Am I the only one this confused? (spoilers)

I am playing Witcher 2, having not read the books, and I quite enjoyed Act I. The Witcher himself is awesome, the combat is fun, the graphics are outstanding, the world building is terrific. I ate it up. The rest of the game, though, has left me deeply confused about what in the world is going on.

Part of it is the maps. I have never seen a game with an automap that is this difficult to navigate. Acts I, II, and III all have this problem. The cities look great but are a complete maze. The wilderness *looks* like it is a wide-open outdoor area, but there are barriers everywhere, and all the paths have twists and turns to make it feel like the world is bigger than it really is. Mists, trolls, spiders, cemeteries, everything just comes around the corner and I have no idea what to expect next.

The plot is confusing, too. In Act II, on Iorverth's path, I really bogged down on the poisoning investigation. It's hard to keep track of all the different people involved, and--like the Witcher himself--I only partially care about all the political intrigue anyway. Quests are getting updates on them with me hardly understanding why it says Geralt discovered whatever he did. Ultimately the poison investigation got marked as "failed", saying I took too long, which I suspect is a glitch. After the quest failed, I hurried through the rest of Act II with the hopes that Act III would be better.

So far, Act III is even more confusing. A whole new city, but this time with one camp of guys in it that attacks me on sight. I had to examine cheat guides to figure out which enemies I should fight (the bounty hunters) versus avoid (some of the guards, which all look alike to me). Finding the sewer was impossible. As I wander around, I'm getting quests thrown at me. Excuse me? Philippa just got hauled off, and I'm reading billboards and arm wrestling? One of the quests is for some guys trying to break into the sewer, but nobody mentions that *I* am trying to break into the sewer and so should maybe join up with them. Then again, once I found the entrance, it's just a door, so why are those guys drilling through some other building to get into the sewer anyway?

Now I find Philippa, and it's the piece de resistance. Everyone is acting like I should be reasonably fine with her being imprisoned and blinded. What!? She's been helping me the whole game, including against other sorceresses. She herself was betrayed by one of the other sorceresses. I'm supposed to ignore all of that because she cast a love spell on someone? Do they know how many times a computer game has made a love spell into a quest objective? Yes, it's dubious, but it's not grounds for chains and blinding. I need a little more build up before such a reversal.

Now I'm fighting a huge mob of people to get to Triss, because f$!@ all these eye-gouging backstabbers. She's the only point of clarity I have left.