something else depending on what I was planning on hunting... I'd oil up my weapons... And then I'd go out hunting.
The potions would last most of the night.
In TW2, it just doesn't work that way. You chug some potions... And they wear off after 15 minutes. So you have to chug some more, and some more, and some more... You can't just prepare for a night of hunting.
Researching the local flora and fauna was no longer necessary. You could go out and kill something new and loot alchemical ingredients from it right away - no point in buying books about the local plants or researching a monster's weakness.
Nope... without knowledge some of the alchemy ingredients won't drop. You can however choose to not spend orens on books and instead kill a lot of that monster to accumulate knowledge on them.
Fair enough - but none of those alchemy ingredients are
necessary. I know because I didn't bother to buy any books after the first chapter, and managed to finish the game just fine.
In TW1 there were numerous jobs that just plain could not be completed unless you did some research.
The day/night cycle was basically gone. All the assorted monsters were out in-force 24/7. No waiting 'til dark to go hunting.
That's not true. More monsters spawn at night, and there're a few spawn points that only trigger at night.
More monsters may very well spawn at night. I don't remember any specific monster spawns that only happened at night, but I do remember some quests that required me to show up some place at a specific hour.
But, in TW1, the world was
basically safe during the day, and downright
unsafe at night.
The world this created felt like one that could actually exist. Regular people going about their business during the day... And huddling inside their homes at night. Relying on traveling Witchers to keep the countryside safe from things that go bump in the night.
In TW2 there are swarms of enemies out in broad daylight - so how do the regular folks cope? How do you go tend your crops (or whatever) when there's monsters everywhere, even at noon?
In TW1, you basically
had to wait 'til nightfall to do your hunting. In TW2, aside from a few specific quests, you can do everything at pretty much any time of day.
TW1 felt more like a fully-realized world to me. Felt more internally-consistent.
I liked that you couldn't just wander out into the countryside and kill things indiscriminately. You had to research your monsters to learn their weaknesses and what ingredients could be harvested from them... You had to brew your potions, and dose yourself appropriately before going out hunting... You had to wait 'til the right time of day to go looking for your prey...
There was a very real feeling that a Witcher was not actually superhuman - just well-prepared.
In TW2, you can skip pretty much all of that. You don't
have to research your monsters, you don't
have to wait for night, and your potions run out so quickly that you can only really
plan for scripted encounters.
As for the mods... I guess I don't care too much right now.
It's good to know that there are mods out there to make it more playable. And I'll probably give them a try eventually. But right now I really don't have any interest in playing through the game again any time soon.
Even if I ignore all the assorted technical glitches I ran into, I was really disappointed with the storyline.