The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Review
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The only other thing I noticed is that if you cast the Igni sign on an enemy, and if you ignite it, then it will catch on fire and show a burning animation. I don't remember that happening before, so it's probably new. Otherwise, the Enhanced Edition looks almost identical to the original version, and so the graphical changes give little reason to try out the game again. Other Improvements
In addition to the more publicized changes, CD Projekt Red has made other improvements. First and foremost, they upgraded the inventory system. When The Witcher first came out, the inventory was divided between quest items and other items, and it was often tough to tell what you had and what you needed (among other things, ingredients tended to look like potions). But now the inventory has been divided into three areas -- quest items, regular items, and ingredients -- and CD Projekt Red added sorting and filtering buttons, making it easier to keep track of your stuff. Better yet, the changes actually added more inventory space, and so now you don't need to constantly run back and forth to shopkeepers to sell items and clear space, and you don't often need to visit inns to shuffle items between your inventory and your storage space.
Another nice change is that CD Projekt Red improved dice poker. When the game was initially released, the dice poker opponents were monumentally dumb, and they'd often roll dice at random, without any regard to whether they were helping their hand or actually hurting it. But now the opponents are both smarter and luckier, and so it's much tougher to get through the dice poker quest in the game. It also means that you can no longer use dice poker as a source for easy money. But on the downside, dice poker also isn't as much fun to play any more. Opponents constantly roll full houses and six-high straights, and you're now much more likely to lose than to win (I lost to Dandelion 10 times in a row before I finally beat him).
Finally, CD Projekt made a couple of claims that don't exactly seem to be true, or perhaps are a matter of semantics. First, they claimed that they reduced the loading times in the Enhanced Edition, but I couldn't tell the difference. When the game first came out the loading times were terrible for me (going in and out of a shop took about five minutes round trip), but these times were knocked way down in the 1.2 patch, and they seem to be about the same now. CD Projekt Red also claimed that they improved (combat responsiveness,) but this also seemed about the same. I noticed that Geralt will actually advance and start fighting plants on his own now, but at other times he just refuses to fight, especially when you try to use the group fighting style.
Conclusion
Just to be clear, The Witcher: Enhanced Edition is a patch rather than any sort of expansion pack. It doesn't add any new quests or locations or characters, and the new script just expands upon existing conversations rather than adding new ones. So if you've already played The Witcher, then there isn't really anything new here. It's just that all of the things you saw before are a little bit better. If you haven't played The Witcher yet, then the Enhanced Edition gives you even fewer excuses to avoid it than you might have had before, and you'd be doing yourself a favor by playing it.
As patches go, the Enhanced Edition is about as good as it gets. Only once before have I seen a game get a major overhaul to its script and voice acting, and that game, Gorasul, desperately needed it (let's just say that it was poorly translated). The Witcher didn't really need to improve its script, but CD Projekt Red spruced it up anyway, and they made a lot of other nice changes as well, making the game even better than it was before. Just be warned, though, that if you're downloading the Enhanced Edition as a patch, it's 1.5 GB in size, and since it touches so many files, it takes upwards of 2 hours to update your game. But that's a small enough downside given all of the improvements that you're getting for free.
