Anyone else get this free on Xbox? I'm through Act 1 playing on Hard, and the masochist in me is gonna stick with it, even for all its adorable faults. But it does seem to be getting easier. Some highlights of the frustration:

The menu interface. No idea what the different colors/symbols in the alchemy screen are for. Still no idea what mutagens do.

The minimap. It rotates, and there's no marker for north, the perfect combination to make it maximally useless.

Barely any autosave. It's cool because I wanted to replay those last 10 min anyway.

The mission with the troll, I roughed him up enough for the screen to fade to a cutscene, and I lost control of Geralt during the fade. That didn't stop the troll from following through on one last smash, and I get a Game Over as the cutscene wrapped up.

The first option in the pause menu being "Difficulty" like the game is taunting me to lower it every time I press start.

The plot, beyond the basics. Never played the first game, can't imagine I'd keep track of all the names even if I had.

Arm wrestling!

Few of the unlocked abilities have a slot for Mutagen. (there is a small circle below the large circle) You insert it there and then you permanently get that bonus. The mutagen is locked in there for the rest of the game.

Minimap and Map sucks, although more apparently in Act 2 Vergen.

Don't play on hard, I don't think the combat is that interesting anyways.

http://kotaku.com/5898645/before-you...in-the-witcher

There's no Witcher 1 thread, but I'm a bit stuck and not finding any help online. I'm in The Swamp Forest in Act II, and these Bloedzuiger plant things are destroying me. I put on an endurance regen potion and a poison resist, using ignie with strong silver sword attacks and points in to incinerate damage with strong silver attack, and I get 2-3 shot before getting them down to half health. Everything else in the game is a total cakewalk, taking on packs of 7-8 Drowners is no problem in the same area. What am I missing?

NM, it was a boss fight I guess a trophy, thing was called an Occidium or somesuch. I learned you can run away and regen outside of aggro range and they don't regain health.

Finish them and run back, the poison explosion area is actually quite small. Don't get surrounded.

Yah I had the name wrong, the journal description made me think the thing I was fighting was the Bloedzuigers, but it was more like a unique boss Eccinops (sp). I'm just starting to figure out how important it is to buy books to get journal entries for enemies and plants etc. I have to go back and grind a few different enemies for quests since I didn't have their journal entries and wasn't getting any drops. I'm loving and hating how little this game holds your hands.

Some of the bounty fights you can make bit easier by quickly killing the normal enemies, run away, heal, then come back to duel the boss.