So yesterday I finished The Witcher 2 and I felt like typing out some of my feelings about the game.
 
The combat has come under quite a bit of discussion since the game came out last week. The main problems seem to be that the game doesn't do a good job of explaining all of the mechanics and you are thrown in at the deep end. I, like many other people, died quite a lot on the very first battle but once I learned how to use the Signs and evade moves effectively I started to enjoy the game a lot more. However, the main problem comes from the fact that when you face multiple enemies. Geralt isn't all that fast when it comes to going from one move to the next, meaning it is hard to move around and attack enemies without taking considerable damage. This results in the player having to run around while occasionally turning around and getting a few hits in before running off again. This isn't really how you'd imagine a bad ass, genetically mutated bounty hunter to fight. 
 
After levelling up and getting better armour the combat becomes a lot easier, in fact it becomes too easy. From about half way through the game I didn't really need to block or dodge anymore due to my large health pool so I would just go up to enemies and swing away at them. Don't get me wrong, this was a lot of fun but I feel they needed to tweak the combat more so that players don't become too overpowered.  But to be fair, I was playing on normal difficulty so perhaps I should try the harder difficulties.
 
My only other main problem with that game is the last Chapter. It is very short and the last boss is terrible, all you do is run in, get a couple of hits in, get knocked down, repeat. It's incredibly boring compared to some of the other boss fights in the game. 
 
Also, towards the end of the game I found myself not really caring about the story or characters anymore. I don't really know why this is as I really like Geralt and the world he inhabits.
 
It may look like I fucking hate this game. Far from it. I think it is a great RPG, there are just a few things that keep me from loving it. 
 
In summary, the game looks beautiful, the characters and world are interesting and unique and the RPG elements are well implemented. However, the game has a poor tutorial and the combat system doesn't work so well when faced with a large group of enemies.

I mostly agree with everything you said.

Combat is devoid of challenge even on hard past a certain point in chapter 1. So really, I can see me pulling off an Insane playthrough. Not that I'm gonna try.
 

I agree with the OP for the most part. The Prologue left me sort of bewildered after dying a bunch and going through that horrible 'stealth' bit in the dungeon. Flotsam was amasing, Vergen was cool (Dwarves! Who doesnt like dwarves?), but I felt like Chapter 3 was developed by a different team entirely. Visually and content wise it was just a huge drop in both quality and quantity. Not to mention the super watered-down conclusion. While I really enjoyed the game, it just felt rushed, especially with all the optimisation issues.

Yeah Chapter 3 was pretty meh but I thought the epilogue was really cool. Most annoying thing about combat is that I either ended up spamming roll, or Quen. Quen just felt cheap and really overpowered by the time it was upgraded and rolling around just dragged fights on. At some point in the first chapter the game seemed to strike a nice balance between challenge and fun but that didn't last very long. I wonder if CD Projeckt will make significant changes in patches to balance the difficulty curve. I'd happily replay it again.

The combat would be much improved if there wasn't that little delay between each move. Find myself jamming on a button till the character responds, really frustrating.
 
As for the end boss, it's making me so angry (even on easy!) that I'm not going to bother with it. If a game starts becoming unenjoyable I just stop playing. 
 
Will probably start another playthrough, the middle part of the game is fairly good (except the sneaking bits).