As much as I love Yahtzee as if he was some holy gift from the gaming Gods, and I'll admit he does spear the game for some valid points, namely Geralt's rather incongruous botomless libido, and the over-reliance on fetchy quests; and there are some points I'm surprised he didn't pickup on, like some wildly inconsistant voice acting, but all the same you should follow up on his advice in his Mass Effect review and ignore this review's conclusion completely if you happen to be a fan of RPGs. The fact he says nothing whatsoever about the story, even the impressive Hot-Fuzz-esque ending of the first chapter, should be a dead give away. The man has speared several different games for moving your character up and down a slider between saint and skeletor, and fails to give the game enough of a chance to see how this game deals with that. Admittably, those omissions do come from a genuine flaw in the game, that it has both a lengthy tutorial and a starter chapter of doom before you get into the meat of the story,but I could name plenty of other RPGs where that is the case to some extent. Hell,even fallout had the dull-as-dishwater "kill the Radscorpions" village before you got rolling. This wasn't a bad episode, because it was very amusing and had Yahtzee being Yahtzee. But you are not necessarily Yahtzee.
It genuinely annoyed me when someone mentioned he'd skip this game for Torment and Fallout 2. Guess what,Yahtzee hates Torment too. The whole reason he's great is that he never tries to deliver a detailed, neutral analysis, he lets fly with his opinion and is hilarious doing it. However, that also means you've got to consider if what he says applies to you. The Witcher ain't perfect by a long shot, but if you like RPGs, it's worth it to pick it up.
Uhm I am curious about the Witcher, but I am not sure I want to buy a game at full price that is boring. And it might be. As much as I love RPGs I must admit that lately the RPGs are quite disappointing me. I am having MORE FUN with old RPGs like Neverwinter Nights 1 and the Baldur Gates series...
And for guys like this, what Yahtzee desribed was equivalent to Irenicus' Dungeon in BGII. If you're like me youprobably installed Dungeon-Be-Goneto by pass that mind numbing bit of rubbish on your hundredth play-through, but it was worth going through once.
Having actually played Painkiller,I found the "intro-theatre" very funny, but was vaguely disquieted by the fact this made a LOT more sense than the original cinematic. And was better acted. And it has only just occured to me that, coincidentally, both of these games were Polish made, as your total irrelevancy of the day.