Totally agree with you, IN ALL POINTS AND FOR ME IT BROKE THE GAME ENTERILY, STORY SAVED IT ALL BUT NOT EVEN ENOUGH WHEN GAMEPLAY IS THAT AWFUL.
My rank to the game: 3/10 and only to give a respect for the storyline, really nasty gameplay, graphic motor and lag/stutter.
But i will add some more of useful things apart of the mentioned cutcene kills GOD I HATE DAT.
Bosses difficulty:
Well there are little scales in stage bosses, the kraken (Kaernk or something like that) will kill you in 3 hits on dark (IDK in normal because i am a hardcore gamer and as i played TW1 game on hard and it was not hard at all but it was a good game, so i started the witcher 2 on dark as i saw something about special equipment and i love that things in gameplay, Susprise? YEP, dark equipment is broken, yeah glitched and really broken especially the swords and the sick stomach sounds plus removal of all music, not bad enough? Hmmm let put some black fog are we? This is the top bug i have seen in years). You get that suckish epic armor in stage 1 to get kaked in 3 hits, nice really? Okey lets talk about the draugr boss, this one is super mega ultra annoying and ofc expect some fps drops and lag due to overloaded environment. Boss battle is not as hard as the first one (I wont count the Letho fight because we all now he is Gerald but with the maxed ability tree), the draugr fight is poorly designed to 2 of his skills: Interesting arrow shower and meteorite/bomb shower, try to attack him when he is using his 2 favorite fu*kin skills and you get punched instead. Quen spam is expected from the players, you need a miracle to defeat that annoying boss that barely let you hit him if you didnt improved the sadly nerfed quen.
Act 3 boss, the Dragon: This is the last mistake that i managed to stand against far enough, if you have played Dark Souls like I did (Love that game to the end BTW) you may remember Artorias, well forget about him he is just a maggot against the dragon, Artorias is nothing he is reaaaaallly easy, why dont you go and put down a dragon in TW2 on dark? This is the real man job, if the Kraken may kill you in 2/3 hits, the Dragon onehits you no matter what gear you have, you better go naked to the battle why bother in gear? You should have lvl 25-30 for the time you fight that piece of crap, you may have the Kingslayer armor (I had the traitor one, more than enough to put down 4-5 soldiers or monsters in no time). Why do you need any kind of resistance or armor when a boss is scripted to kill you in one hit. CD deffend the difficulty with: We have been inspired in the Dark Souls difficulty, well YOU EPICLY LIE... In dark souls you dont get oneshotted or onehit deaths if you wear the best avaliable equipment for the time, for example facing the bell gargoyles if you wear a +4-5 suit plus a basic sword in +4 you get killed in at least 3-4 hits, with Artorias The Abysswalker (Pretty Hard and Nice Boss) having a snake 2H blade that you get in the fortress in +8-+7 give you a very big advantage and by the time i arrived at lvl 100 he was not really hard, but easy enough to put down in 10 or 11 hits. Not to mention the companions help.
You made a large mistake with scripted 1 hit deaths, same mistake you made with cutcene deaths, all that stuff are bugs, not better than that.
Should you play on Dark and get the special armor to prepare for the real challenge like bosses? I SUGGEST NOOOOO WAY, CARE ABOUT YOUR TIME DONT CRAFT THE SPECIAL ITEMS BECAUSE SOME BOSSES ARE BAD SCRIPTED TO KILL YOU IN 1 HIT, HAVE NASTY MOVES/STRATEGY OR BOTH. The dragon have it all, nasty strategy and moves, onehits, penetrates your Quen nerfed shield (Shame on you for nerfing it, why didnt you nerf the Dragon), fire that fully ignore your Quen, etc. Reaaally sad that you decided to shit on the amazing story with this awful gameplay, hack and slash combat and onehit deaths? What kind of misc is that? Reminds me of Gothic 3 LMAO combat with 2 buttons one to attack fast and 1 to slow, reminds me to the Skyrim dragons too... That were toy dragons with soda instead of fire if you compare to the nasty one of TW2.
I didnt ragequitted that hard since the Capra Demon, but i did it right. I bought the game on a store (2 discs inside) for 40 EURO, had to play it with mods THANKS TO THE COMMUNITY FOR FIXING SOME STUFF IN THE GAME, i removed the fog and creepy sound of dark equipment, cheated the missing piece of the draugir armor for the 2nd dark armor (Game is stupid enough to not tell me, loot the corpses or something like that and i was in a hurry plus without space in the inventory, no drops later until i got a drop from boss of act 2, useless in that time due to the mod i installed and proud of it). For the act 3 i lost my patience, i godmoded trough the final bosses, game was really bad that i lost my atention on the ending, i was really pissed off and skipped it by ignoring it. I simply returned to the shop where i bought the game from and asked for a refund, the reason was clear: Broken game.
One more thing: I dont care about the age of the main topic. I was talking about the enhanced edition, not enhanced enough to reach the 5/10 rank even.